BEIJING >> China says its population grew to more than 1.34 billion people last year.

The figure marks a rise from 2000’s tally of 1.295 billion people, which failed to count migrant workers living in cities for less than six months.

In the 10 years since, there has been an extensive shift in the population base as tens of millions of migrant workers have poured into urban areas looking for work.

The figure was drawn from a once-a-decade census conducted over 10 days at the beginning of November.

That undertaking involved 6 million workers who scrutinized apartment blocks, scoured migrant areas and scanned rural villages to document massive demographic changes in the world’s most populous country.