"This article offers a detailed discussion of Chinese mortality as confirmed by data from the 1982 and 1990 censuses.  It points out that, in measuring the actual mortality in China in the 1980s, attention should be paid not only to infant mortality but also to failures in reporting deaths of old people.  Based on age-differentiated population as reported by the two censuses, the author computes the population's average life span and re-evaluates the error in age-differentiated mortality as calculated by using mortality data from the censuses."