ing Rebellion of 1851, which, together with its
after-effects, costs the lives of countless millions, all statisticians
of today estimate the population of China at more than four hundred
millions. If we enter these data together with the census of 1953 into a
chart (see p. 273), a fairly smooth curve emerges; the special features
are that already under the Ming the population was increasing and,
secondly, that the high rate of increase in the population began with
the long period of internal peace since about 1700. From that time
onwards, all China's wars were fought at so great a distance from China
proper that the population was not directly affected. Moreover, in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Manchus saw to the maintenance
of the river dykes, so that the worst inundations were prevented. Thus
there were not so many of the floods which had often cost the lives of
many million people in China; and there were no internal wars, with
their heavy cost in lives.

But while the population increased, the tillage failed to increase in
the needed proportion. I have, unfortunately, no statistics for all
periods; but the general tendency is shown by the following table:

_Date_ _Cultivated area_ mou _per person_
_in_ mou

1578 701,397,600 11.6
1662 531,135,800
1719 663,113,200
1729 878,176,000 6.1
(1953) (1,627,930,000) (2.7)

Six _mou_ are about one acre. In 1578, there were 66 _mou_ land per
family of the total population. This was close to the figures regarded
as ideal by Chinese early economists for the producing family (100
_mou_) considering the fact that about 80 per cent of all families at
that time were producers. By 1729 it was only 35 _mou_ per family, i.e.
the land had to produce almost twice as much as before. We have shown
that the agricultural developments in the Ming time greatly increased
the productivity of the land. This then, obviously resulted in an
increase of population. But by the middle of the eighteenth century,
assuming that production doubled since the sixteenth century, population
pressure was again as heavy as it had been then. And after _c_. 1750,
population pressure continued to build up to the present time.

Internal colonization continued during the Manchu time; there was a
continuous, but slow flow of people into Kwangsi, Kwe