China's life expectancy at birth is currently being debated; the 2010 census data may exaggerate the figure and its rate of increase. In this paper, with an extension of the Lee-Carter method for limited data, we use China's 1982, 1990 and 2000 censuses to forecast the mortality pattern and life expectancy for the 2000 to 2030 period. We find that the annual increase in life expectancy from 2000 to 2030 is predicted to be 0.18 years for males, and 0.23 years for females, and the infant mortality rate is predicted to decline to 10.39‰ in 2030 for males, and to 20.32‰ for females. This work is jointly supported by the 985-3 Project of Xi’an Jiaotong University and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (CSO2012-31206)