Han Ximin
EXPATRIATES and residents of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan living in Shenzhen are required to register their information for the sixth national population census launched yesterday.
From Nov. 1 to 10, nearly 100,000 census takers will go door to door visiting 3 million households across the city, recording family information to finish the first stage of the census.
This will be the first time the expatriate population has been included in a census.
The expatriate population must register their name, nationality, gender, date of birth, purpose and period of stay, education and occupation.
The census office opened an English hotline 8367-0531 for inquiries.
We have trained census takers in English and required census offices in districts to organize interpreters, Yin Yong, head of the statistics bureau, said.
To gather more accurate figures, from Nov. 11 to Nov. 15, another round of the census will be conducted, although on a smaller scale, Yin said.
Compared with the fifth census in 2000, the sixth census would be more challenging because the permanent population had increased to 8.91 million in 2009.
Shenzhen is a city with a large floating migrant population and a challenge to finish the census in a short time, said Yin, hoping residents would cooperate with census takers.
The census was expensive but necessary to learn the total population picture of the nation, provinces and cities. Yin said the information would be kept confidential. It was the basis for decision makers to determing policies for the nation s economic and social development.
The national census is expected to cost around 60 billion yuan, according to Wang Guangzhou, a researcher at the Population of Labor Economic Research Institute under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Statistics will be calculated in December, with key data to be released by the end of April next year, sources said.
The previous census detailed China s population at 1.29533 billion.
