China: Great Dragon Rising - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 326

The vast majority of Hong Kong' s employees work in
the service industry . In fact, 91 percent of the city' s GDP
in 2005 derived from service activities, which are en-
meshed in its globalized production network. Less im-
portant are Hong Kong' s manufacturing activities, which
focus primarily on printing and publishing, food and
beverage production, textiles, and electronics. The tex-
tile and apparel industries are losing employees as the
population ages. Most young people are going into the
service sector.
The 2007 economic downturn hit Hong Kong hard
with unemployment rising to 10 percent. However, the
city government with its pro-market policy—“Market
leads, government facilitates”—installed stimulus pack-
ages to rescue the economy , which currently is in the
process of recovery . Even so, Hong Kong' s role as the
bridge linking China and the West is diminishing as
other coastal cities rise in importance. For instance, as of
2009, Shanghai had overtaken Hong Kong as China' s
economic powerhouse.

Policies vary in rural areas, depending on local needs.
Minorities are permitted to have several children. Conse-
quently , both rural populations and minority popula-
tions are growing faster than urban and Han populations.
The biggest census in the world was China' s 2000
census, which documented a total of 1.27 billion people
in November of that year. Census-taking in China is ex-
tremely labor intensive. Census workers visit every indi-
vidual household to fill out or assist in the filling out of
census forms. This is necessary because a large portion of
the population, especially those living in rural areas, have
low levels of education. In November of 2000, 6 million
census workers went from door to door to complete
the census.
Between 1990 and 2000, the average annual rate of
population growth in China was 1.1 percent, the lowest
since the founding of the PRC. No doubt, the decline was
in large part due to the one-child policy . Currently , the
average number of children per woman is 1.6, which is
among the lowest in the world. Fertility decline more
than offset the effect of a large childbearing cohort,
namely those born during the 1960s and early 1970s
when no birth control policy was enforced. Demogra-
phers predict that by the year 2020 China will have
achieved zero population growth but will still have a
population of 1.5 billion.
Despite the success of birth control, its ramifications
are far-reaching and can be problematic. Fertility decline,
in conjunction with increased life expectancy , accelerates
the aging of the population. Given shrinking numbers of
youngsters and poor social security , the Chinese are in-
creasingly susceptible to lack of care in their old age. In
addition, census results confirm the persistence of male
preference among Chinese. In 1982, for every 100 girls
born, 108.5 boys were born. In 2000, that ratio jumped
to 100:119. Official surveys report that the sex ratios of
the second- and third-born are considerably higher.
Imbalance of the sexes has already had adverse effects
on those in matrimonial age groups, as the number of men
seeking wives significantly outnumbers women of similar
ages—a phenomenon referred to by demographers as
“marriage squeeze.” The number of unmarried young
men called “bare branches” is predicted to be 30 million
by 2020. Furthermore, 45 percent of Chinese women say
that they do not want to give up a career to get married.
Thus, both the age structure and sex ratio of the popula-
tion are expected to induce new social problems in China.
China is primarily an agrarian society , but the 2000
census documented a steady increase in the level of ur-
banization to 36.09 percent. As of 2009, that figure had

Population Issues

From the beginning, Mao Zedong believed that China' s
people were the country' s greatest resource, and that
to reduce population growth was a capitalist, anti-
communist plot. Therefore, initial population efforts were
t reduce mortality . A program of sending minimally
trained “barefoot doctors” into the countryside, coupled
with anti-sterilization and anti-abortion policies, forged
this goal. Only in the 1970s, after disastrous famines
associated with the Great Leap Forward, did consensus
shift from the idealistic view of people as producers to
the realistic understanding of people as consumers.
In the early 1970s, China' s yearly natural increase rate
was about 3 percent. Beginning in 1971, couples were en-
couraged (often by coercive means) to marry later, have
fewer births, and space children farther apart. A more vig-
orous population control program was pursued after Mao' s
death in 1976. Families were ordered to have only one
child, with severe economic and social consequences for
failure to follow this rule. By the mid-1980s, China' s natu-
ral increase rate was reduced to 1.2 percent. That rate has
been further reduced to an officially claimed 0.5 percent.
Nevertheless, China' s population exceeds 1.3 billion—the
largest population in the world! Figure 11-18 shows pop-
ulation concentrations in relatively humid lowlands.
The one-child policy has been most successful in the
cities, where it is rigorously enforced (Figure 11-19).