cause considerable misapprehension among users who do not recognize the upward revision of the population for what it actually is.

• "Provisional Report on World Population Prospects, As Assessed in 1963" Department of Economic and Social Affairs United Nations, New York, 1964. Although the vital rates include the populations of Hong Kong, Macao, and Mongolia their weight is insignificant in terms of the estimated vital rates.

'World Population Prospects as Assessed in 1968" Population Division, United Nations, Working Paper No. 30, New York, December 1969. Medium variant; population figures rounded to nearest million. As in the 1963 assessment, vital rates are for "Mainland Region" which includes Hong Kong, Macao, and Mongolia.

"World and Regional Population Prospects," prepared by the United Nations Secretariat, World Population Conference, Bucharest, Romania, Aug. 19-30, 1974. Medium variant. The population figures include the Province of Taiwan.

FOREIGN DEMOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS DIVISION ESTIMATES

Unlike the United Nations, estimates prepared by the Foreign Demographic Analysis Division (FDAD) of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce, are essentially the responsibility of one individual-John S. Aird. As a demographer who has devoted many years to the study of China's population, he contributes both expertise and continuity to his estimates and projections, and his numerous official and unofficial publications clearly set down his assumptions and rationale regarding China's population-past, present, and future. As with all of us in this field, new insights into what has been and new information about what is happening now have caused some modifications in Aird's conclusions and estimates, but basically, his projections continue to represent the higher population ranges for China.

Table 2 presents the latest set of FDAD estimates-the "maximum probability series of population totals." Anyone interested in the rationale behind Aird's estimates can refer to his writings in which he develops his theories and assumptions in considerable detail.15

15 The following references represent a sample of Aird's work: The Size, Composition, and Growth of the Population of Mainland China, International Population Statistics Reports, Series P 90, No. 15 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1961); "Population Growth." in Economic Trends in Communist China, edited by Alexander Eckstein. Walter Galenson and TaChung Liu (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1968), pp. 183-327; "Population Policy and Demographic Prospects in the People's Republic of China," in Joint Economic Committee, People's Republic of China: An Economic Assessment (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1972), pp. 220-331.

In a word, however, his relatively high estimates are attributed to the country's age-sex structure which, because of the large proportion of the population in the reproductive ages, is unfavorable to low crude birth rates, and to his doubts about the success of the Peking regime in convincing China's tradition-bound rural population to delay marriage and practice family planning.

Lacking reported demographic data, the differences between the UN and FDAD estimates obviously boil down to a divergence in the interpretation of a whole range of demographic, social, economic and political developments in China during the past two decades. Even when considering solely the medium ("the most plausible") variant, the difference between the two sets of figures is rather staggering-increasing from some 100 million in 1975 to about 300 million by 1990.

Note. A brief explanation of assumptions that produced above figures:

1953-59: In the estimates for 1953 and subsequent years, two substitutions were made for the official data: (1) Because of inconsistencies between the official age-sex structure reported from the census of 1953 and the structure that would be expected on the basis of China's previous demographic history, an alternate age-sex structure as of 1953 generated by computer simultion was substituted; and (2) because of inconsistencies and implausibilities in the official vital rates and population growth rates, assumed parameters for fertility and mortality were substituted. In 1953, it was assumed that the birth rate was 45, the death rate was 22.5, and the natural increase rate was 22.5 per 1,000 population. Thereafter, fertility, as measured by the gross reproduction rate, was assumed to decline by about 3.75 percent between 1953 and 1958 in response to urbanization, internal migration, and mass labor operations. Mortality was assumed to decline by an amount equivalent to an increase of about 6 years in expectation of life at birth.

1960-70: Estimated on the basis of the following assumptions: (1) that the gross reproduction rate declined by a further 7.5 percent from the 1953 level during the crisis years 1959-62, and that Imortality rose by an amount equivalent to a drop of about 10 years in expectation of life at birth by 1961, the bottom year of the crisis; and (2) that the gross reproduction rate rose following the crisis, reaching a high point about 5 percent below the 1953 level in 1969 as a result of postcrisis recovery and a wave of youthful marriages during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-68 and then began to decline again because of the resumption of population transfers during 1969-70, and that mortality declined by an amount equivalent to a rise of about 13 years in expectation of life at birth by 1970.

1971-90: Projections based on the assumptions that the gross reproduction rate fell to a level about 8 percent below 1953 by 1972 and will continue to decline at a rate of about 2 percent per year there. after, and that mortality will decline by an amount equivalent to an increase of about 14 years in expectation of life at birth by 1990.

In some cases even larger differences result in alternate population models prepared by each of the two organizations. Such results are inherent in the use of most models which combine extremes in fertility and mortality trends that are clearly recognized to be more imaginative than factual. Furthermore, the more recent the estimates and the closer the target date, the smaller is the variance between the high and the low projections. Even if these facts are understood by the user, however, they do not help him in making his selection from such wideranging projections. These circumstances provide me with an ideal opportunity to express my own views on the subject and present yet another set of estimates of China's population.

