How many people were there in Yuan and Ming Dynasties? Study on Population Size in Yuan and Ming Dynasties

The Yuan Dynasty was a big empire, but for economic development, the occupation of the Central Plains by Mongols was a disaster. Mongolia was born in a nomadic lifestyle, and its mode of production is suitable for grassland. This is a backward mode of production for the ecological conditions in the plain. When Mongolia entered the farming areas in the Central Plains, it did not change the mode of production quickly, but abandoned the land occupied by the north as a grassland for grazing livestock, which greatly destroyed agricultural production. At the same time, in the long-term military conquest, Mongolians adopted a policy of ethnic discrimination and plundered civilians as serfs, and the personal safety of farmers could not be guaranteed. The foundation of population development in traditional society was destroyed and entered a stage of stagnation. Although Kublai Khan took some measures to encourage agriculture, it was only a drop in the bucket. In 80-90, the population of Yuan Dynasty was about 75 million. In the population distribution of the Yuan Dynasty, it can be clearly seen that the population advantage of the South was completely established. In the context of the national population decline, the population in the south continues to grow, rising to140,000 in Jiangxi, 1 1 10,000 in Zhejiang and 8 million in Jiangsu. The population ratio in the south is 3/4, while the population ratio in the north 13 provinces is only 1/4. This population pattern has laid a foundation for the future population distribution. Because the rulers of the Yuan Dynasty insisted on their nomadic customs and ruled with their unique national concepts, but did not integrate into the whole China society according to the cultural traditions of agricultural areas, the social contradictions in the Yuan Dynasty were quite sharp, especially those caused by the racial hierarchy, which intensified the contradictions and led to the rise and chaos of many groups in the world. In A.D. 1368, under the attack of the peasant uprising at the end of Yuan Dynasty, the Mongols withdrew from the Central Plains, and Zhu Yuanzhang established the Ming Dynasty. Zhu Yuanzhang made great contributions to the social and economic development in the early Ming Dynasty. He obeyed the people, encouraged them to cultivate land, exempted pioneers from three years' hard labor, and practiced immigration and land reclamation. He transferred farmers who had almost no land in Jiangxi and Taihu Lake to the Huanghuai Valley, and the government gave them cattle, seeds, farm tools and rations. Compared with the Song Dynasty with better population development conditions, the social productive forces in Ming Dynasty were more developed, and the climate was much warmer than the low temperature cycle in Song Dynasty, which was beneficial to agricultural production. So the population will not be lower than that in Song Dynasty. According to scholars' calculations, the population decline caused by the unrest at the beginning of Ming Dynasty and the end of Yuan Dynasty generally recovered, reaching 63 million in 1398 and nearly 200 million in the end of Ming Dynasty.