INQUIRY INTO THE POPULATION OF CHINA. 669 



though iiiiiuy millions imist h;ne j)ei'islu'(l, it is not at all likely that 

 the nnnihers of 1850 (J:14,41>;J,0()()) were more than decimated. Even 

 then, to kill or starve 4;^,00G,()()0 people in ten yt^ars would mean 

 12,000 a day, in addition to the 40.000 a day who (at the rate of HO 

 per thousand per annum) would die naturally, and would balance 

 about the same number of births. Moreover, the rebellion covered 

 only one-half the area of China, so that 24.000 a day is certainly 

 nearer than 12,000." 



The loss of life attending the crushing of the two Mohammedan 

 and the Nien-fei rebellions (1800-1875) mounted certainly to over a 

 million. Then we have a quarter of a million killed in the suppres- 

 sion of the Mohammedan rebellion in Kan-su in 1804-05. If w^e 

 add to this terrible source of loss of population that resulting from 

 famines and floods, the total is nearly doubled. There were great 

 famines in 1810, 1811, 1846, and 1840, which, according to the 

 Tung hua lu, the best official authority we have on the subject, re- 

 duced the population by 45,000.000. Although this figure may seem 

 excessive, we know that in the next great famine, that of 1877-78, 

 which visited only four provinces of the Empire with great severity, 

 no fewer than 0,500,000 persons fell its victims. This figure I quote 

 on the authority of the China famine relief committee of Shanghai. 



We must add to this again the loss of life which attended the great 

 flood of 1888, when the Yellow Iviver broke its banks and flooded 

 nearly the whole jn'ovince of Ho-nan. According to memorials sent 

 at the time to the Emperor, about 2,000,000 w^ere drowned or starved 

 to death by this catastrophe. Then there is the unknoAvn, but cer- 

 tainly terrible, moi-tality during the great drought and famine in 

 Shan-hsi, Shen-hsi, Chih-li, and southern Mongolia in 1802-03 and 

 j804. There have also been nmnerous epidemics of cholera and 

 plague which have devastated sections of the Empire in the last 

 twenty to thirty years, and still we have not exhausted the list of 

 causes of violent fluctuations, of extraordinary loss to the population 

 of China during the nineteenth century.'' 



It must not l^e lost sight of that these figures represent only the 

 mortality among adults; it is extremely improbable that infants were 

 counted at all. 



Po})otf, in his study on tiu^ population in China,'' estimates that the 



oE. H. Parker. China, p. 190. 



'' I was told in l".t()1 i»y tlie late Li I Inn?,' Clian.i,' that over HO.OOO Chiiieso lost 

 their lives in Pekin.i;; alone dnrini; the P.oxer trouides of I'.MtO. .Vihnittin.ij that 

 this tii^ure and all those here given are exaj;:j;erated, it is true heyond all douht 

 that the loss to the population from these causes has heen fearful. 



'• P. S. Popoff in Novoe Vreniya, No. .'MKU;, Septemher 10. 1884. Conf. S. Wells 

 Williams, The Middle Kingdom, i, 270. 



