Major challenges in the 2000 census brought by the combination of population

The 2000 census encountered many unprecedented challenges, partly from changing societal circumstances, such as reduced funding from governments, difficulty in recruiting experienced census-takers, less co-operation from respondents and huge ‘floating’ population, and partly from the innovated census-taking procedures, especially the changes in the definition of the geographic location and duration of migrants (see Huang 2003; Qiao 2002; Wang 2003a; Zhang and Xu 2002).

The most important challenge of the 2000 census was the enormously increasing population mobility, which made people more difficult to catch and count. According to the 2000 census, about 144 million people, 11.6 percent of the total enumerated population, lived in a street, town or township other than their registered location. If it were taken into account that the majority of undercounted people were living in a place other than their hukou-registered location, this figure would probably rise to 160 million (Li 2003). Among these migrants, 42.4 million people moved across the provincial boundaries, and 36.4 million across urban city or rural county boundaries. Because of the different criteria used in the 1990 and 2000 censuses, the migration figures are not directly comparable. However, if the duration difference is ignored, the number of 78.8 million people living in a residence other than their registered city or county was about 3.6 times the figure of 21.6 million as reported in the 1990 census (SSB 1993; SSB 2002b).

It was commonly recognised among policy makers and demographers that previous censuses undercounted temporary migrants at their current residence. Therefore, a more liberal definition of permanent residence was applied in the 2000 census. One consequence of the change in the geographic boundary for permanent residence is that the census included large numbers of urban residential migrants. The economic boom brought large-scale construction of new residential buildings in urban areas; and richer urbanites, who used to live in inner cities, tended to buy new suburb residences. However, for reasons of health care, or children’s education, or from diminished concern for hukou registration, a large number of these people did not change their hukou registration. It was reported that some households possessed two houses: one was registered under the name of the head of the household, the other under the name of another family member, which was more obvious in big cities than in small cities. Many such people were not migrants in a real sense, but were counted as migrants just because they lived in a residence other than the registered urban street (Huang 2003; Li 2003). One study based on the 2000 census found that in the four old inner-city districts of Beijing, 11 percent of the population were not living in their hukou-registered residence, while in one district of Guangzhou, 21 percent people lived in streets other than their hukou registration streets (Li 2003). Another study reported that in one street of Nanjing city, the capital of Jiangsu province, only 54 percent of people lived in their permanent registration residence there, and about 25 percent kept their hukou there while living in another street inside the city (Huang 2003). The possible outcome was that many of these people could be either counted twice, in their registration location and current residence, or missed in both locations (Duan et al. 2001).

In the previous censuses, the minimum requirement of one-year duration at the current residence ensured that most migrants would be enumerated at their permanent registration location. Despite missing most temporary migrants at their current location, the 1982 and 1990 censuses were less likely to overcount or undercount people at their permanent residential location. However, it was totally different in the year 2000. The 2000 census contained more de facto factors, but still heavily relied upon the weakened hukou registration. During the census interviews, an enumerator could not record everyone immediately in a household. In the first place, he must ascertain the hukou status of each member inside the family; if a

person’s registration was outside the street, town or township, the enumerator must clarify the time-period since the person left his registered location and then decide whether to count this person there. One researcher complained that the census instructions and procedures were too numerous and too complicated for an ordinary enumerator to remember even after seven days of training (Huang 2003: 47). It is important to note that the great majority of the 5-6 million temporarily recruited enumerators were actually working in different jobs before the census. Understandably, most of them would have more difficulty in mastering the complexities than the professionals collecting data in surveys. Although the enumerators for the 1982 and 1990 censuses may have been in the same situation, the census-taking environment was much more favourable, so that the enumerators themselves faced fewer challenges.

During the census, all information on migration duration was given by respondents themselves and difficult to verify, or even if the enumerator recognised a mistake they still could do nothing. If a person for any possible reason did not tell the truth, the enumeration results of ‘permanent’ residents and ‘temporary’ residents would be different; or even if a person did not intentionally give wrong information, if he just left his registered location around six months ago, it would hard to tell whether it was more than six months or less than six months and hence affected the enumeration outcomes. Furthermore, if persons who should be classified as ‘temporary’ migrants in their current location but stated that they were there to visit relatives or as tourists or on business, they would not be counted at all. The possible situation was that some migrants were counted twice in both locations, but some perhaps were missed in both. Of the huge number of migrants, a large proportion migrated for the purposes of business, study or moving house, and were easy to catch, however, still not a small proportion had no fixed job and residence but just wandered inside cities or across cities for searching for any money-earning opportunity. The latter group of people were ‘floating’ population by their mobile nature, and probably did not stay in any residence for more than six months. The risk of this group of people being counted mistakenly in any residence was very high, given the complicated reality and census procedures.

The shift of the census reference date to 1 November in 2000 was intended to include the seasonal rural-urban migrants, who usually went home during the Chinese New Year period, normally in February. In fact, many rural-urban temporary migrants may go back to their hometowns in the summer harvest period, between June and July, and probably reported that they left their homes no more than six months ago. In addition, the millions of tourists during the one-week National Day holiday (1-7 October), just one month before the census, presumably complicated the case. Moreover, for practical reasons, such as avoiding the various local fees and levies, many migrants did not want to be enumerated, and hence misreported their duration of living outside. Therefore, the possible undercounting or overcounting was inevitable. As a matter of fact, the 1995 sample census used the same time-period requirement and resulted in a large undercount of migrants (Zhang, Yu and Cui 1997). Once again, as shown in the post-enumeration survey, the undercounting of migrants, in particular the ‘temporary’ residents (zhanzhu renkou), was the primary cause for the incompleteness of the census (Wu 2001).

From the perspective of census design, the new census procedures were supposed to count the total population completely and temporary migrants accurately. But in practice, these changes actually complicated the census-taking, mainly because China has been more like other countries in terms of economic development and subsequent population mobility since the early 1990s, while the census still heavily relied on the problematic hukou system to determine whether and where to count a migrant.