Society

Door-to-door census confronted by growing privacy awareness

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-10-05 14:54

BEIJING - Zhou Shan felt wronged when she stood outside an apartment in a residential building in suburban Beijing when a residence booklet was handed to her from behind the door. She could not see who handed it to her.

"This is not enough. There are many forms to fill out," Zhou mumbled. Then a simple camp chair was squeezed out from behind the door, for her to sit there, while filling out the forms.

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Zhou has been accustomed to such "bad" treatment since she became a census taker on August 15. China has recruited 6.5 million census takers for the next national population census beginning on November 1. These census takers will mostly be made up of local residents and workers from neighborhood or village committees.

But Zhou, 30, is a college graduate who temporarily had been staying at home to care for her baby. She was persuaded by the staff of the neighborhood committee to assist the census work in her community, as most of the census takers the committee hires are retirees who have enough time, but lack efficient work habits. Zhou then became a desirable, high-degree "intellectual" census taker.

Zhou remembered her childhood living in a bungalow area west of Tian'anmen Square, where neighborhood committees were "omnipotent." "Those grandmas and grandpas with a red band on their arms could tell who any one was who lived in the area."

However, when Zhou embarked on her work as a census taker months ago, she found even the neighborhood committee did not know residents in the area as the temporary resident population made up "a surprisingly high proportion," so most of her work was to check the backgrounds of the floating population.

Among the 145 households she has visited, only 30 homes were found to be registered in the residence booklets, and most house renters did not have temporary residence permits, Zhou said, adding that when an apartment changes hands, the neighborhood committee had not been notified.

Between August 15 and September 15, census takers were required to check resident information door-to-door for the country's once-a-decade census to obtain accurate information about China's population.

Though it is China's sixth national census, census takers found it difficult to enter some people's homes in urban areas. Complaints ranged from takers disturbing residents' sleep to forgeting to wear shoe covers when entering homes.

Zhou once visited an apartment four times but still could not enter, as no one opened the door for her, though she could see that room lights were on.

Ma Jiantang, director of the National Bureau of Statistics, said all the collected information would only be for research and destroyed after the population statistics are compiled and released. "The information must not be a reference for punishment and all census takers and authorities should strictly comply with the duty of confidentiality."

But Zhou said it was not easy to convince all people to fill the census forms as "I can sense their vigilance," especially those who had violated the country's family planning policy and had more than one child when they were prohibited from doing so. China's one-child policy in 1980 called on people to have one child in order to improve the nations' living standards.

Prof. Duan Chengrong, head of the Demography Department of Renmin University of China, said people's uncooperative attitude was "reasonable" due to the growing awareness of privacy protections.

Zhou said all she could do was to do her best to check as much information as possible. After the first round of checking, the neighborhood committee and local police stations would gear up to verify this data.

Prof. Duan said door-to-door surveys were still an appropriate way of taking the census in China, as electronic census methods could not be widely used in a short time due to incomplete systems, plus China still has about five percent of its population being illiterate.

"Not all people can write, nor do they have computers. If they can write, they may not be willing to fill in the forms," he said.