The census also shows that the process of urbanization is also driving a geographical redistribution of population.

Over the past decade, people have continuously flooded into the well-developed coastal areas from populous and poverty-stricken regions. As a result, the population of some provinces such as those located in the Yangtze River and Pearl River deltas has swelled dramatically.

All the above deserve the government's attention and should be taken into account in future policymaking.

But more importantly, the 2010 census has confirmed a grave challenge the country is facing - an aging China has fewer children to care for it. By 2010, young people aged 14 or below accounted for only 16.6 percent of the total population, significantly down from the 2000 figure of 22.89 percent. However, there were 177.65 million people in the age group of 60 or above, accounting for 13.26 percent of the total, and this number is expected to rise to 200 million before 2015.

To address this challenge, China should appropriately adjust its decades-long family-planning policy, in a bid to avoid a demographic imbalance and the accompanying social burden on future generations.

A demographic bonus was one of the engines for the country's rapid economic growth over the past three decades. However, with such an advantage fading and a "population deficit" arising, the government should take action and adjust the family-planning policy as a top priority.

By adhering to the family-planning policy, China has managed to curb population growth and improve the health and education standards of its people and the world has also benefited from China's policy. However, we should carefully study and analyze the changes in major indicators reflected by this new census, and make due adjustments so that the policy can better accommodate the new situation.

In fact, when China launched the family-planning policy nationwide in 1980, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China addressed a letter to all Party members and all members of the Communist Youth League advocating every couple to have just one child, but added that: "30 years later, the population growth will slow down and by that time, the country can adopt a different population policy".

The statistics from the sixth national population census indicate now is the time.

The author is professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University and the director of the Center for China Study, a leading policy think-tank. The article first appeared in China Business News.

(China Daily 05/23/2011 page8)