By Huang Shaojie

Census takers are too often facing closed doors during the city's pre-census counting project, despite intense publicity and official pledges to keep personal data safe.

Fears about revealing private information have made some residents reluctant to talk to census takers, according to the Beijing Morning Post.

Property ownership, divorces and adoptions are subjects that residents consider private, the paper reported.

But their worries are baseless, as information on those subjects is not required, communications officer of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics Zhang Xueyuan told the Global Times Tuesday.

The month-long pre-census started on August 15 to provide authorities with pre-liminary data on who to count and where.

"All we need is to know who is living in a certain apartment and whether they own or rent it for the pre-count," Zhang said. "Properties, income or marital status are not in the census question list."

The real census will take place between November 1 and 10, when residents will be asked to give some personal information such as age, sex, education and occupation.

Until then, expatriates need give little more than passport and visa information, Zhang said, although they do need to give their current address, date of arrival and their landlord's phone number, if they rent.

The statistics bureau has issued a letter that census takers are supposed to show residents at the door translated into English, Russian, Korean, Japanese, German and French. The 400-word-long letter explains the purpose of the census and reas-sures residents about their privacy.

The bureau has also published the names and work badge numbers of census takers for every community in the city on its site at bjstats.gov.cn/rkpc_6.

Census takers go from door to door between 8:30 am and 9 pm, according to a census office employee in Sanlitun, Chaoyang district. "We leave a note printed in Chinese and English on the door when there is nobody home. Residents may contact us when they come back," she told the Global Times.