China’s urban population outnumbers rural for first time

January 17th, 2012 - 5:56 pm ICT by IANS  

Beijing, Jan 17 (IANS) The number of people living in cities in China has exceeded those living in rural areas for the first time, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Tuesday.

The number of urban dwellers increased by 21 million to reach 690.79 million by the end of 2011, accounting for 51.27 percent of China’s total population, the NBS said.

The NBS noted the rural population fell by 14.56 million to 656.56 million by the end of 2011, Xinhua reported.

The country’s total population increased by 6.44 million over the past year to 1.34 billion, it said.

The number of people between the ages of 15 and 64 stood at about 1 billion, or 74.4 percent of the nation’s total. The figure was down 0.1 percentage points from that of the previous year, the NBS said.

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