Lesson video

Hello, my name is Mr. Marsh and I'm here today to teach you all about the population of China.

So grab everything that you need for today's lesson and let's get going.

So by the end of today's lesson, you will be able to describe population growth in China and explain why population distribution is uneven across the country.

There are five key terms for today's lesson, and those are: population, birth rate, death rate, population density, and population distribution.

Population refers to the total number of people living in a particular area.

Birth rate refers to the number of live births per 1000 people per year.

Death rate refers to the number of deaths per 1000 people per year.

Population density refers to the number of people living in a defined area, for example, 300 people per kilometres squared.

And finally, population distribution is how people are spread across a geographic area.

We have two learning cycles for today's lesson, and we're gonna start with the first learning cycle, which is: What is the population of China? So China is the second most populous country in the world, which means it ranks second in terms of the number of people that live there.

The first is actually India.

More than 1.

4 billion people though live in China.

And as Lucas says, "That accounts for around 17% of the world's people living in China alone.

China's population is actually more than 20 times the population of the UK." And from that we can really understand just how large its population is, but also how large it is in terms of its land area to be able to accommodate 20 times the size of the people living in the UK.

So time now for a learning check.

It says which country is the most populous in the world? You have four options on the screen in front of you.

So what I want you to do then is pause the video here whilst you read through those options and select what you consider to be the correct answer.

And the correct answer was B: India.

Now as of 2025, India's population is 1.

438 billion people.

China comes in at 1.

411 billion people.

Nigeria is at 228 million people.

And finally the United Kingdom at 68 million people.

So really, really well done if you got that answer correct.

And as Sam says, "Around 77% of the world's population actually live in the continents of Africa and Asia.

So let's have a look at China's historic and recent population growth and really try to identify how it's changed over time by looking at that graph in front of you.

The graph starts at 1950 and it goes up to current date.

Well, we can see that China's population has grown rapidly since 1950 and it's grown by nearly 900 million people during those years.

So I have a quick question for you, and it says, what do you notice about the rate of population change over time? You may like to pause the video here whilst you study that graph and come up with your own answer, or even perhaps discuss it with someone near you.

Well, let's have a look at this graph in a bit more detail then.

What we can see then between 1950 and the end of the 1980s is that there was a true rapid increase in China's population between this time.

Following this, China's population continued to grow at a very fast rate, but a little bit more slowly during the period of the late 1980s up to the end of the 2020s.

And we see then, yes, that China's population is still growing.

It's still growing consistently, but more slowly than the previous years.

And finally, just coming up to modern day, we can now begin to see something different.

China's population is now beginning to slowly decrease.

What do you think might be the reasons for these changes in China's population? Again, I'd like you perhaps to pause the video here whilst you consider your own answer to that question or even discuss it with someone near you.

There are different reasons for the changes in China's population over time, and we've tried to break them down into three that you can see in front of you.

First of all, we see a falling death rate due to increased and better healthcare across China.

As a result, we have an ageing population with people with a higher life expectancy, perhaps due to that better healthcare.

We're also seeing a lower birth rate across China.

Perhaps it's linked to their increased economic development, but we'll spend a little bit of time later in the lesson, trying to understand each of these reasons.

So birth rate is a measure of the number of live births in a country in a given time.

And this was China's birth rate back in 1950, and you can see that it was extremely high back in the 1950s.

China's birth rate now though is lower than that of many countries in the world.

In fact, it is lower than the United Kingdom and significantly lower than the world average if you follow that blue line.

Now, as we can see on the graph in front of you, China's birth rate has changed drastically over time.

For example, just after the Second World War after 1945, so we're looking towards 1950 here, China's birth rate was extremely high, and as a result, the population increased rapidly.

A severe famine though, between 1959 and 1961, caused a massive dip in the birth rate, again, as the graph does a great job in illustrating.

An overall decline in China's birth rate began in the 1960s.

And this decline continued into the 1970s where, in 1979, the Chinese government introduced a one-child policy.

They were worried that there wouldn't be enough resources for China's rapidly growing population.

Now, what was the one-child policy? Well, it meant that families were only allowed to have one child.

China's one-child policy was increased to two children in 2016 and three children in 2021, but the birth rate is still falling.

So we can see how, over time in its history and more recently, the Chinese government has tried to influence or perhaps motivate or demotivate births across its country and across its history.

More recently, they can see that its population is falling, and as a result they've tried to release that limit, in terms of the number of children by having now three children per family as the limit, thereby increasing the population size over time.

Now on the screen in front of you, we can see a different graph, and this one is showing us the death rate as well as the life expectancy.

