China's population grew by 8.1 million people - or 0.63 percent - last year
to 1.307 billion, the government's State Bureau of Statistics reported Thursday.
There were 106.3 men for every 100 women, the bureau said on its Web site.
The figures are the result of the "1 Percent Sample" - a government
mini-census of some 17 million people that was conducted midway between a
nationwide census done once each decade.
Experts believe the true population is bigger than reported by tens of
millions of people and that the male-female ratio is even more lopsided, with as
many as 120 men to 100 women in some areas.
The government declared a baby boy born in January 2005, to be the Chinese
mainland's 1.3 billionth citizen.
China has tried to limit population growth and ease the strain on scarce
farmland and water supplies by enforcing birth-control rules for two decades
that limit most urban couples to one child and most rural families to two.
The government says that without that policy, the population would be larger
by some 300 million people.
But many families, especially in the countryside, have extra children and
fail to report the births, leading to suggestions that census-takers are
undercounting the population.