BEIJING - Beijing is nearly full.
The population of the Chinese capital, host of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, has surged to within a few hundred thousand of the ceiling of 18 million set by the local government last year.
Xinhua News Agency reports the population rise is straining the city's natural resources and environment, with Beijing long having passed the food self-sufficiency mark of 14 million.
Xinhua says the population includes 12.04 million permanent residents holding Beijing hukou, or household registration certificates, along with 5.1 million migrants, citing figures released by the Public Security Ministry at a workshop on the country's managing of the migrant population.
China has long restrained migration by its enormous rural population by requiring such certificates to live in cities, rounding up and sending home those who lack them.
Some of those restrictions have been loosened to better serve an urbanizing population, although a hukou is still required to freely obtain social services such as health care and education.
Beijing continues to lure both unskilled rural labourers and young professionals, despite soaring housing costs and intense competition for jobs.
Olympic preparations have intensified those pressures, while spurring a building boom, although Xinhua said officials aren't anticipating very much of a post-Games lull.
The report also comes amid a spike in births this year among couples taking advantage of the Chinese astrological year of the pig, which is considered especially lucky.
"Overpopulation is putting considerable pressure on the city's natural resources and environment,'' the report said.
