According to the latest census by Beijing's Municipal Statistics Bureau, released on April 12, the capital's permanent resident population rose from 4.2 million in 1949 to 14.9 million in 2004 -- an average annual increase of 200,000.

After a large rise in the city's population before 1960, the following decade saw hardly any growth. This regularized to steady but still low increases in the 1970s and 80s, largely due to natural population growth.

From the 1990s, migration from other areas became the main source of growth, with an average annual increase of nearly 60,000 household transfer registrations, reaching 13,000 in 2001.

Beijing's permanent resident population in 1975 was double that in 1949, and had tripled by 1995. It is expected to have quadrupled by 2010.

This puts great pressure on Beijing's water and land resources, and how to control population through the market rather than with administrative measures has become an increasingly urgent subject of study.

The five periods of development identified by the bureau were:

1950-1960: high increase -- Beijing's permanent residents increased 3.195 million, an average annual rise of 290,000, to reach 7.396 million in 1960.

1961-1970: negligible increase -- the average annual rise is 45,000, the permanent residents population in 1970 is 7.843 million.

1971-1978: with family planning, natural increase in population obviously dropped -- permanent residents numbered 8.715 million in 1978.

1979-1990: stable increase -- reaching 10.86 million in 1990.

1991-2004: large increase -- reaching 14.927 million in 2004, with people from other places accounting for 63 percent of the rise.

(China.org.cn by Wang Qian, April 15, 2005)