China’s Population.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 460, 5 April 1890, Page 4

China’s Population.

Nearly Four Hundred Million People in the Empire. A writer in the ‘North China Herald,’ discussing the causes of the increase in the population of China and the increasing energy of the Chinese race which enables it to absorb other peoples and always to conquer in the struggle for existence, remarks that the native statistics show that it was not until the end of the seventeenth century that the population went beyond 60,000,000. From that period onward it has Grown Continuously in spite of famines, wars, and pestilences, and is overflowing into other countries and causing political disquietude. The causes of this are a mild and paternal Government, the extension of foreign trade and the spread of emigration. The educational system also, which extends to every village, and leads to the vast increase of persons connected with teaching and literature, and to a multiplication of occupations, has stimulated the increase of population, while foreign trade has vastly increased the number of persons engaged in agriculture. The Cultivation or Silk has grown enormously under the influence of the foreign export, and with it the numbers of persons engaged in tending mulberry trees, feeding silkworms, spinning, weaving, wholesale and retail trade in silk, etc.

Out of the 380,000,000 of which the population is, according to the latest official statistics, composed, about one in ten is engaged in agriculture, one in 100 is a bricklayer or mason, one in 120 is a tailor, one in 140 a blacksmith, and one in nine is a washerman, whileabout one in 100 is a carpenter. All these classes are largely benefited by and increase and multiply with foreign trade. Lastly, emigration has caused an increase in the population to a remarkable degree. The places of those who leave are soon filled up, and when the emigrants return with their wealth they react upon the general prosperity, and consequently the population, by putting their capital into local enterprises, and thus adding their quota to the wealth of the nation. , .