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

DATE: MONDAY, July 2, 1990                   TAG: 9007020104
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: BEIJING                                LENGTH: Short

CHINA BEGINS EFFORT TO COUNT ITS POPULATION

Millions of census workers combed houses and shacks throughout the nation on Sunday as China launched a huge effort to count the largest population in the world and to find out just how big it is.

Beginning early Sunday, 7 million census workers started going from apartment to apartment and hut to hut to help sketch a statistical portrait and to search for off-the-books babies - infants not registered by parents trying to evade family-size rules.

The population is estimated officially as a bit more than 1.1 billion, with the possibility of a large number of unregistered children as well. The estimates are based on mandatory household registrations and on past censuses. The most recent census was in 1982.

- The New York Times

by CNB