ds were adopted on different occasions, and that comparisons
between different enumerations are therefore rather unsafe. Putnam
Weale[14] says:--

The first census taken by the Manchus in 1651, after the
restoration of order, returned China's population at 55 million
persons, which is less than the number given in the first census
of the Han dynasty, A.D. 1, and about the same as when Kublai
Khan established the Mongal dynasty in 1295. (This is presumably
a misprint, as Kublai died in 1294.) Thus we are faced by the
amazing fact that, from the beginning of the Christian era, the
toll of life taken by internecine and frontier wars in China was
so great that in spite of all territorial expansion the
population for upwards of sixteen centuries remained more or less
stationary. There is in all history no similar record. Now,
however, came a vast change. Thus three years after the death of
the celebrated Manchu Emperor Kang Hsi, in 1720, the population
had risen to 125 millions. At the beginning of the reign of the
no less illustrious Ch'ien Lung (1743) it was returned at 145
millions; towards the end of his reign, in 1783, it had doubled,
and was given as 283 millions. In the reign of Chia Ch'ing (1812)
it had risen to 360 millions; before the Taiping rebellion (1842)
it had grown to 413 millions; after that terrible rising it sunk
to 261 millions.

I do not think such definite statements are warranted. The China Year
Book for 1919 (the latest I have seen) says (p. 1):--

The taking of a census by the methods adopted in Western nations
has never yet been attempted in China, and consequently estimates
of the total population have varied to an extraordinary degree.
The nearest approach to a reliable estimate is, probably, the
census taken by the Minchengpu (Ministry of Interior) in 1910,
the results of which are embodied in a report submitted to the
Department of State at Washington by Mr. Raymond P. Tenney, a
Student Interpreter at the U.S. Legation, Peking.... It is
pointed out that even this census can only be regarded as
approximate, as, with few exceptions, households and not
individuals were counted.

The estimated population of the Chinese Empire (exclusive of Tibet) is
given, on the basis of this census, as 329,542,000, while the population
of Tibet is estimate