Population and Ethnical Groups

China is a unitary, with 56 ethnical nationalities populated country. By the end of 2002 the Chinese Mainland population accounted for 1.3 billion people. The special administrative zones Hongkong and Macao as well as the Province of Taiwan are not accounted for.

China is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. The average population density adds up to 134 people's per square kilometre, although the population is not evenly spread. In the coastal metropolitan areas live more than 400 people per square kilometre, in Central China more than 200, whereas the elevated plains of the West with only 10 people per square kilometre are very thinly populated.

Since the Han people are representing the predominant majority, 91.6 % of the total population that is, the remaining 55 ethnical groups are considered national minorities. Within these minorities, the Zhuang people account with 15 million people for the most numerous minority and the smallest number of people is credited to the 2.300 member strong Luoba minority.

The Han nationality is spread all over China, concentrates however mainly in areas of the middle and lower sections of the Yellow River, the Yangtze, the Pearl River and the north easterly expanse of the Chinese Plain. The 55 national minorities are spread over vast areas, covering approximately 64, 3 % of China’s land mass, even though their respective sizes in population is rather small. They live mainly in border regions of Northeast-, North-, Northwest- and Southwest China. The Province of Yunnan is called home for most of the national minorities, representing more than 20 different nationalities. Due to the rapid growth of the population in the past, the Chinese government needed to implement necessary and effective family planning. Nowadays, the growth rate of the population is reversed and alleviates.

The Han people maintain aside of their official Chinese language, an own dialect and letters, partly borrowed from ethnical groups like the Hui and Manchu.

China has successfully harmonized all affairs between the different nationalities. The basic principle is definitely clear: Equality, Unity, the mutual understanding to support each other while aspiring to prosperity and to retain this achievement. The active political system is the National Regional Autonomy, which is under the leadership of the National People’s Congress and has to be founded wherever ethnical groups are living to establish the respective autonomous administrative elements for the local minorities, for the purpose to exercise all their rights and the local administrative works of the region. There are 5 autonomous regions in China: the autonomous region Inner Mongolia, the autonomous region of the Ningxia Hui Minority, the autonomous Region of the Xinjiang Uyghur minority, the autonomous region of the Guangxi minority and the self – governed region Tibet.