The man-land relationship in Qing China: an overview

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Qing era witnessed a continuation of the man-land problem that had haunted Chinese history. Since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, China has developed a unique mode of small-scale peasant production, which required enormous manpower on the one hand and could support a huge population on the other. Taking the Taiping Rebellion arising in 1850 as the watershed, this paper examines the changes in the man-land relationship during two periods of the Qing era and criticizes both the Malthusian Theory of Population from the West and the “overpopulation” argument indigenous in China. This paper concludes that the Malthusian Theory cannot fully explain the complexities of man-land relationship in China and that “overpopulation” was not the root cause for the collapse of dynasties in the Chinese history.