That 400 Million Stat – Just how many Chinese were there in 1937? And What happened then?

I recently came across Tong Lam’s 2011 book A Passion for Facts: Social Surveys and the Construction of the Chinese Nation-State, 1900–1949. It’s a good read and one thing that struck me was the section on that old stat that’s always repeated ad nauseum – China’s population of 400 million in the 1930s. It’s perhaps best remembered now as a stat from the continued interest and frequent re-publishings of Carl Crow’s Four Hundred Million Customers (1937) as well as the Joris Ivan’s pro-Chinese documentary The 400 Million (1939). But, even by the 1930s, the stat had been around for a long time – Tong Lam quotes the American diplomat John Watson Foster using it in 1903. It certainly seems to have been the given number for at least half a century.  However, China did not have anything approaching an accurate population census during that period and, as is noted, various other estimates differed from the 400 million by several hundred million either way. 400 million could stand for any view of China you wanted – a massive potential enemy, market, drain on resources, opportunity or threat, depending on your outlook.

The Chinese too, both late Qing and Republicans – adopted the 400 million estimate – and again for a number of reasons – potential strength, potential weakness, untapped resources or possible crippling problems. Tong Lam calls the 400 million an “enumerative imaginery”, a “political trope” of various uses. But nobody has a better stat!

So we’re left with 400 million and it’s unlikely now that, in the absence of  any useful census data from the period (to my knowledge), historical demographers can do much to improve on that. The 400 million stands!

Of course there had been earlier numbers – but these appear no less reliable. Around the middle of the nineteenth century many western sources quote the population at around 175 million to 200 million. However, the 400 million stat was being bandied about even then – the Rev. Spencer of Rockford, Ill, who’d been a missionary in China, told audiences in America in 1842 of the 400 million Chinese and an 1850 source quotes 450 million – it’s impossible the Chinese population didn’t change in a century!

After 1949 the estimates start to go up – Red Scare! possibly. Perhaps we might expect a dip or at least statis due to the Second World War. In 1950 most reports are talking about 500 million – that’s at least another 100 million between 1939 and 1949 with seven years of brutal and murderous war in between. These figures are important because almost immediately in the 1950s Mao, urged on by the Soviets, starts talking of the need to cut the population by 100 million – i.e. back to 400 million.

The Red Cross had a go at estimating the figures and found half a dozen surveys between 1950 and 1953 – they settled on an amazingly specific 482, 869, 687. The Chinese Red Army argued they were wrong and cited an equally amazingly specific stat of 492,530,000. The government said both were wrong and its was a rounded up 600 million, and growing at 20 million per year. Fast forward to 1960 and Beijing is now saying 650 million and predicting 900 million by 1980. 1965 sees 680-700 million commonly reported. By 1970 the 700 million stat is the most commonly used in newspapers. 1975 and Beijing says “almost 800 million”; 1980 and it’s 900 million and by 1985 the magic “billion” starts creeping in, as does the One-Child Policy.

That’s enough stats for me…from 400 million in the late 1930s to a billion by the 1980s – but perhaps more or less than 400 million in the 1930s and perhaps more or less than a billion by the mid-1980s!! I’m off to a dark room with a cold glass of water to calm down now!