INQUIRY INTO THE POPULATION OF CHINA. ()C)8 



l<''a III i lies. 



l<;r,l, taxed iKiiiulation_ _. : 10.633,000 



16(50, taxed iK)imlatioii___^_"_^ 19,088,000 



1670, taxed population J_ 'J. 19,396,000 



1680, taxed population 17,095.000 



1690. taxed population 20,364,000 



17(1(1. taxed poimlation 20,411,000 



1710, taxed population 2.3,311,000 



172(>. taxed population 24,720.000 



17;!(i, taxed iioiuilation 2.". 480. 000 



111 the case of the census oi' IT'JO we are told tliat there were, t'xchi- 

 sive of the taxe(l [)opubiti()ii, ;)0*,).r)4r» families free fi'oiu taxation, 

 and S,")!,!);")*) families in the case of that of 1T:')(). I'arkei" notes that 

 "evidence clearly shows" (hut, as usual with him, he does not o"o to 

 tlie trouble of o-ivino- any) " that the numbers o-iveii above must be 

 multiplied by si.x, and not by five, as was done by Amiot, in order to 

 obtain the number of individuals."" Pending; production of evidence, 

 I shall follow Fatliei" Aniiot's \'iews on this point, and would add "2 

 })er cent for the tax-free families, which include oHicials. literati, the 

 ai'iiiy, etc. On this basis we find that the total ])opulati()n of C'liina 

 proper in l(>r)I. diirinu' the troublous times which accompanied the 

 establishment of JNIanchu supremacy, was about 55,000,000 — just 

 about the number we should have assumed it to l)e had we to deduct 

 it from the data suj)plied by history alone. From 1()51 down to the 

 pi'esent time the fio^ures of the returns vary with such extraordinary 

 rapidity, so unlike anything we have noted in the whole long list of 

 earlier Chinese enumerations, that one is inevitably brought to look 

 on them as fanciful and probably far remote from the truth." 



In 1712 an imperial edict ordered that the numl)er of families 

 (24,021,331) given in the enumeration of the preceding year should 

 remain the invariable basis for the assessment of the crown taxes, 

 and that all subseciuent censuses should give the total numbei- of 

 inhabitants. Nevertheless, it was only in 1741, after repeated orders 

 had been given by the Imperial (T()\eriiment, that a return was made 

 of the total population of China. According to it the poi)ulation 

 was 143,412,000. For 1743 we find in the Institutes of the Ta 

 Ch'ing dynasty (Ta Ch'ing Hui-tien) a detailed census of the seven- 

 teen provinces — corresponding to the eighteen of the present day — 

 but again given by households. This census gave the total number 

 of households (hu) as 28,877,304, comprising 143,()21,4()0 individ- 

 uals, or about 4.8 persons to a household. To this number, which 



a De Guignes (Voyage a Peking, Vol. Ill, pp. .56-86), after a study of the 

 Chinese census letunis of 1743, 1761, and 1794, concluded that tiiey were e.xag- 

 gerated, and also that the figure five adopted hy the iiiissionai-ies to asccM'tain 

 the mnnliei- of i)ersons in a family was too high hy half, lie calculated the 

 po]nilation of China jiroiier in 178'-» at 15(),0()( »,(»(»() as a niaxiiiiuui. 



