ROANOKE TIMES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, June 18, 1990                   TAG: 9006180103
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: BEIJING                                LENGTH: Short


BILLION-PLUS CENSUS FACES BATTLE IN CHINA

In the first 10 days of next month, China is going to try to count each and every one of its more than 1.1 billion people.

The census effort is likely to meet significant resistance from the more than 50 million Chinese who have illegally migrated in the past few years from rural areas to cities in search of work, and from several million families who have defied China's family-planning controls by having more than one child.

The census, China's fourth since the founding of the Communist regime in 1949, also comes as the world's most populous nation is undergoing an unwanted and potentially devastating baby boom.

Though China has the longest history of population records of any nation in the world, it was not until 1982 that its first scientific census was taken.

- The Baltimore Sun



 by CNB