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SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS 



[VOL. 47 



ber of households (hu) as 28,877,364, comprising 143,621,460 in- 

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

 which corresponds very closely with that given for 1741, Amiot 

 would add 493,075 individuals for unenumerated officials, 2,470,000 

 for the literati, and 4,115,325 for the army. To this again he would 

 add some 50,000,000 for the civil employes of government, the 

 monks, nuns, brigands, vagabonds, troglodytes, etc., with which, he 

 says, China is full. Here I think he is unequestionably wrong, for 

 the civil employes were included either in the already accounted for 

 class of officials, or in the general returns -, 1 while as for monks, nuns, 

 etc., the number was unquestionably so small that it may be omitted 

 in such a rough estimate as that we are attempting to reach. We 

 may adopt the number 143,000,000 individuals as a maximum for 

 the total population of China proper in 1743. 



The various estimates of the population made by the Government 

 of China since 1743 are contained in the following table, in which 

 have also been included the annual rates of increase or decrease 

 between succeeding dates deducted from them : 



Since the last date in the preceding table a number of estimates 

 of the population of China proper have been made by various 

 writers, but none of the estimates has any particular value, all of 



1 Ta Ch'ing Lii-li, 3d Div., Bk. 1, Sec. lxxvi, provides for the registration of 

 persons in the civil and military services. 



2 The figures for 1850 and i860 are given on the authority of the Tung Jtua 

 hi. The data from which the figure for 1885 is deduced were supplied me in 

 1885 by the Chinese Board of Revenue (Hu Pu), and supplemented and com- 

 pleted by figures supplied by the same Board to Mr. Popoff for ten provinces 

 for the year 1879. This enumeration, as also those for 1761, 1812, 1842, and 

 1882 are given in detail, infra, p. 321. See also S. Wells Williams, The Middle 

 Kingdom, I, 258. 



