470 Al^NUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1919. 
its people a decadent race. In spite of periodical floods, famine, 
disease, and civil war, the population of China is, and has always 
been, on the increase. To-day many of the Provinces can not sup- 
port this increase, and we have now, even as it was throughout the 
duration of the Ch'ing dynasty, a steady emigration of Chinese of 
all classes into Chinese Turkestan, southern Mongolia, and Man- 
churia. Now that the rigorous bureaucratic rule of Russia under 
the old regime has vanished, there is nothing to prevent Siberia being 
overrun, peacefully, by the Chinese settler and exploited by Chinese 
merchants, who can hold their own against any other people of these 
regions. 
