(本文选自《经济学人》20201031期)
背景介绍：
自今年11月1日起，中国正式开启了新一轮的全国人口普查，仅700万名人口普查员将走进千家万户展开普查工作。本次全国人口普查也是中国自1953年、1964年、1982年、1990年、2000年和2010年以来的第七次全国人口普查。
China’s 7m enumerators begin the world’s largest census
中国700万名人口普查员开始进行全球最大规模的人口普查
Is the population already shrinking?
In the coming weeks nearly every Chinese house will receive a knock on the door. On November 1st 7m
functionaries
will begin carrying out the country’s ten-yearly census, a task that will take them until December 10th.
在接下来的几周时间里，中国的家家户户都将迎来登门造访者。从11月1日至12月10日，近700万名人口普查员将开展十年一次的全国人口普查。
The last such count, in 2010, found that China’s total population was growing only half as swiftly as it did between 1991-2000. This year’s megacount will provide further details about the country’s demographic crunch.
中国上一次人口普查是在2010年，据调查结果显示，当时的全国总人口增长速度仅为1991-2000年的一半。今年的人口普查数据将会提供更多关于中国人口危机的细节。
Censuses are difficult everywhere, but China’s is especially
fraught
. Its hundreds of millions of migrant workers are tricky to count. Some people do not want officials to find out that they have had more children than family-planning policies allow.
人口普查在世界各地都是很困难的一件事，而在中国更是难上加难。中国数以亿计的农民工很难被调查统计。有些人则担心被人发现违反计划生育政策多生多育。
Fraudsters
and thieves who have posed as census-takers during past counts have given enumerators a bad name. And local governments have sometimes sought to
inflate
population figures in order to claim more subsidies from Beijing.
在过去几次人口普查中，一些骗子和小头冒充人口普查员，从而败坏了他们的形象。而一些地方政府也会夸大人口数据，以便获得更多的中央财政补贴。
This time, says the government, new paperless systems will help to protect people’s information and make it harder for anyone to
fiddle
the count. There are also plans to substitute door-to-door visits with phone calls and online forms, if census officials in some places have to work around local outbreaks of covid-19.
政府表示，此次人口普查将采取无纸化系统，这不仅有助于保护人们的个人信息，还能有效防止统计数据被篡改。对于一些疫情高风险地区，人口普查员还将通过电话和在线调查问卷代替挨家挨户走访的方式。
Whereas many Chinese shy from the box-tickers, some are hoping to use this year’s exercise to help make themselves more visible. A gay-rights group in the southern city of Guangzhou is encouraging people in same-sex relationships to make sure census-takers realise they are a couple, and to insist that they write this information into an open field in the census form.
尽管许多中国人向来不乐意接受调查，但仍有一些人希望通过这次人口普查来表达自己的诉求。在中国南方城市广州，一个同性恋权益机构鼓励同性恋伴侣将自身情况透露给人口普查员，并且坚持要求他们将这一信息填写在人口普查表的空白区域。
The findings from China’s previous census helped persuade the party that it had to loosen its one-child-per-family policy. Since 2016 Chinese couples risk punishment only if they have more than two.
中国上一次全国人口普查的结果推动政府放宽了独生子女政策。自2016年起，只有生育超过两个孩子的夫妻才会面临惩罚。
Yet the total number of births is declining even faster than it was before the change. Last year the country produced the fewest babies since 1961, when its population was only half as large.
但即便如此，新生儿出生率的下降速度仍比政策改变前要快。去年，中国新生儿出生率降至1961年以来的最低水平，而当年的总人口仅为去年的一半。
The government reckons that China’s working-age population has been shrinking since 2012. The share of people aged 60 and over has risen from 10.4% at the census in 2000 to an estimated 18% last year; this group could make up one-third of the population by 2050.
据政府估计，自2012年以来，中国的劳动适龄人口一直在减少。60岁及以上人口的比例从2000年人口普查时的10.4%上升至去年的18%；到2050年，老年人口预计将达总人口的三分之一。
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think-tank, guesses that the number of Chinese will peak at 1.44bn in 2029. But some demographers think that the population may already have started to shrink.
据政府智库中国社会科学院估计，中国人口总数将于2029年达到14.4亿的峰值。但一些人口学家认为，中国人口可能已经在走下坡了。
(红色标注词为重难点词汇)
本文翻译：Vinnie
校核：Vinnie
编辑：Vinnie
自今年11月1日至12月10日，中国将开展第七次全国人口普查。新一轮的人口普查将全面查清人口数量、结构、分布等方面的最新情况，从而为人口发展战略教育和医疗机构布局、儿童和老年人服务设施建设、工商业服务网点分布、城乡道路建设等提供决策依据。
重难点词汇：
functionary
[ˈfʌŋkʃəneri] n. 公职人员；职员 adj. 正式的；官方的
