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Demographics of Shanghai

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39,091
  
37 671

20,456
  
20 578

8,680
  
8 948

26,000
  
26 279

9,472
  
9 828

6,935
  
6 717

Demographics of Shanghai

The 2010 census put Shanghai's total population at 23,019,148, a growth of 37.53% from 16,737,734 in 2000. 20.6 million of the total population, or 89.3%, are urban, and 2.5 million (10.7%) are rural. Based on population of total administrative area, Shanghai is the second largest of the four direct-controlled municipalities of China, behind Chongqing, but is generally considered the largest Chinese city because Chongqing's urban population is much smaller.

Contents

Population

About 9 million out of the 23 million residents of Shanghai, or more than 39%, are long-term migrants, triple the 3 million in 2000. The main origins of the migrants are Anhui (29.0%), Jiangsu (16.8%), Henan (8.7%), and Sichuan (7.0%) provinces, and 79% are from rural areas. They account for the entire population increase as Shanghai's natural growth rate has been negative since 1993 due to its extremely low fertility rate — just 0.6 in 2010, probably the lowest level anywhere in the world.

98.8% of Shanghai's residents are of the Han Chinese ethnicity, while 1.2% belong to various minority groups. However, the minority population has grown by 165.54% since 2000, much faster than the overall population growth.

According to the Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau, there were 152,050 officially registered foreigners in Shanghai as of 2009, an increase of 50% from 100,011 in 2005. The three largest foreign nationalities were Japanese (31,490), American (21,284) and Korean (20,700). Note that these statistics only show officially registered residents, and that the actual number of foreign citizens living in Shanghai is likely much higher. For example, by 2009, the South Korean community in Shanghai increased to more than 70,000 according to Xinhua. Some foreign expatriates are staying in Shanghai as long-term settlers, renewing Shanghai's reputation as China's global city.

According to the 2010 census, 208.3 thousand people from outside of Mainland China resided in Shanghai. That included 143.2 thousand foreigners (which is about 1/4 of all foreigners residing in Mainland China), as well as 44.9 thousand people from Taiwan, 19.3 thousand people from Hong Kong, and 910 persons from Macau. Some authors estimated the Taiwanese community of Taiwan as much larger than what the census reported; 2010 estimates vary around 700,000.

The life expectancy of Shanghai's registered residents in 2010 reached 82.13 years (79.82 for men and 84.44 for women), the highest in mainland China and higher than all but a few countries in the world. In the same year, the maternal mortality rate in Shanghai was 9.61 per 100,000, while the infant mortality rate dropped to 5.97 per 1,000 from 6.58 in 2009. Due to the combination of high life expectancy and low fertility rate, there is a serious aging problem among Shanghai's registered residents: as of 2009 only 8.3% of the total were under the age of 14, while 22.54% were over 60.

Uyghurs

The majority of Shanghai Uighurs are young to middle aged men. Older Uighur men have marriages with Uighur women. Most of the Shanghai Uighurs who are under 35 years of age are single. The vast majority of Uighurs in Shanghai are male. The Uighur women had moved with husbands and are a small part of the population. In 2007 Blaine Kaltman, author of Under the Heel of the Dragon: Islam, Racism, Crime, and the Uighur in China, wrote that the majority of Shanghai Uighur "seem to be childless" and Han children, parents, and teachers indicated that no Uighur students are enrolled in schools in proximity to Uighur areas. Kaltman wrote that most of the Uighurs stated that they came to Shanghai to gain legitimate employment and that most of them "seem to be unemployed". According to Kaltman, most Uighurs stated that they go back to Xinjiang periodically.

References

Demographics of Shanghai Wikipedia


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