Land use in China
China has four times the population of the U.S., within roughly the same area. With 1.3 billion inhabitants, 20% of the world’s population lives in China. While the rate of population growth has been declining for decades, the total number of inhabitants has been growing and is expected to do so through 2030. China’s urban population is growing rapidly; between 1950 and 2009, the percentage of the population living in urban areas quadrupled from 14% to 48%. Meanwhile, the rural population is declining, opening the landscape in areas that are not urbanized. The forests and farming land of eastern China support far more people and major cities than do the grasslands, deserts, and high mountain regions of the west.
Sex-selective abortion
China, the most populous country in the world, has a serious problem with an unbalanced sex ratio population. A 2010 BBC article stated that the sex birth ratio was 119 boys born per 100 girls, which rose to 130 boys per 100 girls in some rural areas. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimated that more than 24 million Chinese men of marrying age could find themselves without spouses by 2020. In 1979, China enacted the one child policy, which, within the country's deeply patriarchal culture, resulted in an unbalanced birth sex ratio. The one child policy was enforced very aggressively throughout the years, including through forced abortions and forced sterilizations, but it has been gradually loosened in recent years, and formally abolished in 2015. China's strong son preference is well documented in documentaries such as "The Dying Rooms" (1995) and "" (2012).