浙江社会科学

根据历史人口学文献,文章系统梳理了中国历史上人口变动的趋势,发现中国历史人口总体变动情况并不能由指数增长来简单描述。通过对两汉、魏晋南北朝隋唐、宋辽金和明清至民国时期中国人口变动情况的总结,文章归纳出不同时期中国人口增长的阶段性特点,得出以下主要结论:(1)中国历史上存在8个相对较长的指数人口增长时期,分别为西汉初期、东汉初期、魏晋时期、南北朝中期以前、唐前期、北宋前期、明前期和清前期,维持指数增长的总时长约占考察期的一半左右。(2)自西汉以来,中国历史上出现过多次人口锐减。(3)历次人口指数增长时期的持续时间和增长速度与期初人口和当时资源环境承载力有密切关系,而期初人口往往又与前朝人口减少的幅度有关。(4)人均粮食产量始终是制约中国历史人口发展的主要矛盾之一,马尔萨斯《人口原理》中的现实性抑制有助于理解中国历史人口的整体变动趋势。当前中国即将进入较长的人口负增长时期,然而历史经验表明,简单的参数化人口预测并不可能长期可靠,对中国未来人口发展变动的预测需要更加审慎。

Based on the literature of historical demography, this paper systematizes the trend of population change in the history of China and discusses that the overall change of the historical population of China cannot be simply described by exponential growth. By summarizing the changes of the Chinese population during the Han Dynasty, the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern dynasties, the Sui and Tang dynasties, the Song, Liao and Jin dynasties, and the period from the Ming, Qing Dynasties to the Republic of China, this paper sums up the periodic characteristics of the population growth in China in different periods. The main conclusions are as follows:(1)there are 8 relatively long periods of exponential population growth in Chinese history, they are the early Western Han Dynasty, the early Eastern Han Dynasty, the Wei and Jin dynasties, the middle Southern and Northern dynasties, the early Tang Dynasty, the early Northern Song Dynasty,the early Ming Dynasty and the early Qing Dynasty.(2)Since the Western Han Dynasty, there have been many drastic population reductions in the history of China.(3)The duration and growth rate of successive periods of population exponentially growth are closely related to the initial population and the carrying capacity of resources at that time, in which the initial population is often related to the magnitude of population decline in the previous dynasties.(4)Grain production may have always been one of the major conditions constraining the development of China's historical population, and the realistic suppression in Malthus' s An Essay on the Principle of Population helps to understand the overall changing trend of China's historical population. At present, China's population is about to enter a long period of negative growth. However, historical experience shows that simple parametric population forecasts are not reliable when making long term predictions about the population. Projections of future demographic changes in China need to be made and examined more carefully.