China has just conducted the 6th national population census,with the enumeration taking place during 1-10 November 2010.Over the last few years,there have been many studies and conferences devoted to the 6th census,the central theme being challenges and suggestions as what the Population and Development Forum discussed a year ago organized by this journal.Today the journal has the forum again on the 6th census,discussing experiences from the conduct of the census.Three papers on different aspects of the census have contributed to the forum.The first paper by Cui Hongyan and Li Rui from National Bureau of Statistics of China examines developments in China’s population censuses over the last six decades,involving improvement in organization and implementation,expansion in census contents and items,upgrade in census techniques,improvement in means of data processing,and implementation of census law according to which the census is conducted.The second paper by Pang Jiangqian from Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics analyzes difficulties in conducting the 6th census in locating census objects as a result of increasing mobility,getting cooperation from residents,and recruiting competent census enumerators.Improved census approaches are discussed in the paper.The third paper by Chen Wei and Yang Shenghui from People’s University of China provides experiences and lessons learned from the 6th census based on their participation in the pilot survey and census preparation and enumeration work.Wang Qian,from National Population and Family Planning Commission of China,is invited to preside the forum,and offers critical comments to the three papers.

This paper examines and compares total fertility rate and cohort cumulative fertility,and discusses the utility of cohort cumulative fertility in analyzing the declining fertility trend in China.The relatively accurate and consistent cohort cumulative fertility data show sustained declining fertility in China in the 1990s,on which estimates are made that China’s total fertility rates in the recent years have dropped to below 1.6 births per woman.