Census will update population records

By Dong Hui  |   2008-10-31  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

RESIDENTS of two subdistricts in Hongkou District may have police arriving on their doorsteps over the next few months.

Authorities will conduct population registration for everyone within the area - including local residents, people from other provinces and cities, and foreign nationals - from now until spring next year, the Shanghai Public Security Bureau said yesterday.

The registration work helps the city government update its population data. Liangcheng residential area and Jiangwan Town are the two pilot subdistricts in the project. The registration work may be conducted citywide next year, according to police officials.

Currently, authorities only have registration details from residence certificates, or hukou. If one person registers his hukou in Hongkou District and lives in Pudong New Area, he may still be registered as living in Hongkou District. If a household moves from Anhui Province to Shanghai, the household may not be registered in the current hukou system.

More than 21 million people live in Shanghai, but only 13.78 million people are registered with the hukou system, according to the Shanghai Population and Family Planning Commission.

Shanghai had 18.58 million permanent residents last year, which makes it the most densely populated city on the Chinese mainland - with 2,931 people in each square kilometer.

The city also has a floating population of about 6.6 million people, which means one in three people in Shanghai has moved from another province.

The situation makes population management a vast challenge, city officials say.

"We will establish a database of population figures in the two subdistricts," said Sun Weiguo, Party secretary of Hongkou. "Police and neighborhood committees will also keep the data updated and accurate."