Basic information, Детальна інформація

|Shaanxi Province |36.05 |

|Gansu Province |25.62 |

|Qinghai Province |5.18 |

|Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region |5.62 |

|Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region|19.25 |

|Hongkong Special Administrative |6.78 |

|Region | |

|Macao Special Administrative |0.44 |

|Region | |

|Taiwan Province and Jinmen, Mazu|22.28 |

|and a few other islands of | |

|Fujian Province | |

|Servicemen |2.50 |

Because of complex natural conditions, the population of China is quite unevenly distributed. Population density varies strikingly, with the greatest contrast occurring between the eastern half of China and the lands of the west and the north-west. Exceptionally high population densities occur in the Yangtze Delta, in the Pearl River Delta, and on the Ch'eng-tu

Plain of the western Szechwan Basin. Most of the high-density areas are coterminous with the alluvial plains on which intensive agriculture is centred.

In contrast, the isolated, extensive western and frontier regions, which are much larger than any European nation, are sparsely populated.

Extensive uninhabited areas include the extremely high northern part of

Tibet, the sandy wastes of the central Tarim and eastern Dzungarian basins in Sinkiang, and the barren desert and mountains east of Lop Nor.

In the 1950s the government became increasingly aware of the importance of the frontier regions and initiated a drive for former members of the military and young intellectuals to settle there. Consequently, the population has increased, following the construction of new railways and highways that traverse the wasteland; a number of small mining and industrial towns have also sprung up.

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INTERNAL MIGRATION

Migrations have occurred often throughout the history of China.

Sometimes they took place because a famine or political disturbance would cause the depopulation of an area already intensively cultivated, after which people in adjacent crowded regions would move in to occupy the deserted land. Sometime between 1640 and 1646 a peasant rebellion broke out in Szechwan, and there was a great loss of life. People from Hupeh and

Shensi then entered Szechwan to fill the vacuum, and the movement continued until the 19th century. Again, during the middle of the 19th century, the

Taiping Rebellion caused another large-scale disruption of population. Many people in the Lower Yangtze were massacred by the opposing armies, and the survivors suffered from starvation. After the defeat of the rebellion, people from Hupeh, Hunan, and Honan moved into the depopulated areas of

Kiangsu. Anhwei. and Chekiang, where farmland was lying uncultivated for want of labour. Similar examples are provided by the Nien Rebellion in the

Huai River region in the 1850s and '60s, the Muslim rebellions in Shensi and Kansu in the 1860s and '70s, and the great Shensi and Shansi famine of

1877-78.

In modern history the domestic movement of the Han to Manchuria (now known as the Northeast) is the most Migration significant. Even before the establishment of the Ch'ing to dynasty in 1644, Manchu soldiers launched raids into Manchuria North China and captured Han labourers, who were then obliged to settle in Manchuria. In 1668 the area was closed to further Han migration by an Imperial decree, but this ban was never effectively enforced. By 1850. Han settlers had secured a position of dominance in their colonisation of Manchuria. The ban was later partially' lifted, partly because the Manchu rulers were harassed by disturbances among the teeming population of China proper and partly because the Russian

Empire time and again tried to invade sparsely populated and thus weakly defended Manchuria. The ban was finally removed altogether in 1878, but settlement was encouraged only after 1900. The influx of people into