At the beginning of the 20th century, it was generally accepted that China's population was 450 million, and the 450 million taels of silver reparations in the Xinugu Treaty were derived from this, with an average of one or two silver per Chinese to the Eight-Power Alliance powers. By the time of the founding of New China in 1949, there were still 450 million people. That is to say, in the past fifty years, although China has experienced many large-scale national wars and disasters, as well as countless natural and man-made disasters, there has been no significant regression in the population that was common in ancient times. Why?
It's two sides. The first is the decline in population after the large-scale wars in ancient times, although it is certain to happen, but the numbers we can see now are often inaccurate. For example, the population of the Eastern Han Dynasty is generally recognized as about 50 million, but when it came to the Three Kingdoms, it was only less than 10 million, which is obviously unlikely and is a statistical problem. To put it simply, it is because during the war and chaos, a large number of people fled and broke away from the country's original household and people-in-law management system, so it became the country's population outside the statistics, thus causing a large-scale population reduction in the data. But these populations generally fled to places that the state could not manage at that time, which does not mean that these populations really do not exist, but are only separated from the statistical system.
Under the ancient system of households and people, the state levied taxes, levies labor and military service, all depending on the statistics of population and land, so after each dynasty entered a relatively stable era, large-scale population statistics would be carried out, on the one hand, to dictate land and resume production, on the other hand, it was also to facilitate the collection of taxes and labor and military service. At the end of the dynasty, it is generally because of the various additional apportionments and enlistments, which will greatly exceed the original provisions of the state, greatly increasing the burden on the peasants, and the peasants will be overwhelmed and will try their best to escape. The main way to escape is to escape from the land allocated by the state to oneself, or to flee to previously undeveloped places, such as deep mountains and old forests or remote areas, or to shelter from powerful households.
For example, at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, there was a large amount of shelter, that is, in order to evade the enlistment, the peasants took the initiative to donate land to the powerful landlords, because the payment of conscription to the powerful landlords was less than the payment of conscription to the state. But in fact, these populations still exist, but the national statistics are not available. There were also large numbers of people who fled large and long distances during this period, migrating to more remote areas. During the Eastern Han Dynasty, the political and economic center of gravity of the entire country was in the north, and the population south of the Yangtze River was small, and at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, many people migrated to the area south of the Yangtze River. For example, Zhuge Liang's family was originally in Linyi, Shandong, and in order to escape Cao Cao's war against Xu Qian, they migrated to the Jiangxi area, and then to the Xiangyang area. Sun Wu, the exiled Zhongyuan family, is even more numerous.
But it's not easy to do such a large-scale census. The first is that this kind of population statistics can only be carried out after the country has completed its reunification, basically there has been no large-scale war, has experienced a period of peace and development, has a stable political and economic order, has a relatively stable society, and basically ends large-scale population flows. For example, the Northern Song Dynasty carried out this kind of demographic statistics, which was already in the Song Shenzong period, and at this time it was nearly a hundred years since the founding of the Northern Song Dynasty, and this kind of nationwide statistics had not been carried out before. This is because, before the Song Shenzong, the Northern Song Dynasty had been in a state of war, first with the Liao State, and then with the Western Xia for a long time. By the time of the Southern Song Dynasty, the Jin Dynasty had already carried out this kind of statistics in the Dading period, and it was already the late period of the Jin Dynasty.
In general, such large-scale nationwide population and land statistics also require a very important condition, that is, the state's administrative system is strong enough to penetrate deep into the grass-roots society, so that relatively accurate statistics can be carried out, rather than local officials randomly filling in false data, which can become the basis for the state to carry out military service management. At the very least, the effective control capacity of the state must be able to control it at the county level, and the township society below the county level also has a relatively stable and reliable management system to do this. For example, in order to carry out this kind of statistics in the early Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang did not trust the grass-roots officials, so he sent Taixue students down to the grass-roots level many times to carry out this kind of land measurement and population statistics. Even so, the historical demographics that can be seen today are far lower than the actual population at that time. For example, it is now generally recognized that the population size of the Ming Dynasty has reached 150 million, but the data left by the Ming Dynasty is 60 million people in the Wanli period.
During the nearly forty years of the Republic of China's rule, neither the Beiyang government nor the later Nationalist government ever met either of these two conditions. First of all, the nationwide war has never ended, and it has been going on continuously, first by various warlords, then by the eight-year War of Resistance Against Japan, and then by the war of liberation that lasted for three years, and there was never a complete end to the war, nor time for restoration and construction, nor did the large-scale population movement stop, so there was no national demographic and social and economic statistics. Only some scholars have conducted some small-scale local statistics when conducting fieldwork, but they are not enough to calculate the overall situation of the whole country.
Then there is the grass-roots management system, which was not established after the collapse of the Qing Dynasty until the founding of New China. Because it was in a period of war, the whole country was in fact in a military-centered state, and the reorganization of the administrative system had never had time to take care of it, and even the most basic civilian bureaucracy had not been established. After the National Government nominally unified the whole country, it was never able to extend the state's management system to the grass-roots level because of its partisan struggle. We often say that in ancient China, the imperial power was not subordinate to the county, and by the time of the Republic of China, the state's administrative system could not even reach the county level, let alone below the county level. Moreover, because the National Government became corrupt very quickly and soon formed the habit of exaggerating and concealing reports from top to bottom, it did not have the ability to conduct large-scale statistics nationwide. For example, in the movie "1942", it is mentioned that more than three million people died of starvation in Henan Province, but only 2,000 people were reported to the central government.
Therefore, the collection of taxes and the collection of labor and military service throughout the Republic of China period were extremely chaotic, and many places even used the yellow book of land and demographic data fabricated during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, and the land that was statistically taxed in some places was not even 30% of the actual land area. This situation continued until after the founding of New China, because the large-scale war ended and the social order gradually stabilized, and the ability to carry out such nationwide population statistics was acquired. Thus, new China did not conduct its first nationwide census until 1953, after the end of the Korean War. After this statistics, it was soon found that the number of people in the country reached the scale of 600 million, which was 150 million more than the original customary saying of 450 million, and it was for this reason that there was a saying that "600 million people do their best".