The life expectancy is in the blue and the death rate is in orange.

What we can see then is that life expectancy, if we go back towards the 1960s up to current modern day, we can see that that life expectancy has grown massively.

If you were born in China in the 1960s, your average life expectancy was around 50, perhaps 55.

Whereas today, if you were born today in China, your life expectancy would be up around 80 years old.

So you can see a tremendous increase in the life expectancy, and this comes back to the improved living conditions, education and healthcare, which has meant that the life expectancy in China has increased massively.

Now at the bottom we have our death rate, and death rate is a measure of the number of deaths per 1000 people each and every single year.

And death rates in China were falling, but now they're beginning to increase once again.

So I now have another type of graph for you, and this one is something that we use in geography, and it's called a population pyramid.

And it's a type of graph that shows the age and sex distribution of a population.

And the one in front of you is a population pyramid for China.

Now let's try and break this graph a little bit more down to make it more understandable.

Well, on the left hand side in blue we've got male.

On the right hand side we've got female.

On the y axis, it shows the age group, and you can see that at the bottom we have zero to four years.

And at the very, very top of that y axis, we have 100 plus years.

On the x axis then, it shows the population in terms of percentage.

So for example, if we divert our attention or eyes to the bottom of the y axis and we look at the zero to four bracket, we can see that 1.

9% of China's total population are aged zero to four and male.

So the population pyramid shows that China's population is beginning to age.

We can see that through the sort of bubbling effect of the bars towards the higher ages that we can see at the top of that population pyramid.

The pyramid is tool which indicates that life expectancy is high; people are expected to live a long time.

The narrow base indicates that there is a very low birth rate in the country.

Now understanding China's increasing life expectancy really does a great job in explaining why it is that China's death rate is beginning to increase.

Furthermore, an ageing population also makes us understand why China's birth rate is beginning to fall because there are less people of reproductive age.

So we move on now to our one and only practise question for the first learning cycle.

And it says this: to construct a line graph to show how the population of China has changed over time.

You also need to describe how China's population has changed over time and list some of the reasons for this change.

I really want you to try to mention both birth rate and death rate in your answer.

So you have the data on the screen there to help you construct that line graph.

And what I'd like you to do then is pause the video here whilst you attempt those three different tasks that you see in front of you on the screen.

Best of luck.

In terms of feedback, then, the graph needed to look something like that that you can see on the screen in front of you in terms of the description of the graph in front of you, well, this is what your answer may have included.

It says that China's population increased by around 700 million people between 1963 and 2023.

The rate of population growth has decreased over time because of a falling birth rate, increasing death rate, and China having an ageing population; China's population is now decreasing.

Really, really well done if you were able to include anything like that in your own description.

Right, now to our second and final learning cycle.

And this is all about Where do people actually live in China? Well, population density is a key term that we need to understand, and it means the number of people living per unit of area.

And the unit of area that we tend to use in geography is kilometres squared.

The map in front of you is showing that, it's showing you where people live globally.

The darker the colour, the more people that live there.

So immediately we get a sense from this map in front of you that more people are living in the Indian subcontinent as well as Southeast Asia, as well as a high concentration or a high density of people living in Europe as well.

So some parts of the world have a higher population density than others.

And as Izzy says, "Some parts of China have a high population density." We can see that again with that dark red colour, which seems to be indicating that the eastern side of China is very densely populated.

Now, as I said, population density really does vary around the world.

The average population density in the UK is 280 people per kilometres squared.

Compare that to the average population density of China, that's China as a whole, is 150 people per kilometre squared.

And finally, Australia is down at three people per kilometres squared.

And for reference, one kilometre squared is roughly the same size as 150 football pitches.

Population distribution then describes how people are spread across an area.

And again, we have the map of both China as well as India, as well as other countries in that eastern part of Asia pictured on the screen in front of you.

This map then is showing population distribution in China.

The darker the shading, the higher the population density.

So China's population is certainly not distributed evenly.

We can see that the eastern parts of China are much more densely populated than the western half of China.

Now I have a quick question for you here.

Why do you think that there are more people living in some areas than others? You may like to pause the video here at this point whilst you consider your answer to that question, or perhaps even discuss your answer with someone near you.

So we need to understand that urban areas, towns and cities are more densely populated.

They have more people there.

So if we think about China for example, we know that the capital city, Beijing and Shanghai, the picture in front of you, are both very densely populated cities.

Rural areas, by which I mean countryside areas, are more sparsely populated, meaning that they have fewer people living there.

