Chapter 1　Population Expansion and Demographic Pressure in Qing China (1644-1911)

1. “The Chinese Thomas Malthus”

In 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) published the classical book,Principles of Population, which had a worldwide influence. Malthusian thinking consists mainly of the idea, that given fixed resources (usually agricultural land),population growth automatically means less per capita income down to the point where people would starve. A main insight was, that this holds, even if the size of land resources grows. For example because agricultural land is claimed from swamps, or forest, or it is used more intensively due to better agricultural techniques such as rice terrace farming or new American crops. The reasoning is that the population may grow exponentially and thus faster than agricultural output increases, again bringing down per capita output to a point where it endangers human existence.

According to Malthus, these arguments fall in two sections, the so-called“positive checks” and “preventive checks”. Stated simply, the contemporary Chinese arguments fall in the former category where the number of people is checked to a level that allows for a per capita income at which humans are able to survive. The stated policies of infanticide, the outright killing of certain social groups, disasters, diseases, and civil wars all fall in the same category and are usually not regarded as acceptable or even preferred “solutions” to the problem of population pressure, because they usually represent problems in their own right to some degree.

More relevant are thus policies and mechanisms that solve the topic before it even arises, i.e. preventing a number of people inconsistent with the availability of food. In 19th-century China, controlling the marriage age would be such a policy, as well as effectively enforcing one or two births per couple.(1) Other mechanisms would include restricting the share of female population getting married at all in connection with restricting births out of wedlock, a social pattern found in large parts of early modern Europe commonly referred to as the“European marriage pattern”.(2)

Practically, the literature usually tests for either of these arguments by empirically relating two sets of variables to each other: The positive check supposes that per capita income (as measured in various ways such as GDP per capita or real wage) should be positively correlated with the mortality rate, and the preventive check supposes that per capita income should be negatively correlated with the birth rate. Of course, there are plenty of more or less sophisticated setups to test these hypotheses all coming down to the same basic idea. What is more important is that when done properly they rely on time series econometrics and thus annual data and auxiliary information. These are not available for 19th-century China. Still, the data presented here are the best available and should be interpreted with the theory just explained in mind.

The other important insight from reflecting in the mirror of Western literature is that the whole point of testing for Malthusian checks is concluding that if and when they don’t apply anymore, an economy has apparently moved on. In turn it enters a post-Malthusian era, in which though population grows, people can still enjoy rising per-capita income. European states experienced this sooner or later in the first half of the 19th century, ironically right after Malthus’s treatise.

There have been myriads of writing on demographic subjects since the publication of Thomas Malthus’s book. Utilising his main arguments and testing his main propositions have been at the core of this type of literature. While this chapter is mainly about the scholarly reflection in Qing China on demographic issues revealing the same analytic approach on the mechanisms of population growth and per-capita income, the most common question in the Western discourse is about, if and when, this close interaction of resources and per capita income was abandoned in whatever region.

In 1793, the 58th year of the Qianlong period within Qing China, five years before Thomas Malthus published his book, An Essay on the Principle of Population, a Chinese scholar named Hong Liangji (1746-1809) wrote an article about the pressures of population growth during his time. It received as a title:Zhi Ping Pian.(3)

Hong was a famous scholar in the Qing. In 1790, he won the second place in the Imperial Examination and worked in the Imperial Academy. Among all his works, the most famous was his research on population. Even though his writing predates Thomas Malthus’ treatise, Hong almost reached similar conclusions. In the Zhi Ping Pian it states:

There have never been people who did not delight in living under a peaceful rule, and none unhappy about living under a peaceful rule that has lasted for a long time (i.e., more than one hundred years). However, in the matter of population, it is noted that today’s population is five times as large as that of thirty years ago, ten times as large as that of sixty years ago, and not less than twenty times as large as that of one hundred years ago.

Take for example a family that at the time of one’s great-great-grandfather or that of one’s great-grandfather was in possession of a ten-room house and a one hundred mou piece of farmland. After the man got married there were at first only the two of them (husband and wife) living in the ten-room house and on the one hundred mou piece of land, with their resources more than ample. Assuming that they had three sons, by the time the sons grew up, all three sons, as well as the father, would have had their own wives, thus, totaling eight people. Eight people would require the help of hired servants, amounting to say, ten people in the household. With the ten-room house and the one-hundred mou piece of farmland, they likely would have just enough accommodation and food to eat, although barelyenough. However, in time, there would be grandsons, who in turn would marry. The aged members of the household would pass away, but there could still be more than twenty people in the family. With more than twenty people sharing a ten-room house and working on a one hundred mou piece of farmland, even if they ate very frugally and lived in crowded quarters,their needs would likely not be met. Moreover, there would be great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren, and the total number of people in the household would be fifty or sixty times that of the great-great-grandfather’s or great-grandfather’s time. For every household at the time of the great-great-grandfather, there would be at least ten households at the time of the great-great-grandson and great-grandson. Some families’ population would have declined, but there would also be lineages whose male members would have greatly multiplied, compensating for the cases of decline.

