Reddit reviews Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962

Did you read the article? They have four citations.

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Maybe you can provide an explanation of why these numbers are wrong and tell us where we will find more accurate figures.

You might be correct to state that they failed to reach communism if you mean that they never reached a physically-impossible utopia.

But in the sense that they tried to fully eliminate prices and private property, and tried to collectivise the economy (especially the provision of food), then they sure gave it the ol' college try.

You can read about their decades-long attempt in the book "Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962" by Yang Jisheng.

>The great bulk of deaths under Mao's authority were during the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950's/early 1960's. He certainly bore some responsibility for the famines during this period, but adverse weather conditions, poor communication, and plain incompetence were also at play.


"During the Great Leap Forward, Mao and his leadership colleagues took specific decisions that led to mass starvation. They perpetuated a system that encouraged people to tell lies about grain production and discouraged transparency, making starvation worse. When the whole leadership (not just Mao) was confronted with Peng's criticisms, they rounded on the critic and allowed the policy to continue for another two years. That was the moment at which the leadership lurched into criminal irresponsibility. It may not have been murder or genocide but it was an unconscionable decision nonetheless.."

>Also, the figures for Mao Zedong are taken from the absolute top estimates from his greatest detractors.

And even at 45 Million, which are estimates for the Great Famine between 1958 and 1962, he still beats out second place by 2x.

Most of it was due to the government structure, and Mao's/The Party's overall insanity. Tombstone:The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962

Some NY Times Review and excerpts from The Guardian Review:

"What Yang found is worth knowing. One of the most devastated provinces was Henan, in central China. Henan had known famine before; the province was at the centre of the horrific hunger that struck during the second world war in 1942-43, killing some 3 to 4 million people. The policies of the Great Leap led to a new desolation in the province. Reports uncovered by Yang make evident a cycle of starvation and violence: a file from 1959 tells of one farmer who was "harshly beaten" because a small piece of beef was found in his home; he died six days later. A woman who was found cooking grain was "subjected to group struggle" for stealing; bound up and soaked in cold water, she too died shortly afterwards."

The ideology of the party knew the scope of the suffering, but did not do anything. They were ignoring the deaths to try and prove how well China was doing compared to the rest of the world.

"For a while, it was possible to think that the leadership had not understood the full level of the catastrophe in the countryside. The shattering of such illusions came at the Lushan conference of 1959. Peng Dehuai, one of the great marshals of the Chinese civil war against the nationalists, was a strong supporter of the Leap. But the discovery that people from his own home area were starving to death prompted him to write to Mao to ask for the policies to be adapted. Mao was furious, reading the letter out in public and demanding that his colleagues in the leadership line up either behind him or Peng. Almost to a man, they supported Mao, with his security chief Kang Sheng declaring of the letter: "I make bold to suggest that this cannot be handled with lenience." Peng was sent off into political obscurity. While there were minor adjustments to the Leap policies, the fundamental flaws were not addressed, and millions more continued to die until the formal abandonment of the programme in 1962."

Furthermore the Cultural Revolution followed much of the same course, Mao pushed the students to purge the party using violence at his direction.

edit to add 2 lines at the

Hitler was economically bound to lose eventually.

Modern doesn't mean good. Go read "Tombstone" and come back to me.

http://www.amazon.com/Tombstone-Great-Chinese-Famine-1958-1962/dp/0374277931