As I said, it is difficult to get a detailed demographic picture from P
region by region except for the few passages I have sent. I am
trying to follow his otherwise correct insistence that we should not
speak of China as one unit the same way we don't for Europe. But
P does not always follow this principle when he writes about the
regional demographic pattern of China. He, however, offers a
detailed regional analysis of "deforestation and soil depletion in
China". Let me sum his argument in point form:
- general conclusion: "both ends of Eurasia were in serious
trouble". By 1800/1850? Not clear, maybe by 1850/1900. China
was certainly *not* facing an imminent ecological crisis by 1800.
The timing, seriousness, or even whether there were any signs of a
crisis varied from region to region.
- resource depletion was "serious" in the *Lower Yangzi*. More
than any other region it depended on "ecologically sensitive
goods", and "imported large amounts of beancake fertilizer from
Manchuria". (226). "Yield increases slowed after 1800" (228), *but*
this advanced region was not any more used-up ecologically than
England or the Netherlands. "But it was probably not until well into
the nineteenth century that [ecological problems] became more
severe than problems in core regions in Europe...And by that time
the most developed parts of Europe had obtained significant
ecological relief from underground *and* overseas..[his italics]
(229).
- Lingnan ("probably China's second most commercialized and
densely populated macro-region") was facing certain ecological
difficulties by the late 18th but it still had more timber left than
"insular and peninsular Europe did" [Europe without European
Russia]. It even had larger forested remaining areas than France.
Its population continue to grow, from 17.5 million in 1753 to 30.5 by
1853 (229-30). "Per-acre food yields in Lingnan irrigated rice
farming kept growing with the help of ever-more beancake fertilizer
and may have doubled between 1750 and 1900" (226). (It began to
import much of this beancake from Manchuria in the 19th).
- "By 1900, much of North China was an ecological disaster area";
"the production of non-food crops probably fell in absolute as well
as per capita terms between 1750 and 1900, as more and more of
its land was needed for food" (234). But not every area of North
China was facing serious problems in 1800. Indeed, "population
growth continued with barely a pause, right through to the still
faster population growth that began in the 1950s; and it did so in
spite of a series of genuine ecological catastrophes with lasting
effects. And both before and after 1850, the most rapid population
growth within North China appears to have been in Henan,
generally the poorest province in the macro-region" (244).
Did North China bring itself into this Malthusian disaster -- into
misery and poverty due to a lack of preventive checks? P
speculates that, in this one case, the old Malthusian argument -
wrongly applied to the whole of China - may hold true, which he
attributes, possibly, to weaker family lineages leading to weaker
fertility restraints (244-45).
- Guangdong and Guangxi were more forested than France through
the 1700s and 1800s. (229-30).
- "Perkins's scattered data suggest that per acre rice yields in
some of the most export oriented counties in the Middle Yangzi
province of *Hunan* did rice sharply as the province filled up: they
were about 60 percent of Lower Yangzi levels in the 18th century
and caught up during the 19th...Cultivated acreage also rose
significantly - presumably mostly in less-advanced areas...Hunan's
population grew about 40 percent between 1775 and 1850" (246).
