China to spend 8 bln yuan on population census

• Source: Global Times
• [16:51 August 17 2010]
• Comments

The Chinese government is to spend 8 billion yuan ($1.18 billion) on the country's sixth national population census, which will officially start on November 1, 2010, reported the China Economic Weekly.

Unlike the previous five population censuses, this will include people from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, as well as foreigners living in China for a long time.

The Ministry of Finance has ploughed 700 million yuan ($103 million) into the census and governments at all levels will also cover part of the total expenses, according to the standard applied to the census of in 2000.

More than 6.5 million census staff members have been recruited for the sixth national population census, and each will have to work for 40 to 60 days, being responsible for collecting data of over 300 people, Feng Nailin, head of the National Bureau of Statistics' Population and Employment Statistics Department said.

The last census, in 2000, showed that China had 1.29 billion people. The new statistical data will be published in May or July in 2011.