The government is encouraging the creation of a national merchant fleet. _Lloyd's Register of Shipping_ for 1968 listed eleven Albanian vessels totaling 36,550 gross tons. Albania and Communist China maintain a jointly owned shipping line, and the number of ships with Albanian registry is increasing. CHAPTER 4 THE PEOPLE The population increased by about 71 percent from 1950 to 1969 and in 1970 was increasing at a rate that would double the number of inhabitants in approximately twenty-six years. The median age, about nineteen years, was increasing slowly. The abundance of rural population and the increasing tempo of industrial development provided potential for rapid urban growth, but government controls and a scarcity of housing tended to restrict population movements. Persons of Albanian ethnic origin constituted about 97 percent of the 2.1 million population in early 1970. Of ancient Illyrian descent, they have maintained their homogeneity despite many invasions and centuries of foreign occupation. The Communist regime, in its effort to develop social and cultural solidarity, attempted to reduce consciousness of the differences between the major subgroups, the Gegs in the north and the Tosks in the south. Some progress has been made, but a continuing struggle is being carried out against customs and beliefs that are considered remnants of the past and detract from the achievement of Communist objectives (see ch. 5, Social System). The Albanian language is a derivative of the tongues that were spoken by the ancient Illyrians and Thracians. For many centuries its continuity was maintained by only verbal means. A standardized alphabet was not developed until the twentieth century. Since World War II considerable progress has been made in making the Tosk dialect the standard written language. In the late 1960s there were still some variations in spelling. The pattern of settlement was predominantly one of widely dispersed villages; approximately two-thirds of the people lived in communities with less than 1,000 population. Only twelve cities had more than 10,000 population in 1969. The quadrangular area formed by the cities of Durres, Tirana, Elbasan, and Fier, all of which are linked by rail and roads, was experiencing the most rapid growth in the 1960s.