Population Reaches 300 Million

At the height of the Ming dynasty China’s population exceeded 100 million. Economic decline and years of war from the late Ming sharply reduced it. In the early Qing, the rulers took measures to restore the economy; society was stable, and the population rose greatly. By the Kangxi reign it had reached about 150 million. By the end of the Qianlong reign it was 300 million, roughly a third of the world’s population, and in the Daoguang era it passed 400 million. There were many causes. Long-term stability and economic growth provided the conditions; high-yield crops such as maize, sweet potatoes and potatoes spread, greatly raising grain output and feeding more people; and after the policies of “increasing population without ever raising taxes” and “merging the poll tax into the land tax,” the poll tax was no longer levied per head, people no longer had to hide their numbers, and official figures came closer to reality. The growth supplied ample labor and promoted the development of frontier and mountain areas, as many inland farmers moved to the Northeast, Inner Mongolia, Taiwan and the southwestern mountains. But population grew far faster than farmland, so land per person kept shrinking and the problem of “many people, little land” became acute; with serious land concentration, many peasants lost their land and became drifters, and social tensions mounted. The late Qianlong scholar Hong Liangji pointed out in his essay Zhiping Pian that population was growing far faster than fields and houses, which would bring serious social problems. The population problem became one root of the Qing’s mid-to-late social crisis.