the largest Turkic minority. They are distributed over chains of oases in the Tarim Basin and in the Dzungarian Basin of Sinkiang. They mainly depend on irrigation agriculture for a liveli¬hood. Other Turkic mi-norities in Sinkiang are splinter groups of nationalities living in neighbouring nations of Central Asia, including the Kazakh and Kyrgyz. All these groups are adherents of Islam. The Kazakh and Kyrgyz are pas-toral nomadic peoples, still showing traces of tribal organisation. The Ka-zakh live mainly in north-western and north-eastern Sinkiang as herders, retiring to their camps in the valleys when winter comes; they are estab-lished in the 1-li-ha-sa-k'o (Hi Kazakh) Autonomous Prefecture. The Kyrgyz are high-mountain pastoralists and are con¬centrated mainly in the westernmost part of Sinkiang.
The Mongolians, who are by nature a nomadic people are the most widely dispersed of the minority nationalities of China. Most of them are inhabitants of the Inner Mon¬golia Autonomous Region. Small Mongolian and Mongo¬lian-related groups of people are scattered throughout the vast area from Sinkiang through Tsinghai and Kansu and into the provinces of the Northeast (Kirin, Heilungkiang, and Liaoning). In addition to the In-ner Mongolia Au¬tonomous Region, the Mongolians are established in two autonomous prefectures in Sinkiang, a joint autonomous prefecture with Tibetans and Kazakh in Tsinghai, and several autonomous counties in the western area of the Northeast. Some of them retain their tribal divisions and are pastoralists, but large numbers of Mongolians engage in seden-tary agriculture, and some of them combine the growing of crops with herding. The tribes, who are de¬pendent upon animal husbandry, travel each year around the pastureland—grazing sheep, goats, horses, cattle, and camels—and then return to their point of departure. A few take up hunting and fur trapping in order to supple¬ment their income. The Mon-golian language consists of several dialects, but in religion it is a unifying force; most Mongolians are believers in Tibetan Buddhism. A few lin-guistic minorities in China belong to neither the Sino-Tibetan nor the Al-taic language family. The Tajik of westernmost Sinkiang are related to the population of Tajikistan and belong to the Iranian branch of the Indo-European family. The Kawa people of the China-Burma border area be-long to the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austro-Asiatic family.
POPULATION GROWTH
Historical records show that, as long ago as 800 âñ, in the early years of the Chou dynasty, China was already inhabited by about 13,700,000 people. Until the last years The census of the Hsi (Western) Han dynasty, about AD 2, comparatively accurate and complete registers of population were kept, and the total population in that year was given as 59,600,000. This first Chinese census was intended mainly as a prepara-tory step toward the levy of a poll tax. Many members of the population, aware that a census might work to their disadvantage, managed to avoid reporting; this explains why all subsequent population figures were unre-liable until 1712. In that year the Emperor declared that an increased population would not be subject to tax; population figures thereafter gradually became more accurate.
During the later years of the Pei (Northern) Sung dy¬nasty, in the early 12th century, when China was already in the heyday of its economic and cultural development, the total population began to exceed 100,000,000. Later, uninterrupted and large-scale invasions from the north reduced the country's population. When national unifica¬tion re-turned with the advent of the Ming dynasty, the census was at first strictly conducted. The population of China, according to a registration compiled in 1381, was quite close to the one registered in AD 2.
From the 15th century onward, the population increased steadily; this increase was interrupted by wars and natu¬ral disasters in the mid-17th century and slowed by the internal strife and foreign invasions in the cen-tury that preceded the Communist takeover in 1949. During the 18th cen-tury China enjoyed a lengthy period of peace and prosperity, character-ized by continual territorial ex¬pansion and an accelerating population in-crease. In 1762 China had a population of more than 200,000.000. and by 1834 the population had doubled. It should be noted that during this pe-riod there was no concomitant increase in the amount of cultivable land; from this time on. land hunger became a growing problem. After 1949 sanitation and medical care greatly improved, epidemics were brought under control, and the younger generation became much healthier. Public hygiene also improved, resulting in a death rate that declined faster than the birth rate and a rate of population growth that speeded up again. Population reached 1,000.000.000 in the early 1980s.
Now China has a population of 1,295.33 million. Compared with the population of 1,133.68 million from the 1990 population census (with zero hour of July 1, 1990 as the reference time), the total population of the 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities and the ser-vicemen of the mainland of China increased by 132.15 million persons, or 11.66 percent over the past 10 years and 4 months. The average annual growth was 12.79 million persons, or a growth rate of 1.07 percent.
The continually growing population poses major prob¬lems for the government. Faced with difficulties in ob¬taining an adequate food supply and in combating the generally low standard of living, the authorities sponsored Drive a drive for birth control in 1955-58. A second attempt at for birth population control began in 1962, when advocacy of late control marriages and the use of contraceptives became promi¬nent parts of the program. The outbreak of the Cultural Revolution interrupted this second family-planning drive, but in 1970 a third and much stricter program was initi¬ated. This program attempted to make late marriage and family limi-tation obligatory, and it culminated in 1979 in efforts to implement a pol-icy of one child per family.
Other developments affected the rate of population growth more than the first two official family-planning campaigns. For example, al-though family planning had been rejected by Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) in 1958, the Great Leap Forward that he initiated in that year (see below The economy) caused a massive famine that resulted in more deaths than births and a reduction of popula-tion in 1960. By 1963 recovery from the famine produced the highest rate of population increase since 1949, at more than 3 percent, although the second birth-control campaign had already begun.
Since the initiation of the third family-planning program in 1970, however, state efforts have been much more ef¬fective. China's population growth rate is now unusually low for a developing country, although the huge size of its population still results in a large annual net popula¬tion growth.
Below I described the distribution of China’s population by different characteristics.
I. Sex Composition.
Of the people enumerated in the 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities and servicemen of the mainland of China, 653.55 million persons or 51.63 percent were males, while 612.28 million persons or 48.37 percent were females. The sex ratio (female=100) was 106.74.
II. Age Composition.
Of the people enumerated in the 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities and servicemen of the mainland of China, 289.79 million persons were in the age group of 0-14, accounting for 22.89 percent of the total population; 887.93 million persons in the age group of 15-64, accounting for 70.15 percent and 88.11 million persons in the age group of 65 and over, accounting for 6.96 percent. As compared with the results of the 1990 population census, the share of people in the age group of 0-14 was down by 4.80 percentage points, and that for people aged 65 and over was up by 1.39 percentage points.
III. Composition of Nationalities.
Of the people enumerated in the 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities and servicemen of the mainland of China, 1,159.40 million persons or 91.59 percent were of Han nationality, and 106.43 million per-sons or 8.41 percent were of various national minorities. Compared with the 1990 population census, the population of Han people increased by 116.92 million persons, or 11.22 percent; while the population of various national minorities increased by 15.23 million persons, or 16.70 percent.
IV. Composition of Educational Attainment.
Of the 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities and service-men of the mainland of China, 45.71 million persons had finished univer-sity education (referring to junior college and above); 141.09 million per-sons had received senior secondary education (including secondary tech-nical school education); 429.89 million persons had received junior sec-ondary education and 451.91 million persons had had primary education (the educated persons included graduates and students in schools).
Compared with the 1990 population census, the following changes had taken place in the number of people with various educational attainments of every 100,000 people: number of people with university education in-creased to 3,611 from 1,422; number of people with senior secondary education increased to 11,146 from 8,039; number of people with junior secondary education increased from 23,344 to 33,961; and number of people with primary education decreased from 37,057 to 35,701.
Of the people enumerated in