ANOTHER SET OF ESTIMATES

Commenting on some of my earlier estimates 16 an observer wrote that they were "entirely impressionistic and subjective" and therefore "have no demographic value to warrant further discussion." I am convinced, however, that given the lack of hard data, the importance of "feel" based on many years of study on China and her population problems should not be minimized, and in table 3 I again present some slightly revised, but still "impressionistic and subjective" figures. If for no other reason, the unsophisticated method makes it possible for those who disagree with my assumptions to easily pinpoint their disagreements and perhaps make adjustments in line with their

convictions.

Since the Cultural Revolution, Peking has been stressing the now generally accepted hypothesis that a primary requisite to a drop in fertility in developing countries is a change in their social, cultural, and economic environment-when people have enough to eat, when the population becomes literate, when the status of women changes and they become more involved in the society and the economy, and when old-age security is assured either through work or through some form of welfare. Such changes occur only slowly, however, and even if China was aware of this relationship in the 1950's and 1960's, she was not yet ready to emphasize it. Although all of these conditions were not yet present, China's high birth rate probably did drop slightly during the 1950's, not so much because of the birth control campaign initiated in the middle of the decade, but because of a certain amount of tampering with the lifestyle of many individuals. Fertility remained fairly stable during and immediately after the Great Leap Forward (1959-61), but then resumed its gradual downward trend until the Cultural Revolution (1966).

10 See Current Scene, vol. VII, No. 24, Dec. 15, 1969, and vol. XIII, No. 3, March 1974.

During the mid 1960's, fertility was reacting, in part, to the resumed campaign to postpone marriage and to use contraceptives which were becoming much more readily available-the whole effort being closely tied into the expanding public health system. After another 3-year holding pattern during the Cultural Revolution, the birth rate began to reflect the effects of the mounting national commitment to reduce fertility in the 1970's and should continue to drop by an average of one point per year during the period covered by the estimates. Although the level of 27 births per 1,000 population in 1975 is considerably higher than some visitors to China believe it to be on the basis of some sample figures given them, considering the vast rural population, it represents a significant achievement for the current program to plan births an achievement Peking can be proud of. Western-style modernization is not likely to come to China in the near future-their developmental goals taking on somewhat different characteristicsbut the above prerequisite conditions for a reduced fertility are becoming more and more in evidence, and as long as present priorities persist a continuation of the downward trend in the National birth rate seems inevitable.1

The death rates assumed in table 3 are considerably higher than the 17 per 1,000 in 1953 and 11 per 1,000 in 1957 reported by the Chinese. The early priority allocated to the improvement of sanitation and environmental health was, in fact, reflected in a declining death rate, but given the conditions that existed in China before 1949, the shortage of medical personnel and facilities and the size of the widely scattered rural population, the actual reported rates are completely insupportable. The long-term trend of decreasing mortality had only a minor reversal immediately following the Great Leap and a minor

17 See Leo A. Orleans, "China's Experience in Population Control: The Elusive Model," prepared for the Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, September

hesitation during the Cultural Revolution. During the Cultural Revolution the Chinese freely admitted that although major diseases were well under control through preventive measures, curative medicine was almost completely inaccessible to most of the rural population. That is why the assumed death rate for the 1960's is somewhat higher than might be anticipated. A major change came about during and after the Cultural Revolution when large numbers of medical personnel were moved from the cities into the countryside to improve the existing health delivery system for the peasants.18 If China does not experience any major agricultural setbacks, mortality should continue to decline. This decline will be very slow, however, because the level of mortality has already dropped to a level at which further reduction will have to come about as a result of more formidable improvements in curative medicine, rather than by training still more barefoot doctors or by further advances in public health.

SOVIET ESTIMATES

It is not unusual to hear the comment that the Soviet Union (not unlike the U.N.) must have some exclusive knowledge about the population of the People's Republic of China. Just why this should be the case is never made clear. Certainly what little is published in Soviet sources does not support such an assumption and the Russians seem to be floundering along with everyone else—with no two sources using the same population figure for China. Of course, when it comes to Soviet research on China, the outside world is able to react only to the tip of the iceberg, but it is indeed doubtful that either the Russian scholars or their intelligence counterparts have any unique sources about Chinese population.19

In the 1950's the Soviets had no problems with China's population. They never published any critical analysis of the data and, as any good allies should, used figures released by the Chinese, either from the 1953 census (which was planned and executed with the help of a Soviet specialist) or from some of the other Chinese sources that were then available. During the 1960's--after the break between Moscow and Peking the volume of Soviet publications on China decreased, but when the occasional need for a population of China came up, they continued to use essentially the same figures they did in the 1950's. Most frequently they used the all-purpose figures of 600 or 650 million or the end of 1957 figure from Ten Great Years, but they did start to supplement them with estimates made by the U.N. and Western scholars. On the basis of a reasonably large sample of Soviet sources, it would seem that for the first two decades of the existence of the People's Republic, the Russians did not publish a single estimate of their own on the size of China's population.

During the last half dozen years or so, there has been a basic change in the published works on China in the Russian language. Despite the continuing polemic (now more likely to be concentrated in the first and last chapters of a book or the first and last paragraphs of an article),

19 For a detailed discussion of public health and medicine, see Leo A. Orleans. "Health Policies and Services in China," prepared for the Subcommittee on Health, U.S. Senate, March 1974.

19 In general. visiting Soviet scholars inevitably complain about the gaps in Chinese materials available to them in the Soviet Union and assure us that: "You Americans have more data on China than anyone else."