China is drafting a long-term development programme on population to not only continue to maintain population growth, but also to deal with various emerging population problems such as the ageing society, the State Population and Family Planning Commission revealed yesterday.

The drafting work, which starts now and will be finished at the end of 2005, is a vital part of the commission's work since the word "population'' was added to the commission's title early this year.

Population development programmes will become an important part of the commission's work which usually is regarded as a department that only cares about population growth, said Zhang Weiqing, the minister of the commission.

The population on China's mainland is estimated at about 1.294 billion by the end of 2003, with a net increase of less than 10 million in the year, according to the commission's prediction.

In 2003, China's mainland registered a population growth rate of about 7.25 per thousand, the commission revealed.

According to the United Nation Population Fund's statistics in 2000, China's population growth rate is lower than the global average.

And China now begins to rank among countries with a low birth rate, low mortality and low population growth.

"At the same time, lots of prominent population problems have emerged as the society develops, such as the ageing population and the increasing number of migrants, Zhang said.

The number of people aged over 65 is expected to account for more than 25 per cent of the total by 2050, which will bring a heavy economic burden to the nation.

And China still has not been able to set up a well-run relief and insurance system to take care of them.

Meanwhile, the urban areas in China are bearing the heavy burden in providing employment opportunities for the increasing population moving from the rural areas presently. In the country with 900 million people living in rural areas, there are nearly 90 million migrant people.

Moreover, the development programme also will focus on how to tackle the threat by acute infectious diseases to human beings, such as HIV/AIDS and SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome).

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