The population history of China covers the long-term pattern of population growth in China and its impact on the history of China. The population went through many cycles that generally reached peaks along each imperial power and was reduced due to wars and barbarian invasions. The census data shows that the population as percentage share of the world has a long-term average of 26%, with 6% standard deviation. The minimum could be as low as 16% while the maximum as high as 38%. In the late 19th century and the early 20th century, the percentage share has been trending down. This was caused by two opposite factors: On one hand, the world population has been growing explosively. On the other hand, in order to address the poverty issue, China implemented a strict birth control policy. For recent trends see demographics of China and China.

Census data PeriodBroadberry, (2018), pp 990–994.Banister, (1992), pp. 52–53.Maddison, (2006), p. 167.Deng and Sun, (2019), pp 20–22. Year Census households Census population Modern estimatesShare of world populationWarring States −42343,740,00027%Western Han −20042,000,00028% Western Han 1 12,366,470 59,594,979 65,000,00027% Eastern Han 156 16,070,906 56,486,856 65,000,00027%Eastern Han20060,800,00025% Western Jin 280 6,801,000 8,200,00037,986,00017% Western Jin 300 35,000,00017% Sixteen Kingdoms 400 51,300,00022% Northern and Southern dynasties 500 51,300,00022% Sui 606 8,700,000 46,019,956 46,000,00019% Tang7056,156,14137,140,000 48,300,00019% Tang 755 8,914,709 52,919,309 53,000,000-90,000,00023%-34.6%Tang80050,600,00018% Tang 900 39,000,00016% Northern Song1014 9,055,729 21,996,965 54,300,000 23% Northern Song 1103 20,524,065 45,981,845 123,100,000 36% Southern Song and Jin 1200 19,526,273 76,335,485 122,300,000 33% Yuan 1290 13,196,206 58,834,711 75,306,00017% Yuan 1351 27,650,000 87,587,000 120,359,00031% Ming 1393 10,699,399 60,545,813 65,000,00019% Ming 1400 11,415,82966,598,339 81,000,00023% Ming 1500 10,508,93560,105,835 110,000,00026% Ming 1550 10,621,43660,692,856 145,000,00026% Ming 1600 160,000,00026.67% Qing 1650 123,000,000 140,000,00021.54% Qing 1700 126,110,000 160,000,00022.86% Qing 1750 177,495,000 225,000,00025.85% Qing 1791 303,000,000 330,000,00034% Qing 1821 355,540,000 383,712,00037% Qing 1851 431,896,000 408,359,000-436,000,00032.5-35%Republic of China 1931 474,780,000474,780,00024%People's Republic of China 1950 546,815,000552,000,00022% People's Republic of China1975916,395,000920,940,00023% People's Republic of China19821,008,180,0001,022,250,00022% People's Republic of China20001,262,645,0001,283,190,00021% People's Republic of China20051,303,720,0001,321,620,00020% People's Republic of China20101,337,825,0001,359,760,00020% People's Republic of China20151,374,620,0001,397,030,00019% People's Republic of China20201,411,778,7241,447,084,64817.8%

Han, 202 BC – 220 AD

During the Warring States period (475–221 BC), the development of private commerce, new trade routes, handicraft industries, and a money economy led to the growth of new urban centers. These centers were markedly different from the older cities, which had merely served as power bases for the nobility.Nishijima, "The economic and social history of Former Han", (1986), p. 574. The use of a standardized, nationwide currency during the Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) facilitated long-distance trade between cities.Bret Hinsch, Women in Imperial China (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002) p. 28. Many Han cities grew large: the Western Han capital, Chang'an, had approximately 250,000 inhabitants, while the Eastern Han capital, Luoyang, had approximately 500,000 inhabitants. The population of the Han Empire, recorded in the tax census of 156 AD, was 50.6 million people in 12,366,470 households.; . The majority of commoners who populated the cities lived in extended urban and suburban areas outside the city walls and gatehouses.; .

Trends: Tang to Southern Song Demographic historian Angus Maddison uses extensive data to argue that the main base of the Chinese economy shifted southwards between about 750 AD and 1250 AD. In 750 three-quarters of the population lived in the rural north, growing wheat and millet. By about 1250 three-quarters lived south of the Yangtze and grew mainly rice. By 1000 AD per capita income in China was higher than the Europe average at the same time. Divergence took place in the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries as the European economy grew faster. From 1250 to 1900 China saw a fourfold increase in population whilst maintaining an average per capita income more or less stable. The main explanations were peace, irrigation, and fast-ripening seeds that permitted two crops a year. Chinese total GDP grew faster than that of Western Europe from 1700 to 1820, even though European per capita income grew faster.Maddison (2007) pp. 16–17.Maddison, (2006) p. 241.

