Red China: The Loss of Man

* Peking figures, considered by Western experts to be relatively accurate through 1957.

** A polite Chinese expression with a somewhat Madison Avenue flavor. The brick is a coarse, inexpensive article that is thrown out by the speaker so that others will throw in something more valuable like jade, in the form of criticisms and suggestions. It is something like saying of an idea: "Let's put it on the train and see if it gets off at Hunan."

*** The exact population of China is unknown. In 1948, during the civil war, the Nationalist government estimated, on the basis of a partial census, that there were 460 million mainland Chinese. Today the Nationalists on Formosa insist that mainland population has dropped to 450 million. Nationalist Historian Hu Shih, under a complex and interpretive system, insists that there are only 300 million. In 1953 the Chinese Communists held a nationwide census and came up with a figure of 582.6 million, and now estimate a population of 670-680 million. The latest figures published by the U.S. Census Bureau are restricted to the year 1958 and give China's population as 678 million. The U.S. independent Population Reference Bureau estimates that there were 716 million Chinese in mid-1961, a figure agreeing with that of India's demographic expert, Dr. Sripati Chandrasekhar.