Brown, Arthur Judson, 1856-1963 / 2008-09-06 00:00:00

The very fact that it has so long
sustained such a vast population suggests the richness of its
resources. There are said to be 600,000,000 acres of arable soil,
and so thriftily is it cultivated that many parts of the Empire
are almost continuous gardens and fields. Four hundred and
nineteen thousand square miles are believed to be underlaid
with coal. Baron von Richthofen thinks that 600,000,000,000
tons of it are anthracite, and that the single Province of Shen-si
could supply the entire world for a thousand years. When we
add to this supply of coal the apparently inexhaustible deposits
of iron ore, we have the two products on which material greatness
largely depends.
The population proves to be even greater than was supposed,
for while 400,000,000 was formerly believed to be a maximum
estimate, the general census recently taken by the Chinese
Government for the purpose of assessing the war tax places the
population of the Empire at 426,000,000. This, however,
includes 8,500,000 in Manchuria, 2,580,000 in Mongolia,
6,430,020 in Tibet and 1,200,000 in Chinese Turkestan.
Some of these regions are only nominally Chinese. Those on
the western frontier were until comparatively recent years
almost as unknown as the poles.
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