﻿320 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [VOL. 47 



The population of China is most unevenly distributed ; in certain 

 sections for example, around Swatow, and in portions of Ho-nan, 

 Shan-tung, and Chih-li, it is extraordinarily dense, while in others, 

 as Kan-su, Yiin-nan, Kuei-chou, and Kuang-hsi, it is surprisingly 

 sparse. Guesses of the population based on partial returns from 

 some densely populated center would give a most erroneous idea 

 of the population not only of the province as a whole, but of 

 even a smaller division of the country. I have traversed several 

 times all the northern provinces of China— Chih-li, Shan-hsi, Shen- 

 hsi, and Kan-su — and can vouch for the fact that in none of them 

 does the population appear to exceed in numbers what the soil can 

 easily support. The absence of easy lines of communication over 

 which surplus produce can be readily exported, and the fact that the 

 Chinese do not raise cattle or any domestic animals in considerable 

 numbers, tend to restrict the areas cultivated by the farmer. It seems 

 certain that China could support a much larger population than it 

 now has — a condition which could not exist if the population had 

 reached the enormous figure which imaginative writers give us. I 

 am confirmed in this opinion by such a careful observer as F. S. 

 A. Bourne, who referring to the journey of the Blackburn Cham- 

 ber of Commerce Mission, 1 which traversed the whole Yang-tzu 

 valley and southwestern China, says : " From what we have seen on 

 this journey I should say that China could support twice her present 

 population, and that each man might be twice as well off as he is now ; 

 and this without any revolutionary change in their present manner 

 of life." 2 



1 Rep. of Mission to China of Blackburn Chamber of Commerce, 1896-97, 

 p. in. 



2 In a most interesting study entitled Tenure of Land in China and the Con- 

 dition of the Rural Population (Jonrn. Cli. Br. Roy. Asiat. Soc, n. s., xxiii, pp. 

 59-174), we find it stated (pp. 76-79) on excellent authority that " it is impos- 

 sible to say with any sort of exactness what proportion of the whole soil of 

 China is tilled by peasant owners, but probably it cannot be put at less than 

 one-half. The other moiety is owned in great measure by retired officials and 

 their families, the class known as the literati and gentry. . . . Considerable 

 tracts of land are owned by such families, and it is the invariable rule in 

 these cases to lease the land to small farmers. In the central and populous 

 parts of China these holdings are exceedingly small, often less than an Eng- 

 lish acre, seldom larger than three or four acres. . . . Most lands yield one 

 or more subsidiary crops in the course of the year, besides the principal crop. 

 . . . On the frontier provinces, where the soil is poorer and the population 

 more sparse, the size of the holdings is in general much larger than in the 

 centra] provinces, and the people would seem as a rule to be better off. But 

 as population increases there seems everywhere to be a strong tendency for 

 holdings to become reduced to the minimum size that will support a single 



