Three Kingdoms - Population

Population

After the Yellow Turban Rebellion, serious famine followed in the Central Plains of China. After his coming to power, Dong Zhuo gave full swing to his army to plunder and rape women. When the Guandong Coalition was starting the campaign against Dong Zhuo, unexpectedly absurd enough, he ordered that "all the population of Luoyang be forced to move to Chang'an, all the palaces, temples, official residences and homes be burnt, no one should stay within that area of 200 li", (considering the miserable life at that time, it was almost impossible for most people to move to the final destination alive) thus making cries of discontent rise all round and the population there decreased sharply. When Cao Cao was attacking Xu Province, it was said that "hundreds of thousands of men and women were buried alive, even dogs and chickens did not survive. The Si River was blocked. From then on, these five towns never recover." When Li Jue and his army were advancing towards the Guanzhong area, "there remained hundreds of thousands of people, but Li Jue allowed his army to plunder the cities and the people, thus making the people have nothing but eat each other to death."

It can be known from the following table that how serious the decrease of population was during that period. From the late Eastern Han to the Western Jin Dynasty, despite its length about 125 years, the peak number of population only equaled 35.3% of the peak number of the entire Eastern Han Dynasty. From then on to Sui Dynasty, the population never recovered. It also should be noted that the high militarization of the population was common. For example, the population of Shu was 900,000, but the military were more than 100,000, occupying more than 10% of the population. The Records of the Three Kingdoms contains population figures for the Three Kingdoms. As with many Chinese historical population figures, these numbers are likely to be less than the actual populations, since census and tax records went hand in hand, and tax evaders were often not on records.

While it is clear that warfare undoubtedly took many lives during this period, the census figures do not support the idea that millions were wiped out solely from warfare. Other factors such as mass migration out of China must be taken into account.