section_path: Demographics/China
section_name: China
paragraph_text: China
  
  According to Twenty-Year Trends in the Prevalence of Disability in China, a medical publication from the National Library of Medicine, there were an estimated 84.6 million Chinese individuals living with a disability in 2006. In a 2006 poll of 83,342 men and 78,137 women, the age groups with the highest reported rates of disability are 18–44-year-old males (22.5%) and 65–74-year-old females (22.8%), according to polls published in the journal that were representative of the country as a whole. In China, the percentage of people with disabilities varies substantially between urban and rural regions, with men and women having reported rates of 72.4% and 72.2%, respectively, in rural China, compared to reported rates of 27.6% and 27.8%, respectively, in urban China. Hearing and speech disabilities are the most commonly reported in China, with men being more affected than women at rates 39.6% and 36.2% among disabled people, respectively.