[
    {
        "id": 204447,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1962",
        "page_number": 79,
        "title": "RAS-1962",
        "content_text": "68\n\nHEROLD J. WIENS\n\npeople of tribal ancestry often have been registered as Han rather than as Miao, Yao or Yi.17\n\nOn the other hand, from the viewpoint of livelihood of traditional type, the mountain dwellers' habitat has been shrinking with time. Since the shifting fire-field mountain farmer requires a forest of some sort to burn to provide the necessary ashes to fertilize the sterile and thin soils of mountain slopes, the destruction of forests on an increasing scale necessarily shrinks the space for his cycle of operation. As Han Chinese population has increased, it has moved deeper and deeper into the mountain ravines, forcing the non-Han mountaineer into lesser space. This would tend to accelerate the re-use of land in shifting cultivation abandoned during an earlier part of the cycle and leaves less time for new forests to regrow. Ultimately, mature trees for restocking the mountains become depleted so that only coarse grass, ferns and shrubs cover the slopes. Today, some ninety to ninety-five per cent of south China hill lands are denuded of forests and are unsuitable for the mountain farmers' type of shifting cultivation. The basis for support of tribal peoples such as the Miao and Yao would have decreased with time, and so, presumably, has affected the size of their populations.\n\nThis restriction of their habitat no doubt has had its influence in causing the Miao and Yao as well as other mountain peoples of south China to cross the southern frontiers into adjoining countries of Southeast Asia where forests are still abundant in the mountains.\n\nTable I lists the populations of the fifty ethnic groups listed by the 1953 census on mainland China as reported by Fang Jen.18 These groups together with later revisions have been analyzed by S. I. Bruk, a Soviet ethnographer, in a short monograph accompanying a two-sheet map of ethnographic groups in China on a scale of 1:5,000,000. The following account is largely based upon this map and accompanying monograph.\n\n17 Kuei-yang Chung-yang Jih-pao, Hsin Kuei-chou kai-k'uang (The development of new Kuei-chou), Kuei-yang, 1944, 280.\n\n18 Fang Jen, Wo-kuo shao-su-min-tsu ti jen-k'ou yü fen-pu (The populations and distribution of our national minorities), Ti-li chih-shih (Geographical Knowledge), Vol. 9, No. 6, (July, 1958), 258-259.\n\n19 Solomon I. Bruk, Naseleniye Kitaya, MNR i Korei (Peoples of China, Mongolian People's Republic and Korea) Moscow, 1959, (as translated by the United States Joint Publications Research Service, No. 3710, 16 August, 1960, Washington, D.C.).",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207285,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1975",
        "page_number": 53,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "CHINA'S ECONOMIC PLANNING & CHANGING GEOGRAPHY 45\n\nthe present regime is making efforts to convey water from the Yangtze River in the south to the Yellow River in the north. Since 1958, several survey parties in western Szechuan and southern Kansu have studied the possibility of transferring superfluous water to the Yellow River from the Gold Sand River, the Taito River, and other tributaries of the Yangtze.\n\nThere are, of course, many difficulties to be encountered in carrying out this plan. For example, the northwestern region is so sparsely settled that a tremendous number of workers must be brought in to construct the necessary canals and locks. The area has a serious problem of seepage and evaporation, and it experiences violent earthquakes.\n\nIf the plan is successful, however, it will provide ample compensation for the effort required. It will lessen the threat of flood in the southeast part of China, and will prevent drought in the northwest. It will improve the use of the region for pasture land, and increase its agricultural production. It can also develop electric power, which will make up for the shortage of coal in the region. It will modify the dry climate to some extent; this in turn will encourage forest growth. It will form a system of waterways that will facilitate navigation throughout the country.\n\nThe building of Railroads—For the sake of political coherence and the furtherance of economic development, the present government has paid great attention to the building of railroad systems. The length of the main line built since 1949 was 16,000 miles. Of the many completed systems of railroads, three have geopolitical significance. They reflect the determination of the present regime to unify the state and to open up the frontier border by connecting it with the inner areas.\n\n1. Along the east coast, five ports—Yentai, Ningpo, Foochow, Amoy, and Chiankiang—have been linked to the interior by short lines. The military intention of the railroads built in the areas around Foochow and Amoy apparently is that of “liberating” Taiwan.\n\n2. Two long railroads have been built for the purpose of connecting China with the Soviet Union. One, which was built in 1954, runs from Tsining to Ulan Bator in Outer Mongolia, and then to the Soviet Union. With the completion of this railroad, China was joined to the Mongolian People's Republic. The other, which is",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d",
        "rank": 0
    }
]