Demographic changes in Sichuan

Sichuan is China’s most populous province, with a registered population of 91.06 million in 2019. However, Sichuan's population has experienced two great ups and downs since the Han Dynasty. Based on the data I found on the Internet, I compiled it as follows (because the data comes from the Internet, the accuracy cannot be tested, so it is only for reference): During the Western Han Dynasty, the population of Sichuan was approximately There were 3.51 million people, and by the Tianbao period of the Tang Dynasty, the number reached about 6 million, accounting for more than 10% of the national population. During the Southern Song Dynasty, due to the Anshi Rebellion in the late Tang Dynasty, the northern population migrated southward and the economic prosperity during the Song Dynasty, Sichuan's population more than doubled to 13.5 million people (some say it reached about 20 million people). In other words, at least from the Tang to the Song Dynasty, Sichuan's population has been growing continuously. (Although the population of the Tang Dynasty nearly doubled compared with that of the Western Han Dynasty, I have not found the population of Sichuan during the Five Husties and the perennial wars after the Western Jin Dynasty. It should have declined instead of increasing).

At the end of the Song Dynasty and the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, Sichuan experienced a half-century-long war against the Jin Dynasty and the Anti-Mongolia War, which caused the Sichuan people to suffer disaster. Especially during the anti-Mongolian war from 1235 to 1280, Sichuan's population plummeted by more than 95%, leaving only about 600,000 people.

During the Ming Dynasty, immigrants from Hunan and Hubei provinces immigrated to Sichuan in order to increase the population of Sichuan. By the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, Sichuan's population finally increased to about 3.8 million. But by the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, Sichuan's population dropped sharply again to less than 600,000 (some say less than 500,000). The reasons are as follows:

1. In the late Ming Dynasty, Zhang Xianzhong massacred more than 600,000 Sichuan people, which was equivalent to the total population of Sichuan in the early Yuan Dynasty.

2. Zhang Xianzhong’s four adopted sons fought with the Nanming army in southern and eastern Sichuan. The number of casualties is unknown.

3. After the Manchu and Qing dynasties entered the customs, the Sichuan people resisted the Qing Dynasty for at least thirteen years. The Qing army, like the Mongolian army, implemented a massacre strategy against Sichuan. 4. Famine, plague, tiger attack. Speaking of tigers, you may not believe that the now extinct wild South China tigers once roamed the borders of Sichuan! In the early Qing Dynasty, Sichuan's population was less than 20% of what it was during the Ming Dynasty, and the land had been barren for a long time. The forest coverage rate in Sichuan and Chongqing reached more than 80%, which provided conditions for the large-scale breeding of South China tigers. Liu Shixi, a painter in the early Qing Dynasty, made a rough estimate of the number of people who died from tiger attacks in Sichuan in the early Qing Dynasty in his "Shu Turtle Mirror": "Since the beginning of the Shu Rebellion in the fifth year of Chongzhen, 34 out of 10 people in southern Sichuan have died from tiger attacks, and 34 out of 10 people have died from the plague in southern Sichuan. Twenty-three out of ten were tigers, but not a single one was left alive. It was precisely because Sichuan's population had been reduced to the point where "there were only a few survivors" that the "Huguang Fill-in-Sichuan" campaign was launched during the Kangxi period. There are as many as a dozen provinces that have immigrated, including Hunan, Hubei, Henan, Shandong, Shaanxi, Yunnan, Guizhou, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Shanxi, Gansu, etc.

Since then, Sichuan's population has grown rapidly, reaching more than 43 million by the end of the Qing Dynasty. Even after 3.5 million Sichuan people came out to resist Japan, the population of Sichuan was still 48.76 million when Japan surrendered in 1945, making it still the most populous province in China.