A fast increasing population has become the top challenge China has to face in its ambitious strategy of developing the western regions, legislators and experts on population warned Friday.
The legislators and experts were attending a workshop on population and development, sponsored by the Education, Science, Culture and Health Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), which opened in Beijing Friday.
Jiang Chunyun, vice-chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, stressed that lowering the rate of population growth and improving the quality of population are vital to the overall development of China's western regions.
The 10 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in the west have a population of 283 million, making up 22.7 percent of the country's total, while the arable land in the west accounts for 23.7 percent of the national total. This means more people than what the land can support.
Li Honggui, vice-president of the China Population Society, pointed out that the excessively rapid population growth regardless of limited arable land resources in the west is especially worrisome.
Statistics show that population in western China grew at an average annual rate of 2.6 percent between 1990 and 1998, doubling the national average during the same period of time.
Professor Wei Jinsheng, of the China Research Center of Population Information, suggested efforts should be made to have more farmers engage in non-agriculture business, which will help improve their standard of living and finally streamline their concept on birth control.
Vigorously promoting family planning is another major way to solve the population problem in the west, he added.
The professor pointed out that poor birth-control services and insufficient investment in family planning gives rise to the rapid population growth in the west.
In 1998 alone, a lack of one billion yuan worth of input prevented the normal development of the family planing undertaking in the west, Wei said, citing the latest statistics.
As farmers have a deep-rooted logic of "raising a son against old age," the government should establish an insurance system to finance the elderly farmers who have no son to support, the professor suggested.
At the two-day symposium, experts and legislators from the west are expected to discuss such issues like family planing, reproduction-related health care and the quality of the newborn.
(People's Daily 11/4/2000)
