This is where we get back to something I said a few comments upthread: if there were losses anything like as big as the censuses suggest, they seem like good evidence of major government incompetence even if they had nothing to do with war.
but other people claim that it was low quality
No doubt. There would be some people claiming high quality and some people claiming low quality regardless of the actual facts, I take it.
The later census reports about 1⁄4 as many people as the earlier. For China not to have lost at least, say, 1⁄3 its population, it seems like (1) the later census must have been really bad, or else (2) it must have been counting a markedly smaller notional population (e.g., some territory having been lost). I haven’t seen anything suggesting that #2 was the case (and have seen it explicitly claimed that it wasn’t); is that wrong?
If not #2 then #1, but that again seems improbable prima facie. Do you have good reason to think it’s wrong?
I’m just trying to understand the basis for your very uncompromising claim: “your sources are complete garbage”. Because it seems strange to me that nothing you’ve said so far either gives good support for that claim or indicates that you have good support for it. I’m not claiming you haven’t, for the avoidance of doubt. It’s just that, well, you seem to be conspicuously avoiding offering any support beyond the observation that comparing censuses could give misleading results.
This is where we get back to something I said a few comments upthread: if there were losses anything like as big as the censuses suggest, they seem like good evidence of major government incompetence even if they had nothing to do with war.
No doubt. There would be some people claiming high quality and some people claiming low quality regardless of the actual facts, I take it.
The later census reports about 1⁄4 as many people as the earlier. For China not to have lost at least, say, 1⁄3 its population, it seems like (1) the later census must have been really bad, or else (2) it must have been counting a markedly smaller notional population (e.g., some territory having been lost). I haven’t seen anything suggesting that #2 was the case (and have seen it explicitly claimed that it wasn’t); is that wrong?
If not #2 then #1, but that again seems improbable prima facie. Do you have good reason to think it’s wrong?
I’m just trying to understand the basis for your very uncompromising claim: “your sources are complete garbage”. Because it seems strange to me that nothing you’ve said so far either gives good support for that claim or indicates that you have good support for it. I’m not claiming you haven’t, for the avoidance of doubt. It’s just that, well, you seem to be conspicuously avoiding offering any support beyond the observation that comparing censuses could give misleading results.