CHINA’S POPULATION.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 85, 23 November 1911, Page 4

CHINA’S POPULATION.

It appears that China is not quite so densely populated as an exuberant fancy has supposed. There is always a tendency to magnify flu* mysterious, and China has always persuaded ns into exaggeration. The Chinese Government has lately attempted some sort of census of the people, and the results have just boon published and forwarded to London. China could hardly he expected to number her people in just the same way as other countries, and so we find that she counts families instead

;«! individuals. The size (if Use family, therefore, becomes a factor in the calculation, ami this is necessarily an uncertain quantity. Chinese officialism places it at 5.5 individuals, and upon this basis the population of the country is ,‘529,012,001). This includes Manchuria, 1 Isinchiang, and the dependencies. hut it does not include Tibet, with a population of about 6,560,000. ' China evidently contains a lot of people, hut not so many as

we thought. She inis been popularly credited with 100,0t)0,000 more than tins. Nor is the density of population so as we had supposed. She has about 198 to the square mile, hut Belgium lias 589, England 558, Holland 112, and Massachusetts lIS. But these are relatively small areas with special industrial conditions. The revolution now in full swing, will wipe out a tremendous number of people, hut even in this matter the figures in tlie talcs we hear are probably largely exaggerated.