NEW PHASES IN THE CHINESE PROBLEM. 183 



the complete absence of immigration into China, is striking evi- 

 dence of the redundancy of the population ; for, though that emi- 

 gration is almost wholly confined to two provinces, viz., Kwang- 

 tung and Fookien, representing together a population of probably 

 from 34,000,000 to 35,000,000, 1 am disposed to think that a num- 

 ber nearer 3,000,000 than 2,000,000 from these provinces alone are 

 located in foreign countries. In the kingdom of Siam it is esti- 

 mated that there are at least 1,500,000 Chinese, of which 200,000 are 

 in the capital (Bankok). They crowd all the islands of the Indian 

 Archipelago. In Java, we know by correct census there are 136,- 

 000. Cochin-China teems with Chinese. In this colony we are sel- 

 dom without one, two, or three vessels taking Chinese emigrants 

 to California and other places. Multitudes go to Australia, to the 

 Philippines, to the Sandwich Islands, to the western coast of Cen- 

 tral and Southern America ; some have made their way to British 

 India. The emigration to the British West Indies has been con- 

 siderable, to the Havanna greater still. The annual arrivals in 

 Singapore are estimated at an average of 10,000, and 2,000 is the 

 number that are said annually to return to China." 



" There is not only this enormous maritime emigration, but a 

 considerable inland efflux of Chinese toward Manchuria and 

 Thibet ; and it may be added that the large and fertile islands of 

 Formosa and Hainan have been to a great extent won from the 

 aborigines by successive inroads of Chinese settlers. Now these 

 are all males ; there is not a woman to 10,000 men ; hence, perhaps, 

 the small social value of the female infant. Yet the perpetual out- 

 flowing of people seems in no respect to diminish the number of 

 those who are left behind." 



Sir John Bowring not only testifies to this perpetual outflow 

 of Chinese emigrants, but he paints in vivid colors the causes 

 which lead to these results. He says : " There is probably no part 

 of the world in which the harvests of mortality are more sweep- 

 ing and destructive than in China, producing voids which re- 

 quire no ordinary appliances to fill up. Multitudes perish abso- 

 lutely from want of the means of existence ; inundations destroy 

 towns and villages, and all their inhabitants ; it would not be 

 easy to calculate the loss of life by the typhoons and hurricanes 

 which visit the coasts of China, in which boats and junks are 

 sometimes sacrificed by hundreds and by thousands. The late 

 civil wars in China must have led to the loss of millions of lives. 

 The sacrifices of human beings by executions alone are frightful." 



It is such a condition of things, and such causes as these, that 

 induce the laboring classes of Chinese to emigrate to other coun- 

 tries. Considering the incentive which exists in these densely 

 populated districts to escape from the misery which marks their 

 existence, and to seek new lands where their condition may be 



