Citing Primal Data or Selective Adoption: An Analysis of the Official Data of Population in Guangxi During the Ming and Qing Dynasties

The central government enforced the control on Guangxi during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Although being an important job carried out by feudal government, the investigation and statistics of population couldn’t be implemented successfully in Guangxi, the official data of population were only fiscal unit at many times, which was appeared obviously during the Ming Dynasty and early Qing Dynasty. The author takes full advantage of local historical documents, analyses the data of population carefully in Guangxi during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. We find that there isn’t the investigation and statistics of population in Aboriginal office region on the whole, and many data of population don’t accord with the true population in the region inhabited by Han nationality, especially in the Ming Dynasty. After the 14th year of Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty, although the official data of population approach to the truth totally, there are many problems in the data of population of some Prefecture, Sub-prefecture and County. So we must use the official data of population in history discreetly.