quently, family planning work entered a new phase of development.
At the end of the 1970s, Deng Xiaoping, the chief architect of China's reform and opening to the outside world, made an in-depth analysis of China's basic national conditions on the basis of the experience and lessons of socialist construction since the founding of the People's Republic, pointing out that, to accomplish the goal of the four modernizations in China, it was imperative to take into consideration the basic features of the Chinese environment, that is, the vast scale of the country, its weak foundation, its massive population and the low ratio of cultivated land, and this demonstrated the objective need for the development of population to be coordinated with the development of the economy, society, resources and environment. The major contribution Deng Xiaoping made to the solution of China's population problem is: To study and deal with the population problem in the overall context of the national economic and social development and clearly point out that China's population policy is an important policy of strategic significance. In accordance with Deng Xiaoping's thinking, the Chinese government has made it a basic state policy to carry out family planning and population control and to improve the life quality of the population, and has clearly incorporated it in the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, thus establishing the important position of family planning programme in China's overall task of national economic and social development.
By February 15, 1995, China's population had reached 1.2 billion. Over the past few years, the annual births have averaged about 21 million, with a net annual increase of 14 million. Such massive total population and annual population growth constitutes a heavy burden for China, a country that has a weak foundation and little cultivated land, whose economic and cultural level is rather backward and where development is regionally imbalanced. The negative impact of China's overabundance of population has permeated all aspects of social and economic life; in fact, many difficulties China has encountered in its economic and social development are directly related to the problem of population.
Over the vast territory of China, the space suited for people to live and engage in economic activities is limited and population distribution is extremely uneven. Plains and hilly land account for 12.0 percent and 9.9 percent respectively of China's total land area, totalling only 21.9 percent, while basins, mountains and plateaus account for 18.8 percent, 33.3 percent and 26.0 percent each, adding up to 78.1 percent. Many of the mountain, plateau, hilly and basin areas are unsuited for living. China's humid and semi-humid areas, appropriate for living, account for only 47 percent of the total land mass, while the arid and semi-arid areas account for 53 percent. Now, 94 percent of China's population live in the eastern part, which accounts for 46 percent of the country's territory, particularly in the southeastern region where the natural environment is better and the economy is relatively developed. The State Statistical Bureau estimates, on the basis of data collected in the third national census in 1982, that 20.3 percent of China's population live in areas over 500 metres above sea level, whereas in the world's population as a whole, only 10 percent live in areas over 400 metres above sea level. At present, there are still 70 million people in China living below the poverty level, of which the majority live in the western region where the geographic environment is harsher. Obviously, the poverty of the population is closely related to their poor living conditions. Besides this, China's per-capita average of forested land, grassland and freshwater resources amounts to only one-ninth, one-third and one-fourth of the respective world averages. "Food is the first necessity of the people." To solve the problem of feeding a population of 1.2 billion is a big challenge to China. Now, cultivated area in China acc