Will the Chinese become giants in the future?

In recent years, Chinese people with taller than usual stature have sometimes appeared in the media. Has the amazing and unprecedented economic growth of this country in recent decades affected tall stature?

A report recorded that the average height in China in 1920 was 159.47 cm, while it has now risen to 171.83 cm.

This was confirmed by the Chinese Ministry of Health in 2022, with a spokesman announcing that the average height of men and women in China had increased in five years, and the height of men had increased by more than one centimeter.

A spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Health announced on that occasion that “the average height for men between the ages of 18 and 44 years in 2020 reached 169.7 cm, and for women it was 158 cm, and these two figures are respectively 1.2 and 0.8 cm higher than they were in 2015.” ".

What anthropologists call body length is a distinctive feature of the appearance of different peoples, and it is usual that the Chinese are usually short, while the people of Scandinavians are quite the opposite.

Some experts attribute the short height of the Chinese to the fact that for many generations they had no access to anything except plant foods, while others confirm that the inhabitants of China in ancient times were tall.

Those who hold this opinion rely on the discovery several years ago by Chinese archaeologists, during excavations they conducted near the city of Jinan, the capital of Shandong Province, graves of skeletons whose owners were taller than 180 centimetres, one of which was of a man whose height exceeded 190 centimetres.

These ancient inhabitants lived five thousand years ago in present-day Shandong Province, and were observed to have lived in relative luxury, which is believed to have influenced their height.

It became clear to specialist scientists that after a period of relative height among the ancient Chinese, the situation changed and there was a slowdown in height.

Maria Mednikova, a Russian anthropologist, says that the reasons for the decrease and increase in human height can be explained 50 percent by genetic factors, and the other half by social factors.

A recent ranking of the tallest people on Earth included the Dutch in first place, with an average height for women and men of 175.62 centimetres. Separately, the average height for men was 182.53 cm, and for women was 168.72 cm.

In this classification, citizens of Latvia ranked second with an average height for both sexes of 175.61 cm, Estonia ranked third, Denmark ranked fourth, and the Czech Republic ranked fifth.

As for the classification of the shortest people, the first place went to the people of East Timor, with an average of 155.47 centimetres, followed by Laos, then Madagascar, and then the Philippines.

Experts confirm that people of short stature tolerate high heat and humidity better than others, because their bodies conserve energy more. People of average and short height in general live easier than tall people for the same reason.