I’ve been reading a book where the population of China is a big part of the plot and it got me wondering about how it got so big.
How is it that China became the most populated country in the world ?
Thanks.
A lot of food and a lot of ***.
The usual way.
Perhaps the easier question to ask is when was it not the ,argest populated country/region in the world?
There have always been alot of people in China, coupled with the fact that it produced one of the earliest civilizations which was alot more stable than it’s western counterparts.
There are two important readons: Rice and Peace.
The first reason is that the chinese early on mastered the complex processes involved in farming rice. It’s a crop that can yield large amounts of food per area, and thus support a large agricultural population.
Secondly they have been more-or-less at peace since the Chou dynasty, about 1000BC.
(I say more-or-less, because there have been times of turbulence, but not quite to the same extent as in Europe on a similar timeline.)
I can’t see what is so special about China. India is probably much more densely populated.
Yeah, that’s a Bad Thing. 
Eastern China ( which is where the vast bulk of the population is concentrated ) is enormously productive agriculturally and mostly not a lot more densely populated than the Netherlands ( or at least that was the case in the 80’s ) - It is just immensely larger. There are a number of similar areas in the old world and they do tend to have massive populations - the Gangetic Plain in India, the island of Java, etc.
China has always been the most populous country on the earth, dating back as far as it was a country.
The earlier comments on peace and farming methods are right on the money as well. China has generally been a highly centralized country and when in conditions of internal peace it has frequently increased to carrying capacity and beyond ( said capacity varying with technology and associated factors - the introduction of American food crops contributed to the increase under the Ming and Qing for example ).
So between the 4th and 2nd century B.C.E. a technological revolution triggered a population boom - From a few million to ~57 million by 2 C.E… Further upsurges can be charted on the handy graph I ran across awhile back:
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/ChinaFood/data/pop/pop_21_m.htm
- Tamerlane
This “peace and prosperity” could be a result of the communist type government. so we must ask ourselves, is a communist/socialist government really that bad? or have we been brainwashed and blindsided by a lifelong feeding on democratic propaganda to ever really know?
Thoughout the vast bulk of its history, China has been ruled by Imperial governments. Communism only took hold in the last 50 years, and I would not call the Cultural Revolution or The Great Leap Forward(over a cliff) peaceful or prosperous. Most of the increase in food production (and popluation growth) over the past 50 years is due to improvements in agricultural techonology, not the communist farming policies. India has experienced a similar growth in population and food production, and they are not communist. The current economic growth in China didn’t start until after Mao died, and the Chinese government started easing towards a more market economy. (while still suppresing political dissent, of course.)
Yeah, I mean, the worst famine in history occured under the policies of Communist China. That’s something I’d love to just try out here!
Although Chinese communism has killed more than 35 million, the sacrifice is worth it, right? :rolleyes:
</hijack>
The population really exploded owing to Mao Zedong. He was sure that there would be a scorched earth war with either Russia or America. He also had the wonderful catchphrase of “every mouth is born with two hands” meaning one hand can support an individual and the other and to contribute to society.
Mao’s population policies at least doubled the population. It is something that the average Chinese today will roundly criticize Mao for. The one unforgiveable act that he inflicted upon the general Chinese population.
Daoloth - you have a cite that it was the worst famine in history? I find that a stretch. it was bad but China has experienced famine since time immemorial.
Communist farming policies were a horrible failure. Deng Xiaoping basically started to dismantle the communes as soon as he came back in the 1970’s in order to raise the subsistence level and try to kick start the economy.
Well, deadliest famine that has been measured. See The Geography of Famine by William A. Dando. Hunger in History also has some information, on it I believe. Hungry Ghosts by Jasper Becker is an extensive expose on the history of Mao’s famine.
Aside from the comments others have made about the last 50 years, it’s perhaps worth noting the argument that, through the last few millennia, Chinese agriculture has been dependent on a stable irregation system. The maintenence of this was not remotely a communist nor socialist concern; it was, in line with DreadCthulhu’s comment, an imperial one.
Measured? just how? If you can believe just about any Chinese source, they didn’t know or were able to measure it themselves at the time. I haven’t read the geography of famine, but an online search reveals it as published in 1980, which means that it is highlyunlikely to contain any kind of factual information from internal classified “neibu” Chinese government source material. To be fair, of course given the times, the only information one can most likely come up with even including “neibu” government internal classified sources will be ancedotal.
Jasper’s book is hardly well researched or documented. Most of it from 1-2 trips he took to China’s Anhui province to find material and almost all of it ancedotal.
There was a famine. It was bad. How bad is really up to the person interpreting ancedotal information and whether or not they have an axe to grind.
My parents were in China during the Great Leap Forward. Yes, there wasn’t a lot to eat, and a lot of people go hungry. But, due to the highly equal distribution system, the end result was a huge number of hungry people instead of a bunch of dead. Just before you ask, they were in some pretty poor rural areas.
Urban Ranger, can I ask where your parents were?
Daoloth, you could also do some research on the amount of starvation caused with Chiang Kai-shek had river dykes blown across central China to delay the advancing Japanese.
Yeah, I’d read about the famines that Kai-shek created, but IIRC, they don’t even number half the victims of Mao’s. Although, admittedly, finding precise numbers on each of these is difficult (war time for the first, government secrecy the second).