Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"The massive increase of population that in Europe was at first attributed to industrialization occurred also and during the same period in China, even though there was no comparable industrialization. . . . One may guess that the Chinese population by 1600 was close to 150 million. . . . If we accept these totals, we are confronted with a situation in which the Chinese population doubled in the 50 years from 1790 to 1840. If, with greater caution, we assume lower totals in the early eighteenth century and only 400 million by 1850, we still face a startling fact: something like a doubling of the vast Chinese population in the century before Western contact, foreign trade, and industrialization could have had much effect." [Fairbank: China, p. 167-8]