II. Population

Total population: 19.63 million (2008)

Life expectancy (average):

Xinjiang is a region in the world, where people have a longer life expectancy. The third national census showed that there were 3,765 people over the age of 100 in China. Of whom 865 were in Xinjiang. Hetan Prefecture was designated by the International Society of Natural Medicine as a long-life prefecture in the world.

Ethnicity:

There live in Xinjiang 1,073,300 people from 46 ethnic minority groups, or 61.42 percent of the total population, and 6,601,000 Han people. Thirteen of the 47 ethnic groups – the Uygur, Han, Kazak, Hui, Mongolian, Kirgiz, Tajik, Xibe, Ozbek, Manchu, Daur, Tartar, and Russian have lived there for generations.

Literacy:

At the end of 1998, there were 7,100 primary schools, more than 100 polytechnic schools, and 18 colleges and university with a teaching staff of 180,000. In 1998, 276 graduate students were admitted into the colleges, university, and research institutes, an increase of 18percent over 1997. The number of graduate students studying in school was 747, an increase of 15.5percent over the figure of 1997. There were 775,200 students in regular junior high schools, an increase of 9.5 percent over that of 1997; 2,502,700 primary school students, an increase of 3.4 percent; students in adult-educational colleges and universities, an increase of 5.19 percent; 822.62 million students in and 230.9 million graduates from polytechnic schools; and 46,717 students in and 11,228 graduates from colleges and university. In 1998, 96,500 people got rid of illiteracy, an increase of 35.7 percent, and the percentage of illiterate and semi-illiterate people among the people at the age of 15 and over was 11.4.