A Chinese Malthus or an English Hung? A Comparative Analysis of Hung Liang-chi and Thomas Robert Malthus’s Population Theories

Samantha Moon

History of Economics Review, 2025, vol. 90, issue 1, 38-54

Abstract: Thomas Robert Malthus is well known for his 1798 treatise on population theory, An Essay on the Principle of Population. Lesser known is Chinese philosopher Hung Liang-chi, who, several years earlier, wrote a series of essays that outlined a population theory eerily similar to Malthus’s. While it is clear that the men never interacted, the parallels between the men’s theories – population growth’s inevitable outstripping of the means of subsistence, arithmetic vs geometric growth, and natural checks to population growth – have led to some hailing Hung as a ‘Chinese Malthus’. This paper presents a comprehensive comparative analysis of the population theories of Hung and Malthus. Analysis centres on the ways the cultural, political, and social contexts of China and England influenced the development and framing of the men’s theories and seeks to answer the following question: can Hung accurately be called a Chinese Malthus?

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/10370196.2025.2535794

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