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.
Unrecognized ethnic groups in China
Several ethnic groups of the People's Republic of China are not officially recognized. Taken together, these groups (未识别民族 "wèi shíbié mínzú)" number more than 730,000 people; if considered as a single group, they would constitute the twentieth most populous ethnic group of China. Some scholars have estimated that there are over 200 distinct ethnic groups that inhabit China. There are in addition small distinct ethnic groups that have been classified as part of larger ethnic groups that are officially recognized. Some groups like the Hui of Xinjiang with the Hui of Fujian are geographically and culturally separate except for the shared belief of Islam. Han Chinese being the world's largest ethnic group has a large diversity within it, such as in Gansu, the Han here may have genetic traits from the assimilated Tangut civilization. Although they are indigenous to Hainan island and do not speak a Chinese language, the Limgao (Ong-Be) people near the capital (8% of the population) are counted as Han Chinese.