Spatial pattern and its evolution of Chinese provincial population: Methods and empirical study

doi:10.1007/s11442-015-1248-x

Abstract

Abstract:

China has been experiencing an unprecedented urbanization process. In 2011, China’s urban population reached 691 million with an urbanization rate of 51.27%. Urbanization level is expected to increase to 70% in China in 2030, reflecting the projection that nearly 300 million people would migrate from rural areas to urban areas over this period. At the same time, the total fertility rate of China’s population is declining due to the combined effect of economic growth, environmental carrying capacity, and modern social consciousness. The Chinese government has loosened its “one-child policy” gradually by allowing childbearing couples to have the second child as long as either of them is from a one-child family. In such rapidly developing country, the natural growth and spatial migration will consistently reshape spatial pattern of population. An accurate prediction of the future spatial pattern of population and its evolution trend are critical to key policy-making processes and spatial planning in China including urbanization, land use development, ecological conservation and environmental protection. In this paper, a top-down method is developed to project the spatial distribution of China’s future population with considerations of both natural population growth at provincial level and the provincial migration from 2010 to 2050. Building on this, the spatial pattern and evolution trend of Chinese provincial population are analyzed. The results suggested that the overall spatial pattern of Chinese population will be unlikely changed in next four decades, with the east area having the highest population density and followed by central area, northeast and west area. Four provinces in the east, Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin and Jiangsu, will remain the top in terms of population density in China, and Xinjiang, Qinghai and Tibet will continue to have the lowest density of population. We introduced an index system to classify the Chinese provinces into three categories in terms of provincial population densities: Fast Changing Populated Region (FCPR), Low Changing Populated Region (LCPR) and Inactive Populated Region (IPR). In the FCPR, China’s population is projected to continue to concentrate in net immigration leading type (NILT) area where receives nearly 99% of new accumulated floating population. Population densities of Shanghai, Beijing, Zhejiang will peak in 2030, while the population density in Guangdong will keep increasing until 2035. Net emigration leading type (NELT) area will account for 75% of emigration population, including Henan, Anhui, Chongqing and Hubei. Natural growth will play a dominant role in natural growth leading type area, such as Liaoning and Shandong, because there will be few emigration population. Due to the large amount of moving-out labors and gradually declining fertility rates, population density of the LCPR region exhibits a downward trend, except for Fujian and Hainan. The majority of the western provinces will be likely to remain relatively low population density, with an average value of no more than 100 persons per km².

Key words: China, provincial, population, urbanization, migration, spatial pattern, natural growth

Yu DENG, Shenghe LIU, Jianming CAI, Xi LU, P NIELSEN Chris. Spatial pattern and its evolution of Chinese provincial population: Methods and empirical study[J].Journal of Geographical Sciences, 2015, 25(12): 1507-1520.

Figures/Tables 9

Table 1

Table 2

Table 3

Table 4

A comparison between reported population and projected population in 2010"

Province	Population 2000 (million)	Decade natural growth rate	Projected natural growth population 2010 (million)	Reported net migration 2000-2010 number (million)	Projected population 2010 (million)^a	Reported population 2010 (million)	Percentage of projected population error^b
Beijing	13.82	1.81	14.07	+4.40	18.47	19.61	5.81%
Tianjin	10.01	1.80	10.19	+2.07	12.26	12.94	5.26%
Hebei	67.44	5.99	71.48	-1.81	69.67	71.85	3.03%
Shanxi	32.97	5.90	34.91	-0.51	34.4	35.71	3.67%
Inner Mongolia	23.76	4.03	24.72	+0.33	25.05	24.71	1.38%
Liaoning	42.38	1.11	42.85	+0.09	42.94	43.75	1.85%
Jilin	27.28	2.33	27.91	-0.62	27.29	27.46	0.62%
Heilongjiang	36.89	2.35	37.76	-1.26	36.5	38.31	4.72%
Shanghai	16.74	1.01	16.91	+5.73	22.64	23.02	1.65%
Jiangsu	74.38	2.34	76.12	+3.50	79.62	78.66	1.22%
Zhejiang	46.77	4.44	48.85	+7.76	56.61	54.43	4.01%
Anhui	59.86	6.32	63.64	-4.81	58.83	59.50	1.13%
Fujian	34.71	6.05	36.81	+1.31	38.12	36.89	3.33%
Jiangxi	41.40	8.08	44.74	-1.76	42.98	44.57	3.57%
Shandong	90.79	5.27	95.57	-0.91	94.66	95.79	1.18%
Henan	92.56	5.42	97.58	-5.44	92.14	94.02	2.00%
Hubei	60.28	2.93	62.05	-2.68	59.37	57.24	3.72%
Hunan	64.40	5.35	67.84	-2.55	65.29	65.68	0.59%
Guangdong	86.42	7.65	93.03	+5.98	99.01	104.30	5.07%
Guangxi	44.89	7.98	48.47	-1.33	47.14	46.03	2.41%
Hainan	7.87	9.07	8.58	+0.05	8.63	8.67	0.46%
Chongqing	30.90	3.21	31.89	-1.96	29.93	28.85	3.74%
Sichuan	83.29	3.03	85.81	-1.38	84.43	80.42	4.99%
Guizhou	35.25	8.23	38.15	-2.10	36.05	34.75	3.74%
Yunnan	42.88	8.10	46.35	-1.07	45.28	45.97	1.50%
Tibet	2.62	11.17	2.91	+0.02	2.93	3.00	2.33%
Shaanxi	36.05	4.07	37.52	-0.61	36.91	37.33	1.13%
Gansu	25.62	6.38	27.26	-0.80	26.46	25.58	3.44%
Qinghai	5.18	9.76	5.69	+0.05	5.74	5.63	1.95%
Ningxia	5.62	10.52	6.21	+0.04	6.25	6.30	0.79%
Xinjiang	19.25	10.99	21.37	+0.24	21.61	21.81	0.92%

