President Hu Jintao Answers Questions During the Registration of Nationwide Population Census

BEIJING, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Hu Jintao and eight other top leaders took part in the country's once-in-a-decade census Tuesday at Zhongnanhai, the central leadership compound in Beijing, or entrusted their families to submit the required information.

The leaders, also including top legislator Wu Bangguo, Premier Wen Jiabao, top political advisor Jia Qinglin, as well as Li Changchun, Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, He Guoqiang and Zhou Yongkang, are all Standing Committee members of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee.

China launched a nationwide census Monday. More than six million census-takers will visit more than 400 million households between Nov. 1 and 10.

Information required to fill out a census form includes the respondent's name, age, sex, ethnic group, education, residential housing area and number of rooms of their dwelling.

Since many residents will not be at home during office hours, census-takers make appointments first.

Guo Guirong of Xining City, capital of northwest China's Qinghai Province, had such an appointment at 7 p.m. Monday.

"The census workers were punctual and since they told me to have relevant documents ready beforehand, it took less than ten minutes to get everything done," said Guo.

Census-taker Ding Yuhong told Xinhua that "for those residents who can not be reached by phone, we left a note on their door to tell them when we'd come back."

The pre-census promotion was quite successful since almost everybody knows about the census and was willing to cooperate, said Feng Yi, resident of Xining City.

"Census-takers wear uniforms and have identity cards with them to reassure us that they're who they say. They even wear shoecovers to keep our house clean. All these help us to feel relaxed with them," said Feng.

Rather than simply fill out the forms, some elderly people even shared their experience, with much enthusiasm, of previous censuses with census- takers.

Zhao Chunyi, a 78-year-old retired professor of Jilin University in northeast China's Jilin Province, said that, "Even if I could not live long enough to benefit from the results of this census, my offsprings will. Therefore, I will surely cooperate with census-takers."

An official report based on the information gathered will be produced by the end of next April, while an in-depth analysis of the data will be conducted through 2013.

Demographics collected in the census will help China to map out its future national economic and social development plans.

China conducted its first nationwide population census in 1953. Since 1990 it has conducted a census every ten years. In the last census, China's population stood at 1.295 billion.