Considering the size and the regional diversity of China, a prudent analysis of many economic and policy issues needs to consider the regional differences in climate, soil, water, and other natural resource endowments, population density, and social and economic development. Future-oriented multi-regional assessments require regionally detailed scenarios. A key component of such scenarios is the evolution of the population in different regions. For studies of land-use change and agriculture, such regionally disaggregated population projections are needed for estimating regional food demand and regional labor supply. These scenarios can also serve as background information for modeling development-induced migration, if migration migration processes are explicitly modeled. 

With Chinas increasing integration in the world economy, the number of studies analyzing different features of this process has been booming recently. An increasing number of studies undertake their assessments at some level of regional detail and need regional scenarios to provide background information about the geographical distribution of people. The regional population projections presented in this report are developed for use in such studies. 

The report combines national-level demographic scenarios for the period 2000 through 2030 with information about the provincial population distribution from the year 2000 census and projections of provincial birth-rate, death-rate, rate, urbanization, and interprovincial migration based on historical data. Results are available at three levels of regional resolution and age-group aggregation. This report presents the regional population projections at two levels. At the first level, the provinces are merged into eight economic-geographical regions. This level of aggregation makes modeling activities more tractable, but it still preserves a reasonable degree of spatial homogeneity. At the more detailed level, we consider the 31 provinces as the officially defined jurisdictions delineate them (as of 2000). The present report contains tables of urban, rural, and total population aggregated to three main age groups: 0-14, 15-64, and 65 and above for the provinces and for the eight regions. At the third and most detailed level, comprehensive tables covering 17 five-year age groups, 31 provinces and the 8 regions, rural, urban, and total population are also available.