Table 4

Table 5

Figure 1

Figure 2

Table 6

Figure 3

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	2010	2015	2020	2025	2030	2035	2040	2045	2050
Total population	133972.49	136974.3	138779.2	139525.6	139307.6	138158.8	136090.6	133176.8	129560.4
Urban population	669192.56	761579	846363	911804	957649	984446	998581	1004090	1001612
Urbanization rate	0.49	0.55	0.61	0.65	0.69	0.71	0.73	0.75	0.77

Year	Registered residence (million)
	Total	Urban area			Rural area
	Total	Subtotal	Intra- province	Inter- province	Subtotal	Intra- province	Inter- province
Up to 2010	212.25	83.85	70.39	13.46	128.4	75.25	53.15
Up to 2000	98.12	43.39	37.93	5.46	54.74	35.44	19.30
2000-2010	114.13	40.47	32.46	8.01	73.66	39.81	33.85

Parameters or variables	Definition
R_n_,_t	Population natural growth rate in province n for year t
P_n_,_t	Population amount for natural growth in province n for year t
P'_n_,_t	Improved population amount for natural growth in province n for year t
UP	Total urban population
ΔMR	Migration amounts from rural to urban area
ΔNM	Net inter-provincial migration matrix
TPM	Net transition probability matrix
M	Migration amount
ΔM	Total net migration amounts
δ_n_,_t	Difference between provincial population projection and the data from the UNs in province n for year t
TP_n_,_t	Total population amount in province n for year t
S_n_,_t	Area of province in province n for year t
DP_n_,_t	Population density of province in province n for year t
A_n	Variance of population density of province n
B_n	Ratio of new accumulated net-migration to maximum of the total population in province n
C_n	Ratio of new accumulated net-migration to maximum of natural growth population of province n

Year	Total population (million)	Urban population (million)	Urbanization rate	Growth in urban population (million)	Migration from rural to urban area			Growth in migration of inter-province (million)
Year	Total population (million)	Urban population (million)	Urbanization rate	Growth in urban population (million)	Inter- province	Intra- province	Total	Growth in migration of inter-province (million)
2000	1259.95	456.35	0.36	-	-	-	-	-
2010	1339.72	669.19	0.50	212.84	34.23	40.26	74.49	46.07
2015	1369.74	761.58	0.56	92.39	12.74	14.98	27.72	17.34
2020	1387.79	846.36	0.61	84.78	11.69	13.75	25.42	15.91
2025	1395.26	911.80	0.65	65.44	6.01	7.07	13.08	8.19
2030	1393.08	957.65	0.69	45.85	2.11	2.48	4.59	2.87
2035	1381.59	984.45	0.71	26.80	0.00	1.61	1.61	0.00
2040	1360.91	998.58	0.73	14.14	0.00	0.57	0.57	0.00
2045	1331.77	1004.09	0.75	5.51	0.00	0.11	0.11	0.00
2050	1295.60	1001.61	0.77	-2.48	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00

Regional type		Criterion			Ratio of new accumulated floating population (%)	Ratio of new accumulated natural population growth (%)	Province
Class	Sub-classes	A	B	C	Ratio of new accumulated floating population (%)	Ratio of new accumulated natural population growth (%)	Province
Fast Changing Populated Region	Net immigration leading type	A>10	b>5%	c>>1	99	18	Beijing, Tianjin, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Guangdong
	Net emigration leading type		B<-5%	c<<-1	-75	14	Henan, Anhui, Chongqing, Hubei
	Natural growth leading type		b≈0%	\|c\|≈0	-1	6	Liaoning, Shandong
Low Changing Populated Region	Net immigration type	5<a<10	0<b<5%	0<c<1	1	5	Fujian, Hainan
Low Changing Populated Region	Net emigration type	5<a<10	-5%<b<0	-1<c<0	-18	31	Hebei, Shanxi, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Hunan, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Shaanxi
Inactive Populated Region		a<5	0<b<5%	\|c\|≈0	-6	26	Guizhou, Yunnan, Ningxia, Gansu, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Qinghai, Tibet