The most populous Chinese province, Henan, is predicted to have its 100-millionth citizen next July.

The provincial population and family planning commission made the prediction on Friday, just before the 20th World Population Day on Saturday, whose focus this year is "investing in women and girls".

It predicted the symbolic birth is likely to come between the noon of July 7 next year and the morning of the next day.

Meng Xiancheng, head of the Henan commission, said the coming of the baby has been delayed by 13 years as the province has avoided 33 million births over the past three decades, thanks to the country's family planning efforts.

The population of Henan stood at 99.18 million at the end of last year, accounting for 7.4 percent of the country and 1.5 percent of the world.

The large population poses a challenge to the province, Henan's Communist Party chief Xu Guangchun said. "We must strictly control the birth rate and make sure the population is below 107 million in 2020.

"We cannot slack on this issue, or else we could have hundreds of thousands of extra births in the twinkling of an eye," Xu said.

In Henan, local people are well rewarded if they voluntarily answer the country's call on birth control. The rewards ranging from case, land and education preferences have greatly reinforced the birth control efforts.

Li Meixiang, a 42-year-old woman in Duandong Village, Mengzhou City, had been approved of having another child besides her 14-year-old daughter. However, Li gave up the quota to continue enjoying benefits the one-child status.

She was given a patch of land to build a new house after she promised not to have the second child.

She would spend at least 60,000 yuan (US$8,785) on the education of the second child, if she had, from primary school to college. With only one kid in the family, she receives 1,000 yuan in subsidy every year and an additional 840 yuan every year after she is 60.

"It is not worthwhile to have a second kid," Li said.

"My girl now goes to school for free. She will have 10 points more than other students for being the only one child in the family at the admission exam for high school," Li added.

The large population has become a big burden for the development of Henan, said Wang Xianzhi, director of the Institute of Population and Development Studies of the Henan Institute of Education.

The large population has diluted wealth and resources of residents in Henan. The province's GDP has grown by 416 times from 1952 to 2007, while the growth per capita grew only by 184 times.

Each of the Henan people has 760 square meters of farmland, only two thirds of the national level, and has only one sixth of water resources of the national level.

Wang said the expanding aging population and imbalance in the birth rates of boys and girls are serious problems, while "the government also has to create more jobs for more people."

The province's incentive-oriented family planning policy has won extensive support, but it is still not enough to stop the current baby boom, said Wang.

"The 100-millionth citizen is a warning," she said.

(Xinhua News Agency July 11, 2009)