Asia-Pacific Population Journal - Volume 3, Issue 1, 1988

The rapid decline of fertility in China during the 1970s coincided with a rapid rise in the educational attainment of Chinese women. This coincidence raises questions about the role and importance of educational change in China’s fertility decline, which this article attempts to answer.

Between the time of the second and third population censuses of China (1964-1982), the annual growth rate of the Chinese population averaged 2.1 per cent. The annual growth rate of the Han majority was 2.0 per cent; the growth rates for all other ethinc groups were higher than the national average except for the Korean minority, whose average annual growth rate was 1.5 per cent.

Since the late 1970s, China has been making strong efforts to accelerate the pace of modernization. Because the Chinese Government considers poor economic development and rapid population growth to be the main obstacles to modernization, it has emphasised both of those aspects.

The importance of fertility transition in Asia begins with the magnitude of its influence on the world population growth. Asia constituted 58.2 per cent of the world’s population in 1985. Because it is likely to remain in excess of 55 per cent well into the first quarter of the next century, Asia will continue to dominate the global population phenomena and its growth. In particular, China and India have a dominant role in influencing the Asian demographic situation, because together they comprise the majority of the region’s total population.