﻿R0CKHILI.| THE POPULATION OF CHINA 307 



1(151, taxed population [0,633,000 families. 



1 mid. " [9,088,000 



1 ('jo, " 19,396,000 



1680, '" 17. 005,000 



T690, " 20,364,000 



1 7no, " •' 20,411,000 



1710. " " 23,311,000 



1720, 24,720,000 



[730, " " -'5,480,000 



In the case of the census of 1720 we are told that there were, ex- 

 clusive of the taxed population, 309,545 families free from taxation ; 

 and 851,959 families in the case of that of 1730. Parker notes that 

 " evidence clearly shows " (but as usual with him he docs not go to 

 the trouble of giving any) that the numbers given above must be 

 multiplied by six, and not by five as was done by Amiot, in order to 

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

 I shall follow Father Amiot's views on this point, and would add 2 

 per cent, for the tax-free families, which include officials, literati, the 

 army, etc. On this basis we find that the total population of China 

 proper in 165 1, during the troublous times which accompanied the 

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

 about the number we should have assumed it to be had we to deduct 

 it from the data supplied by history alone. From 1651 down to the 

 present time the figures 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. 1 



In 1 712 an imperial edict ordered that the number of families 

 (24,621,334) given in the enumeration of the preceding year should 

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

 and that all subsequent censuses should give the total number of 

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

 had been given by the Imperial Government, that a return was made 

 of the total population of China. According to it the population 

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

 Ch'ing dynasty (Ta Citing 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 num- 



1 De Guignes (Voyage a Peking, in, 56-86), after a study of the Chi- 

 nese census returns of 1743, 1761, and 1794, concluded that they were exag- 

 gerated, and also that the figure five adopted by the missionaries to ascertain 

 the number of persons in a family was too high by half. He calculated the 

 population of China proper in 1789 at 150,000,000 as a maximum. 



