Abstract:

The provincial-level comparison of the Seventh Census and the two previous Censuses shows that the overall patterns of the dynamics of population distribution in China in the two decades before and after 2010 are as follows. 1. Based on the Four-Regions division, the population proportion of the East Coast tends to increase, the Central and Northeast China tends to decrease, and the Western China shifts from decline to a slight increase. 2. Based on the two-parts division by the HU Huan-yong line, the population proportion in the northwest part experiences a slight growth to a decline. 3. Based on the South-North division, the share of the northern population has changed from a slight rise to a decline. Combined with the regional GDP data in corresponding census years, it shows that the inter-provincial variance in GDP per Capita tends to shrink in general. 1. For the Four Regions, the difference of the top two among the East Coast tends to decline, as well as the bottom two in the Central and the West, and the variance within the Northeast are significantly smaller than the national average. 2. The gap of GDP per capita between the two sides of the HU Huan-yong line has changed from narrowing to widening. 3. The gap of GDP per capita between the south and the north is widened significantly from 2010 to 2020. The main conclusions are as follows. 1. New changes are found in the spatial pattern of population in China, among which high propriety should be given to the emerging of northerners’ “Moving South” phenomenon and its impacts. 2. New progress and new challenges coexist in the regional balance between the population spatial pattern and the economic growth in China. 3. Both positive and negative couplings exist in the dynamics of China’s population distribution and regional economic growth. Therefore, we shall conform to the objective trend of current migration to improve the regional balanced development of population on the one hand and economy and society on the other.

Key words: population census, population distribution, spatio-temporal coupling, regional balance