A Hard Task

By YIN PUM IN

A Hard Task

By YIN PUM IN

As the world’s biggest census begins, census takers are knocking on doors in Beijing

C ensus taker Li Zhiying and her colleague started their work knocking on doors in Shuiduizi, a compound community in Chaoyang District, Beijing,on the morning of November 8.

As part of China’s sixth national census,about 6.5 m illion census takers fanned out across the world’s most populous country on November 1-10, visiting more than 400 m illion households and trying to get an accurate count of the population.

“Time has become lim ited w ith only two days left because there are still some residents we haven’t found,” Li said. “The workload is huge for us to get accurate information in such a short period.”

Each census taker is required to visit 80 to 100 households, recording the registration information of 250 to 300 residents, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Though it is the country’s sixth national census, takers found it difficult to enter some people’s homes.

Complaints ranged from takers disturbing residents’ sleep to forgetting to wear shoe covers when entering homes, according to Li.

“People go to work during the day and won’t answer the doorbell or let us in at night for security reasons,” she said. The greatest difficulty was that they often could not even find the people.

Li once visited an apartment five times,but no one opened the door for her.

“Even w orse, som e o ther peop le slammed their doors in my face,” she said.

“People no longer feel they should be managed,” said Zhang Yi, a scholar of the Institute of Population and Labor Economics under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “Instead, they believe they should be served by the government. That is why they say no to census takers before they are convinced their privacy is protected.”

“The most important thing is to ensure residential information remains confidential and this is the main focus of our training,” said Shang Weihua, a census taker in Beijing’s Shunyi District.

Shang said census takers had signed con fidentiality agreements w ith the sub-district and would also show a confidentiality comm itment to residents before asking questions.

Besides, some people were not w illing to answer the questions because they thought it wasn’t safe to open the door to a stranger, said Gu Yanzhou, Deputy Director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics.

In order to make community members feel more com fortable, the government hired local people to conduct the census in their neighborhoods.

Photos of the census takers were also published on community bulletin boards, Li said.

Another difficulty is the great number of migrant workers moving into cities in recent years.

By the end of 2009, there were more than 17.5 m illion permanent residents in Beijing, among which more than 5 m illionwere from other areas, according to official figures released in June.

(Le ft) EXPATS’ INFORMATION: Fo reigners living in a comm unity in Nanchong City, Sichuan Province, take part in China’s sixth nationa l census on Novem ber 2

Ma jor Figures in Censuses o f China, the United States and Russia in 2010

As the places where they are registered and where they live are not the same, and since many people cannot always be tracked down, it is hard to do a census for the floating population, according to Gu.

Since people are more likely to be at home in the evening and on the weekend,census takers need to work until 9 p.m.,Shang said. “We have also tried to choose a good time to visit, based on different lifestyles, and make appointments w ith people who seem absent for a long time.”

Expats inc luded

For the fi rst time, foreigners living on the mainland were included in the census.

In order to get accurate information,millions of appointment letters had been delivered to those foreigners in Beijing before November 1, said Su Hui, Deputy Director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics.

Yang Shu, an official w ith the Census Office of Maizidian, a multinational community in Beijing’s Chaoyang District, said their office recruited volunteers w ith bilingual or multilingual skills to help w ith the census.They have also translated the questionnaire into at least five languages, including English, French and Japanese.

WRITING CAREFULLY: An e lderly c itizen fills in the questionnaire o f thesixth nationa l census at Beijing’s Taiyangyuan Comm unity on Novem ber 1

The questionnaire for foreigners is much easier and shorter compared to that for mainland residents.

“In fact, most foreigners are cooperative.They would answer my questions after I introduce myself as a census taker and some would even volunteer to help me contact their friends in the same community,” said Li, who was responsible for a community with many foreigners.

“Of course, it’s also difficult to find some of these foreigners, but we w ill try to reach every one of them by making repeated visits,” Li said. “Furthermore,we will also leave notes on their doors suggesting they make an appointment w ith us.”Officials said foreigners living illegally in the country w ill not be repatriated as a result of information collected during the census.In order to have more accurate figures, from November 11 to November 30, another round of census taking w ill be launched. One in 10,000 households w ill be visited again, w ith the National Bureau of Statistics sorting and filing the data through December.