Some 1.4b Chinese by 2015

CHINA'S population will near 1.4 billion by 2015, when over half of the nation will be considered urban dwellers, state press said on Sunday.

China's urban population will rise to over 700 million people by 2015 when city dwellers outstrip the rural population for the first time, Xinhua news agency said, citing Li Bin, head of the nation's population planning agency.

Over the next five-years, as the rural population leaves the countryside for the urban industrial centres, China's population will undergo several other major changes as it surpasses 1.39 billion people, Ms Li said.

During the period, China will witness its first ageing-population boom, with an average of about eight million people turning 60 each year, up from an average of around 4.8 million from 2006-2010, she said. By 2015, China will have 200 million people over 60 years of age, Li told a population symposium in Nanjing city.

Meanwhile, the proportion of the population aged between 15 and 59 - the working age group - will peak and then slowly begin to fall, the report said. According to official statistics, China's population stood at 1.32 billion at the end of 2008, about 2.5 times the number in 1949. when the People's Republic of China was founded, Xinhua said.

China implemented a strict population control policy in 1979, generally limiting families to one child, with some exceptions for rural farmers, ethnic minorities and other groups. The government maintains that the policy has averted 400 million births and has vowed to enforce it until at least 2033, when the population is expected to peak at 1.5 billion people.