China starts world's biggest census exercise

Beijing: China, the most populous country, on Monday launched the world's biggest census exercise to update the decade-old population data.

About 6.5 million workers will fan out to the nooks and corners of the country to visit over 400 million households, including that of foreigners, in the next 10 days.

In order to have more accurate figures, another round of census exercise will be launched from November 11 to 30, though on the smaller scale of 1/10000 of the population, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) officials said.

Statistics will be calculated in December, with the key data scheduled to be released by the end of April 2011, they said.

The census is expected to reveal an accurate data about the age profile of the Chinese as China which has been strictly implementing one child policy is grappling with rapidly ageing population, putting heavy strain on pension funds.

Anyone born before Monday gets included, and anyone born after gets left out until the next exercise which is expected to be taken in 2020, according to the NBS.

About 90 per cent of the people will be asked to fill in an 18-item form, covering their name, sex, ethnic group, household registration, and education; the other 10 per cent, chosen randomly, will be asked to fill in a longer 45-question form.

Foreigners, who for the first time being included, have to answer 10 questions.

The exercise was expected to cost around $ 103 million (700 million yuan).

China holds its national census every 10 years.

The previous one, in 2000, showed that the world's most populous country had 1.29 billion people.

If the previous household visits are anything to go by, the census takers will not have an easy job, because many people worry about their privacy, not to mention the rapidly swelling migrant population in major cities, state run 'China Daily' said.

Many census takers previously found that people simply refused to open their doors to them.

Also, people who have more than one child would not like to declare their second child fearing punishment.

According to Tan Bihua, one census taker in the southern city of Guangzhou, where the census started on October 25 - ahead of the nationwide effort because of the 16th Asian Games - each person is responsible for about 120 to 150 households and the greatest difficulty is that they often cannot even find the people.

Tan said she had to pay eight visits to one household to get their information because they were migrant workers who had no regular work hours.

In Beijing, most residents received a mobile-phone message over the weekend, asking them to take part in a cooperative spirit.

Vice-Premier Li Keqiang, promised that any personal information collected will be kept strictly confidential.

If people repeatedly refuse to open the door to the census takers, they have the right to ask the police for help.

Yang Shu, Deputy Director of the census office of Maizidian, a multinational community in Beijing's Chaoyang district, said their office has recruited volunteers with bilingual or multilingual skills to help with the census.

They have also translated the questionnaire into at least five languages, including the usual English, French and German.

"Foreigners' lifestyles are different and sometimes it's difficult to find them, so we suggest they make an appointment with the census takers - a time that is convenient for them," Yang said.