Chen Tingjing

Chen Tingjing was a historian and reformist scholar of the Qing dynasty. He was born in Yanghu, Jiangsu, in 1746. He passed the highest level of the civil service examination at the age of 29 and became a junior compiler in the Hanlin Academy. He held various government posts, such as education intendant of Guizhou, censor of the Grand Secretariat, and governor of Jiangxi. He was known for his critical essays and memorials to the Qianlong Emperor and the Jiaqing Emperor, in which he advocated for political, economic, and social reforms. He also wrote extensively on Chinese history, geography, classics, and population. He was one of the first Chinese scholars to raise the issue of population growth and its impact on the environment and society. He proposed measures to control population, such as encouraging migration, limiting family size, promoting celibacy, and discouraging polygamy. He also suggested ways to improve agriculture, commerce, taxation, education, and military affairs. He was influenced by the New Text school of Confucianism and the statecraft scholarship of the late Ming and early Qing periods. He was respected by his contemporaries and later generations as a patriotic and visionary scholar. He died in Yanghu, Jiangsu, in 1809 at the age of 63.