Ming, 1368 – 1644 Sinologist historians debate the population figures for each era in the Ming dynasty. The historian Timothy Brook notes that the Ming government census figures are dubious since fiscal obligations prompted many families to underreport the number of people in their households and many county officials to underreport the number of households in their jurisdiction.Timothy Brook, The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China (U of California Press, 1998) p. 27. Children were often underreported, especially female children, as shown by skewed population statistics throughout the Ming. Even adult women were underreported; for example, the Daming Prefecture in North Zhili reported a population of 378,167 males and 226,982 females in 1502.Brook, 1968, pp 97–99, 267. The government attempted to revise the census figures using estimates of the expected average number of people in each household, but this did not solve the widespread problem of tax registration. Some part of the gender imbalance may be attributed to the practice of female infanticide. The practice is well documented in China, going back over two thousand years, and it was described as "rampant" and "practiced by almost every family" by contemporary authors. However, the dramatically skewed sex ratios, which many counties reported exceeding 2:1 by 1586, cannot likely be explained by infanticide alone.

The number of people counted in the census of 1381 was 59,873,305; however, this number dropped significantly when the government found that some 3 million people were missing from the tax census of 1391. Even though underreporting figures was made a capital crime in 1381, the need for survival pushed many to abandon the tax registration and wander from their region, where Hongwu had attempted to impose rigid immobility on the populace. The government tried to mitigate this by creating their own conservative estimate of 60,545,812 people in 1393. In his Studies on the Population of China, Ho Ping-ti suggests revising the 1393 census to 65 million people, noting that large areas of North China and frontier areas were not counted in that census.Ho, 1959, pp. 8–9, 22, 259. Brook states that the population figures gathered in the official censuses after 1393 ranged between 51 and 62 million, while the population was in fact increasing. Even the Hongzhi Emperor (r. 1487–1505) remarked that the daily increase in subjects coincided with the daily dwindling number of registered civilians and soldiers.Brook, 1968, p 95. William Atwell states that around 1400 the population of China was perhaps 90 million people, citing Heijdra and Mote.

Historians are now turning to local gazetteers of Ming China for clues that would show consistent growth in population. Using the gazetteers, Brook estimates that the overall population under the Chenghua Emperor (r. 1464–87) was roughly 75 million, despite mid-Ming census figures hovering around 62 million. While prefectures across the empire in the mid-Ming period were reporting either a drop in or stagnant population size, local gazetteers reported massive amounts of incoming vagrant workers with not enough good cultivated land for them to till, so that many would become drifters, conmen, or wood-cutters that contributed to deforestation. The Hongzhi and Zhengde emperors lessened the penalties against those who had fled their home region, while the Jiajing Emperor (r. 1521–67) finally had officials register migrants wherever they had moved or fled to bring in more revenues.Brook, 1968, p 28, 94–96, 267.

Even with the Jiajing reforms to document migrant workers and merchants, by the late Ming era the government census still did not accurately reflect the enormous growth in population. Gazetteers across the empire noted this and made their own estimations of the overall population in the Ming, some guessing that it had doubled, tripled, or even grown fivefold since 1368. Fairbank estimates that the population was perhaps 160 million in the late Ming dynasty, while Brook estimates 175 million,Brook, 1968, p 162. and Ebrey states perhaps as large as 200 million. However, a great epidemic that entered China through the northwest in 1641 ravaged the densely populated areas along the Grand Canal; a gazetteer in northern Zhejiang noted more than half the population fell ill that year and that 90% of the local populace in one area was dead by 1642.Brook, 1968, p 163.

Qing, 1644 – 1911 The most significant facts of early and mid-Qing social history was growth in population, population density, and mobility. The population in 1700, according to widely accepted estimates, was roughly 150 million, about what it had been under the late Ming a century before, then doubled over the next century, and reached a height of 450 million on the eve of the Taiping Rebellion in 1850.William T. Rowe, China's Last Empire: The Great Qing (2009) p. 91. The food supply increased due to better irrigation and especially the introduction of fast-maturing rice seeds, which permitted harvesting two or even three crops a year on the same land. An additional factor was the spread of New World crops like peanuts, potatoes, and especially sweet potatoes. They helped to sustain the people during shortages of harvest for crops such as rice or wheat. These crops could be grown under harsher conditions, and thus were cheaper as well, which led to them becoming staples for poorer farmers, decreasing the number of deaths from malnutrition. Diseases such as smallpox, widespread in the seventeenth century, were brought under control by an increase in inoculations. In addition, infant deaths were also greatly decreased due to improvements in birthing techniques and childcare performed by midwives and doctors. Government campaigns lowered the incidence of infanticide. Unlike Europe, where numerical growth in this period was greatest in the cities, in China the growth in cities and the lower Yangzi was low. The greatest growth was in the borderlands and the highlands, where farmers could clear large tracts of marshlands and forests.Rowe, 2009, pp. 91–92

The population was also remarkably mobile, perhaps more so than at any time in Chinese history. Indeed, the Qing government did far more to encourage mobility than to discourage it. Millions of Han Chinese migrated to Yunnan and Guizhou in the 18th century, and also to Taiwan. After the conquests of the 1750s and 1760s, the court organized agricultural colonies in Xinjiang. Migration might be permanent, for resettlement, or the migrants (in theory at least) might regard the move as a sojourn. The latter included an increasingly large and mobile workforce. Local-origin-based merchant groups also moved freely. This mobility also included the organized movement of Qing subjects overseas, largely to Southeastern Asia, in search of trade and other economic opportunities.Rowe, 2009, p. 92

Famines