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Chinese Population Growth
Increases in population have usually been accompanied (indeed facilitated) by an increase in trade. In the Western experience, commerce provided the conditions that allowed industrialization to get started, which in turn led to growth in science, technology, industry, transport, communications, social change, and the like that
we group under the broad term of “ development. ” However, the massive
increase in population that in Europe was at first attributed to industrialization
starting in the eighteenth century occurred also and at the same period in China,
even though there was no comparable industrialization.
It is estimated that the Chinese population by 1600 was close to 150 million. The
transition between the Ming and Qing dynasties (the seventeenth century) may
have seen a decline, but from 1741 to 1851 the annual figures rose steadily and
spectacularly, perhaps beginning with 143 million and ending with 432 million. If
we accept these totals, we are confronted with a situation in which the Chinese
population doubled in the 50 years from 1790 to 1840. If, with greater caution, we
assume lower totals in the early eighteenth century and only 400 million in 1850,
we still face a startling fact: something like a doubling of the vast Chinese
population in the century before Western contact, foreign trade, and
industrialization could have had much effect.
To explain this sudden increase we cannot point to factors constant in Chinese
society but must find conditions or a combination of factors that were newly
effective in this period. Among these is the almost complete internal peace
maintained under Manchu rule during the eighteenth century. There was also an
increase in foreign trade through Guangzhou (southern China) and some
improvement of transportation within the empire. Control of disease, like the
checking of smallpox by variolation may