Now, the image on the screen in front of you is a village in the Yunnan province in a mountainous region in southern China.

And again, it speaks volumes about the sparsely populated nature of some rural areas in China.

Physical factors, by which I mean natural factors, really do play a key role in affecting where people in China do and don't live.

They affect the population density.

And I have a question for you to consider right here.

So why might these parts of China be much more sparsely populated? And here is another map to really help you guide your answer.

Think about what you know about the physical geography of China, or perhaps just study the two maps in front of you.

You may like to pause the video here whilst you study those two maps and consider your own answer to that question.

Well, the Gobi Desert in northern China has a very hot and dry climate, and this makes it extremely difficult for people to live there, to grow crops and keep animals due to the very dry and infertile soil, as well as the fewer natural resources which are found there.

For example, wood and water.

So living there is extremely challenging, and naturally, as a result, not many people actually live there.

Furthermore, western China, again, shown on the map in front of you, is extremely mountainous.

Mountain ranges passing through this region include the Himalayas and Kunlun, and the harsh climate that we find with regions in high altitude make it very challenging for populations to survive there.

Mountainous terrain also makes accessibility and development, building on these mountain sides extremely difficult.

So a quick learning check and it says which of the following might lead to an area being more vastly populated? And I need you to select two answers here.

So pause the video, read through the four options, and select what you consider to be the two correct answers.

And the correct answers were B and C.

A harsh climate and a mountainous terrain really do make it very difficult for development and for populations to live inside those areas.

Next learning check says, which of the following would encourage a dense population? And again, I need you to select two answers.

So once again, read through the four options whilst you pause the video and then select your two answers.

And the correct answers this time were A and C, areas with good conditions for growing crops, and C, areas that are easy to access.

So really well done if you were able to get that answer correct.

Now, with a population of over 1.

4 billion people, it goes without saying that China must have some cities with very high population densities.

And these are shown on the map in front of you as they're showing that most of these are located on the eastern side of China.

The red dots on this map show the locations of China's major cities, the larger the dot, the larger the city by population.

Now, China's larger cities include Beijing, the capital, Chengdu, Chongqing, Guangzhou, and Shanghai.

Just for reference, the UK has only two cities with a population of more than 1 million people.

By contrast, China has more than 100 cities of this size.

Human factors though also play an effect or an impact on where people live.

This is to do with things like job opportunities, good transport, better services, and these all encourage people to live in cities.

Shanghai is a very large coastal city in eastern China, and as a result, Shanghai has a thriving economy.

Different industries and the world's busiest container port are all based there, and that creates job opportunities for people.

And so people migrate or they move into Shanghai City and they wish to stay there.

And over time, this combination of migration and natural population increase really causes a city like Shanghai to grow in size in terms of its population and its physical size as well.

And yes, as a result, Shanghai is one of China's most populous cities.

And as I said before, many people move here from other parts of China, perhaps the rural areas of China, they move to big cities such as Shanghai to work or even to study.

So a quick learning check, it says true or false: poor transport links can encourage a high population density? What you need to do then is pause the video here whilst you consider and then select your answer.

And the correct answer was false.

Now, what you need to do again is pause the video whilst you consider why this statement is false.

What is the true statement in this scenario? And the answer is: Poor transport links leads to low population density because it is more difficult to access jobs and services.

This makes an area less attractive for people to live and work.

So really, really well done if you were able to identify those two correct answers.

We're run now to our one and only practise question for our final learning cycle, and it says this: to complete the text to explain why China's population is not evenly distributed across the country.

You have six gaps to fill there, and you have six words shown at the bottom of the screen as a word bank.

So what I'd like you to do then is pause the video whilst you attempt this practise question.

Best of luck.

And the correct answers should have looked something like this.

It says, physical factors affect population distribution in China.

The Gobi Desert in northern China is more sparsely populated.

The hot and dry climate here make it difficult for people to live, grow crops and keep animals.

Fewer people live in Western China because of the harsh climate and mountainous terrain, which makes it less accessible.

Cities such as Shanghai are more densely populated because of human factors such as job opportunities, good transport links, and better services.

Really, really well done if you were able to get those six answers correct.

So time now for our learning summary, and this is what we need to know from today's lesson.

The population of China is more than 1.

4 billion.

China is the second most populous country in the world.

China's population increased rapidly after the Second World War, but its population is now declining.

Falling birth rates and an ageing population are contributing to the decrease in China's population and the population of China is unevenly distributed because of different physical and human factors.

So really, really well done during today's lesson.

It was a pleasure teaching you and I will see you again on the next lesson.

Goodbye.