Reply #19: China has always been a significant part of the world population [View All]

[muriel_volestrangler]

Their major population growth happened before 1850. At that point, they had a major civil war, and continued in civil wars pretty much until Mao won the last one, and that cut their population growth to very little. China is a large part of the most agriculturally productive region of the planet, so it's not surprising they've made up a large part of the population.

Sources:
http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/china_1950_population.htm
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/sixbillion/sixbilpart1.pdf

population in millions:

year World China    %
   0   300    60   20
1000   310   ~60   19
1750   790  ~180   23
1800   980  ~320   33
1850  1260  ~430   34

1950  2520  ~560   22
1999  5980  1253   21

So what we see is that they are at a proportion of the world pretty much close to the long term average.