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this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2026
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United States | News & Politics
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do tell https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25495509
The graphs in the paper you linked show a big spike in mortality around 1960. The Great Chinese Famine was 1959 to 1961. How does Mao get credit for lower mortality in 1962 onward, but not receive blame for the famine years?
Because you have to look at the overall picture instead of cherry picking. The reality is that China was completely devastated after the war, and rebuilding was not an easy process. There was no blueprint for what to do, and people were doing their best given what they knew. The paper I linked shows that the policies proved to be correct on the whole, and life expectancy increased dramatically as a result.
Yeah, not buying that argument at all. Practically every country was devastated after the war, China's hardly unique in that regard. Why would it take fifteen full years for China's postwar woes to culminate in an acute famine? Makes no logical sense, and stinks of excuse-making.
Mao wanted to reform China, and tens of million of deaths was the price he was willing to pay. It's a lot easier to make great strides when you don't give a fuck about your own people. I'll reserve my admiration for leaders who manage the feat without inflicting untold human misery on the their own citizens.
That's because evidently you're historically illiterate. China went through a century of humiliation prior to the war, being colonized and devastated by predatory western powers. That was, in fact, a very different situation. Meanwhile, 15 years is not that long of a time to restructure your whole society. It's pretty clear that you and logical sense don't really get along.
When you make things up, anything can be true.