People in China
The most populated country in the world
Most of the people on earth live in China. It now has
1.4 billion inhabitants. Every fifth person on earth
lives in China. Only India comes close with its
population, because around 1.1 billion people live
there. China is the country with the highest population
in the world. By the way, in 1953 it was less than half.
The population in China has actually doubled within a
few decades. And it will continue to grow.
A growing population
But while we in Germany would be happy about an
increasing population, the Chinese are not at all happy
about this growth. The so-called "one-child policy" has
existed since 1979. This means that the communist
government stipulated that the Chinese could only have
one child per family. That worked quite well in the
cities. In the country, however, it was not so easy to
enforce this regulation, which intrudes deeply into
people's private lives. Here people are allowed to have
two children per family. Even if the strong growth of
the population was slowed down, there are also many
negative consequences of this policy for China (compare
everyday life: Consequences of the one-child policy in
China). These regulations have now been relaxed. Couples
can have two children if they have government
permission. There are now Chinese families who want a
third child. They often have to pay a heavy fine and run
the risk of losing their jobs. Forecasts assume that the
Chinese population will continue to grow until 2030 and
then the population will decline.
The Han Chinese
Most of the Chinese belong to the so-called Han
Chinese. 90 out of 100 Chinese belong to the Han
population, as it is often abbreviated. The Han Chinese
were established after a 3rd century BC dynasty. Named
BC.
There are also 55 other nationalities that are
officially recognized. The largest group is that of the
Zhuang. These belong to the Thai people and live mainly
in the autonomous region of Guangxi. The Hui and Uighurs
who live in the Tibet Autonomous Region are other larger
populations. Other minorities include the Mongols,
Kazakhs, Yi and Miao. There are also 20 additional
groups that are not recognized, including the Sherpa,
for example, who live in eastern Nepal, but also in the
mountainous regions of China, and often work as load
carriers for mountaineers.
Where do people live in China?
Most of the people live in the fertile east of the
country. The longest river in China also flows here.
People farm on the banks. Only ten out of 100 Chinese
live in the west with the Himalayan mountains, in the
great deserts in the east and the hard-to-reach regions.
However, most of the minorities also live here. Many of
these strive for independence, as in Tibet or Xinjiang.
The provinces in the west are the poorest and so are the
people who live there.
Urbanization
In China, too, there is so-called urbanization, which
means that more and more people are moving from the
countryside to the city. That's why the Chinese cities
are growing pretty fast. Since 2011, more than half of
the Chinese have lived in cities and the number is
increasing. This is quite problematic for the
environment. But because many people cannot find work in
rural areas, they move away. One billion Chinese people
are expected to live in cities by 2025.
Languages in China
Since China is home to most of the world's people,
Standard Chinese is the most widely spoken mother tongue
in the world. Standard Chinese is also the official
language in China. By that we mean mandarin. But since
China is huge and so many different population groups
live there, there are also many different dialects in
the individual regions of the country. Germany is much
smaller, but here, too, a person from Munich sometimes
has a hard time understanding a hamburger and vice
versa. Whereby one should correctly differentiate
between different languages rather than dialects in
China. In the south they speak Cantonese, which is like
a language of its own and is spoken by many millions of
people.
Religions in China
The Chinese constitution now guarantees the right to
exercise one's religion freely again. But the communist
government tries to keep the influence of religions on
the population as low as possible. Religion and state
are strictly separated from each other. Most Chinese are
officially without religion, which is then called
non-denominational. But there are many people in China
who are followers of Confucianism, Daoism or
Buddhismare. Most religious Chinese are Buddhists. In
China, religion is often mixed with philosophy.
Sometimes the religions also mix. So a Christian can
also visit a Buddhist temple. This is not unusual in
China.
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