How did China (and India for that matter) get so populous in the first place?

They’re one of the oldest civilizations on earth, and the fact that they are communist doesn’t help. People living in rural areas are only allowed (at most) to have two children. It is also believed that a long time ago, the amount of children you had was a status symbol.

The smiling fertility goddess?

Humping. Lots and lots of humping.

Hey hey. This is a seriously interesting question. Let’s really think about this.

Kaiser, how on earth do you think
being communist “doesn’t help”? Doesn’t help what?
China has had a ONE-child policy since the fifties. That helped a lot, and it also
made a lot of people extremely unhappy.

China and India can’t be “one of the oldest civilizations on earth”, can they? because
they’re two civilizations, aren’t they? Actually they’re many more than two, since
each is a huge consortium of annexed civilizations.

Humping, yep, we got that part.

I am in a very bad mood this morning and these answers are making me irritable.
Someone else weigh in, please.

Good morning, kev.

For the first 30 years after the Communist takeover, the population grew from 540 million to in excess of 800 million encouraged by the Communist government. At that point they began to panic, but even with the one child policy, there is a momentum built in that will still fuel a 260 million person surge.

^ There’s the answer.

Ok, I had not forgotten about India. Here is a data point from an Indian discussion board: “The birth rate in India (31 per thousand people) is greater than that of China (20 per thousand people). If this trend continues, India will beat up China by 2025.A.D.”

The causes are different from China. The Hindu culture is totally focused on having sons. From UIC

“In this huge and diverse nation, a single desire binds all families, urban and rural, wealthy and poor, well-educated and illiterate: the quest for sons. One woman said, “until you have a son, you are not a complete woman.” Culture and religion, economics and education, limited access to safe and reliable birth control, valid fears that disease will kill some offspring, skepticism toward government and aid agencies—help explain why, in absolute numbers, India is growing faster than any nation on Earth.

The cultural preference for males creates far more children of both sexes than most families can support. Girls pay the biggest price for the practice. Some Indian families kill female babies; most condemn them to something that resembles a living death. Indian customs disdain daughters.

Powerful economic reasons persist that make a male heir desirable. A son is unemployment insurance and an old age pension. Many Hindus believe that entry to heaven is impossible unless a son lights the funeral pyre. Most Indian couples want at least two sons.”

Government efforts at control were faulty. They began a sterilization program for women instead of targeting men. The result was simply to render those women in danger of death and abandonment.

Here’s an interesting interactive display that shows human population growth and distribution over the past two millenia. You’ll see that even at AD 1, China and the Indian subcontinant had a jump on the rest of the world.

When it comes to China, In addition to the jump they had on the other cultures, people have more children in secret or pay the government off to have another kid despite China’s one child policy. There’s still alot of people who either have more children in secret or pay the government off to have another kid. Even today out in the sticks the farmers of China are making as many kids as they can get away with.

five dolla, me love you long time.

Poor access to birth control. I don’t recall either country having a feminist revolution putting birth control in the hands of females. When women have little control over when and if they have a child…you get lots of children.

Chuck Norris hasn’t made his way over there yet.

@jlelandg
And yet, US population is growing at a faster rate than China’s.

Its simple, they’re uneducated. Put frankly, stupid people don’t understand the repurcussions of not pulling out.

Nor do they ever learn their lesson. If you thought you were poor before, try having a kid or six.

@Spargett
Your assumptions don’t translate well to agricultural, under-industrialized societies, where children produce more wealth than they consume. Not so clear, under those circumstances, that it’s smarter for a family to have fewer children.

@Harp

Agriculture doesn’t pan out well when populations exceed water supplies.

I’m not arguing that larger families make good macro-economic sense, I’m just saying that down at the family level, where the reproductive decisions are made, the hard economic realities are such that we can’t assume the correlation between intelligence and family size that you were suggesting,

In 1 CE, who populated the eastern part of the continent (currently China,) and who populated the southern part (currently India?) Some archeologists are trying to prove that while neanderthals and homo sapiens developed in Africa, then emerged to populate the world, they believe a second line of homo sapiens independently developed in China, quickly populating the Far East. However it occurred, why did those peoples greatly increase their populations over a time period of 1000 or 2000 years, while Europe, the Caucasus, and Africa grew much more slowly?

I’m ashamed that so many people seem to think the populations of China and India are large due to stupidity or communism. They’ve been more populated than Europe for the whole of known history, and China has had arguably the most advanced culture for the longest time. Looking at the Nova graphics, it seems apparent that the real reason India and China are more populated is because of climate and geography – and they’ve simply had more people, over time, as a result.

The answer probably lies in the part of the world that India and China are located in ( as storm culture alluded to). Compared to Russia, Europe, North America, Australia etc. life is better supported in these countries (not too cold and not too hot to flourish without some serious inventions). This is also a reason why industrially these countries have (until recently) lagged the West in terms of industrial development…not because the people are not intelligent, they did not need to.
In countries that depend on agriculture (and do not have heavy equipment), it is cheaper to manufacture cheap labor (offspring) than to hire additional workers. Of course this is ultimately short sighted since the property keeps getting divided until it is too small to support a single family.
Also (at least in India) where people are still free to chose, birth control and sex education are finally beginning to take hold, but when you already have a billion people, you are not going to see a dramatic fall in the population levels.
An interesting side question would be: How large would the British population be if they did not lose so many people / men in their wars and explorations over the years. Then compare the size of Britain to the sizes of India and China and extrapolate.