In Europe as well as in Japan, we find a strong population increase; in Europe at almost the same time as in China.  But before population pressure became too serious in Europe or Japan, industry developed and absorbed the excess population.  Thus, farms did not decrease too much in size.  Too small farms are always and in many ways uneconomical.  With the development of industries, the percentage of farm population decreased.  In China, however, the farm population was still as high as 73.3 per cent of the total population in 1932 and the percentage rose to 81 per cent in 1950.

From the middle of the seventeenth century on, commercial activities, especially along the coast, continued to increase and we find gentry families who equip sons who were unwilling or not capable to study and to enter the ranks of the officials, but who were too unruly to sit in villages and collect the rent from the tenants of the family, with money to enter business.  The newly settled areas of Kwangtung and Kwangsi were ideal places for them:  here they could sell Chinese products to the native tribes or to the new settlers at high prices.  Some of these men introduced new techniques from the old provinces of China into the “colonial” areas and set up dye factories, textile factories, etc., in the new towns of the south.  But the greatest stimulus for these commercial activities was foreign, European trade.  American silver which had flooded Europe in the sixteenth century, began to flow into China from the beginning of the seventeenth century on.  The influx was stopped not until between 1661 and 1684 when the government again prohibited coastal shipping and removed coastal settlements into the interior in order to stop piracy along the coasts of Fukien and independence movements on Formosa.  But even during these twenty-three years, the price of silver was so low that home production was given up because it did not pay off.  In the eighteenth century, silver again continued to enter China, while silk and tea were exported.  This demand led to a strong rise in the prices of silk and tea, and benefited the merchants.  When, from the late eighteenth century on, opium began to be imported, the silver left China again.  The merchants profited this time from the opium trade, but farmers had to suffer:  the price of silver went up, and taxes had to be paid in silver, while farm products were sold for copper.  By 1835, the ounce of silver had a value of 2,000 copper coins instead of one thousand before 1800.  High gains in commerce prevented investment in industries, because they would give lower and later profits than commerce.  From the nineteenth century on, more and more industrial goods were offered by importers which also prevented industrialization.  Finally, the gentry basically remained anti-industrial and anti-business.  They tried to operate necessary enterprises such as mining, melting, porcelain production as far as possible as government establishments; but