One may say that at the time of the great-grandfather and great-greatgrandfather, not all uncultivated land had been reclaimed and not all available housing had been filled. However, the amount of available farmland and housing likely had only doubled or at the most increased three to five times, while the population would have grown ten to twenty times. Thus,farmland and houses are always in short supply, while there is always a surplus of households and an excess in the population. Furthermore, some families would have bought or otherwise appropriated other people’s properties such that one person owns the houses of more than one hundred people and one household occupies the farmland of one hundred households.No wonder that everywhere there are people who have died from exposure to windstorms, rain, and frost or from hunger and cold and the hardships of homelessness.

This leads us to ask whether there is a natural way to deal with such a situation. Floods, droughts, and plagues are natural ways of reducing the population. However, people who unfortunately become victims of such calamities are no more than 10% or 20% of the total population.

Do the ruler and his ministers have a way of dealing with such a situation? They may make adjustments in the following ways: pursuing policies to ensure that no farmland remains unused and that there is no surplus labour. Moreover, migration of farmers to newly reclaimed land may be organized; heavy taxes may be reduced after a comparison is made betweenpast and present tax rates. Extravagance in consumption may be prohibited; and the appropriation of other people’s properties to wealthy household may be suppressed. Should there be floods, droughts, and plagues, grains in the granaries may be made available, and all the funds in the government treasury may be used for relief. These are all that the ruler and his ministers can do in the way of adjustments between population and productive land.

In summary, after a long period of peaceful rule, nature cannot stop the people from reproducing; yet, the resources with which nature nourishes the people are finite, and what the ruler and the ministers can do for the people is limited to the policies enumerated above. Among ten youths in a family,there is always one or two who would resist going to school. With some idle people in all the empires, how can it be expected that all will accept control from authorities? Housing for one person is inadequate for the needs of ten people; how can it be sufficient for a hundred people? The food for one person is inadequate for ten people; how can it be sufficient for a hundred people? This is why a period of peaceful rule concerns me.

Hong dared to raise questions regarding current affairs and criticised the chosen responses, a choice for which he ended up suffering a lot. Hong’s lifetime experienced one of the fastest population expansions in Chinese history.The population boom resulted in a series of socio-economic problems. He found that the increase in production was slower than the population’s growth, and he believed that the tension would be relieved by disasters, famines, plagues, and wars. Hong pointed out that the government could mitigate the problem through policies such as adjusting taxes, encouraging colonisation, and enhancing the social safety net. However, he expressed his concern about the limits of the population boom and policies by the government to solve the population crisis in addressing such an inherent structural dilemma. Hong’s article didn’t get accepted by Emperor Qianlong, and he was even sentenced to death in 1799 since he infuriated the court by criticising the current politics. Of course, he was not executed but exiled to the Yili region in Xinjiang province by the Emperor.

From these analyses, we can conclude that Hong’s idea was very similar to Thomas Malthus’ idea of positive and preventive or moral checks. It is therefore adequate that Hong was called the “Chinese Thomas Malthus.” Referring to an obvious parallel in contemporary Chinese policy, these ideas laid the ground to formulate the one-child policy (despite their very recent abolition) in modern China.

After Hong, there were also some scholars who had suggestions about the population problem; of them, Wang Shiduo (1802-1889) was the most famous.Wang’s idea was mainly recorded in his Yibing Riji (Diary of Wang Shiduo).Wang believed that “the population would double in 30 years if there were no war. However, production did not increase at the same pace. All the mountains had been sown with corn and all the rivers had been changed to agricultural land.The planting technology was already highly developed; all the vegetables had been eaten, but it was still not enough to feed such a huge number of people.”“Ordinary people were tired of their families…their livelihood was poor not because of wrong policy and bad harvest but because of the population. More and more rebellions would be followed.”(4)

Wang had a number of suggestions to reduce the population. The first was to implement a late marriage policy. During his time, a couple would get married generally at the age of 15 or 16. Wang decreed that men and women should be married no earlier than the ages of 30 and 25, respectively. Anyone in violation of this rule should be sentenced to death. The second was to control the birth rate. He said one family could only have one boy or one girl, and two boys would be the maximum allowed but having two girls was not permitted. Children above that number must be killed, and abortion should be used in the family that already had a kid. The third was to adopt even more draconian law. The government should kill large numbers of criminals, especially the rebels who should be killed at once. Just like Hong, Wang’s ideas were not accepted by the rulers at all. The population expansion was instead “solved” by the Taiping Rebellion(太平天国运动, also known as Taiping Heavenly Kindom Movement) and other series of wars.(5)

From above it becomes clear, that Malthusian thinking was independently developed and established in the Chinese discourse at about the same time as in the West, and that the main strands of argument were in fact following Malthusian principles. However, the question when China actually ceased to be a Malthusian society will be left for further research.