INQUIRY INTO THE POPULATION OK CHINA. 671 



rate the poiJiilalioii of Clie-kiaii_i>: would doiihlc itself hy natural 

 increase in 417 years. 



Newsholnie;' calciilalini:- the avera<re l>iilli rate and (l(>ath rate foi- 

 the five years iSill-lM',).'), found that in I'russia the population would 

 double itself by natural increase in V.).2 years; in Enfrhmd in rA)A 

 years; in Italy in (')."). 7 years; in Austria in 71.1 years, and in France 

 in 5!)! years, the annual increase in the pei-iod named avera<j:in<j^ in 

 the latter country ouly O.OS per 1,(){)(). Conditions of life in other 

 ])rovinces of the Empire of China are ai)i)r().\imately the same as in 

 Che-kian<i- — in fact, in a number they are worse, particuhirly as 

 regards the frequency of famines, floods, and epidemics; neverthe- 

 less, Chinese enumerations would have us believe that the population 

 in China increases more rapidly than in the most favored countries of 

 the Avorld. 



In the case of China, natural increase is the only one to be taken in 

 line of count ; immiiiration into China is practically nil, and emigra- 

 tion from China proper to other portions of the Empire, excluding 

 Asia, has only within (piite recent times become of considerable size, 

 and even now it is not sufficient to appreciably affect the sum total 

 of the population in. the approximate count we are trying to make of 

 it. The only migratory movements of the Chinese have been from 

 province to province of the Empire. Without going far back into 

 the past it will suffice to mention the repopulation of the provinces of 

 Ssii-ciruan and Yiin-nan after the Manchu conquest from the Hu 

 Kuang provinces and the similar movement to Ssfi-ch'uan during 

 the great T'ai-p'ing rebellion. The emigration from Shan-hsi into 

 southern and eastern Mongolia after the famine of 1877-78, and that 

 from Shan-tung and Chih-li into Manchuria still going on, are the 

 most important recent movements of population to outlying parts 

 of the Chinese Empire. The emigration to southern Asia and to 

 remoter parts of the world is drawn exclusively from the provinces 

 of Fu-kien and Kuang-tung, and though considerable, is not so large 

 as to affect to any appreciable degree the rough figures of population 

 we hope to establish.^ 



Very little accurate information has come to us as to the death 

 rate in any given locality of China; in fact, the only official data I 

 know of is the death rate in Peking during one year, 1815, for which 

 year we have also the returns of a detailed census of the population 

 within the Peking city walls. These were obtained by Sacharoff 

 and published in his valuable study, cited previously. According to 



a Eleiu. Vital Statistics, p. 15. 



''The following figures relative to (Miinose emigration, taken from Kxi)ort of 

 April 14. 1!K>4, a German paper devoted to eomnien-ial geography, first api)eared 

 in (iottwaldt's work on Chinese emigration. The greater part of the Chinese 

 emigration originates in the southern provinces, Shau-tung being the only 



