托福TPO阅读48原文+题目+答案

小编发布托福

TP O48

阅读本文

+

答案，希望帮助考生 对照文本更好的研究真题，充分备考，

争取理想成绩，实现留学梦想。

< br>

Chinese Population Growth

Increases in population have usually been accompanied (indeed facilitated)

by an increase in trade. In the Western experience, commerce provided the

conditions that allowed industrialization to get started, which in turn led to

growth in science, technology, industry, transport, communications, social

change, and the like that we group under the broad term of

“

dev elopment.

”

However, the massive increase in population that in Europe was at first

attributed to industrialization starting in the eighteenth century occurred also

and at the same period in China, even though there was no comparable

industrialization.

It is estimated that the Chinese population by 1600 was close to 150

million. The transition between the Ming and Qing dynasties (the seventeenth

century) may have seen a decline, but from 1741 to 1851 the annual figures rose

steadily and spectacularly, perhaps beginning with 143 million and ending with

432 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 in 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.

To explain this sudden increase we cannot point to factors constant in

Chinese society but must find conditions or a combination of factors that were