With a POD no earlier than 1600, what is the lowest population China can have by today?
If you want a really copout answer, nuclear war.
But honestly, the events that would lead to the greatest depopulation of China by the present day are all in the 20th century and that's the timeframe that would allow for the largest mass death scenarios. China's got lots of fertile land so such an event would have to be traumatic and late as possible to circumvent any chance of recovery.
But honestly, the events that would lead to the greatest depopulation of China by the present day are all in the 20th century and that's the timeframe that would allow for the largest mass death scenarios. China's got lots of fertile land so such an event would have to be traumatic and late as possible to circumvent any chance of recovery.
China ends up controlling all of the areas it did until 1945, as per OTL.
POD: The computer error of 9 November 1979 leads to the Cold War going nuclear.
Humanity doesn't go extinct, but total world population is reduced to less than 100 million through the nuclear war and its aftermath.
Population of China is something around 30 million.
POD: The computer error of 9 November 1979 leads to the Cold War going nuclear.
Humanity doesn't go extinct, but total world population is reduced to less than 100 million through the nuclear war and its aftermath.
Population of China is something around 30 million.
0. The US is pounded by a KT sized asteroid in 1601 and the resulting ecological devastation causes either actual human extinction or so close to it as to make no difference. Any surviving communities will be living in small, isolated pockets and surviving or growing only very slowly.
Give them a Pol Pot, who actually kills 6/7 of their population or whatever Pol Pots goal was. Give them some bizarre goal towards population reduction that actually works.
Population reduction would have to come through nuclear war or a phased program of North China pastoralization, which was something considered by Ogadei back in the 1200s. The Manchus were agriculturalists, however, so it's far more of a stretch to see them adopting such a policy.
Constant militarization, the diversion of funds from irrigation projects to war, and the subjection of most of the peasantry into abject poverty will probably required in order to suppress population growth.
Even during the terrible catastrophes during the Ming (climate adjustment due to Little Ice Age), Ming population is estimated to have increased from 60m in 1381 to c.150m in 1600. The Qing had 313m in 1794, 430m in 1840.
I say 'estimated' because Ming census policy actively discouraged registering of population (because that would lead to higher central gvt demands on county/province tax etc). So official statistics from 1381-1600 actually showed only a change from 60m to 66m. (as an aside, even today the size of China's population is only a derived estimate based on the last complete census in 1989). So there's also a 'joke' solution here: continue the disincentives to register population accurately to this day, resulting in China massively underreporting its population.
Constant militarization, the diversion of funds from irrigation projects to war, and the subjection of most of the peasantry into abject poverty will probably required in order to suppress population growth.
Even during the terrible catastrophes during the Ming (climate adjustment due to Little Ice Age), Ming population is estimated to have increased from 60m in 1381 to c.150m in 1600. The Qing had 313m in 1794, 430m in 1840.
I say 'estimated' because Ming census policy actively discouraged registering of population (because that would lead to higher central gvt demands on county/province tax etc). So official statistics from 1381-1600 actually showed only a change from 60m to 66m. (as an aside, even today the size of China's population is only a derived estimate based on the last complete census in 1989). So there's also a 'joke' solution here: continue the disincentives to register population accurately to this day, resulting in China massively underreporting its population.
A realistic one - some of Mao's ministers advised him to pursue a population control policy after he won the civil war, but he ignored this and the Chinese population exploded in the 1950s and 60s. Only in the 70s did the government begin to campaign to limit family sizes. If they had started in 1950, today's Chinese population could be a lot lower. The population then was about 550 million.
A successful Japanese conquest with heavy-handed occupation tactics, followed by a Soviet-invasion/“liberation” of China as part of its war with Japan, and then when (now presumably Communist) China is just starting to recover from the effects of that, Mao or someone like him tries to implement the Great Leap Forward, resulting in OTL-like famines.
Qing China was highly unlikely to modernize and “pulling a Meiji” as slang for “rapidly industrializing to Western standards” needs to die.
Seconding that, plus an earlier demographic transition wouldn't lead to the lowest possible population. Mind, you'd see stage 2 and 3 of the demographic transition model first and, as the Qing proved, China can fit way more people without industrialising (population from Qing conquest to their decline shot up by 4x in 200 years). Even Japan hasn't seen too dramatic a decline in population yet, so I'd say an earlier demographic transition won't get the absolute lowest population in China.