Has anyone noticed in one of the pictures in the article, "A farmer drying harvested wheat on a road near Gaodadian Village".
The billboard actually says, “Upholding civilized behavior and eradicating bad Xi (Jinping) starts with me.”
Habit in Chinese is the same as the last name Xi
21
China today is celebrating her 70th anniversary of the founding of PRC. When Mao's Red Army marching in Beijing in early February I was there to witness that important event. After three years civil war from 1946-1949, Chiang Kaii-shek's Nationalist Army was defeated by Mao. Chiang was retreated to Taiwan. But in 1949 rarely anyone would believe that Mao and his Chinese Communist Party will last longer than a few months. But thy were wrong. Mao and his younger comrades are still in control of the mainland China. Now China is in the hands of Xi Jinping. China came out of poverty and now living in prosperity. Xi was born in 1953 several years after the civil war. Whether you agree or disagree with Chinese Communist Government but the Chinese people are living in peace and prosperity. No one is starving to death. This report about Xinyang in Henan province and how people starve to death and how HIV killed millions of Chinese in Henan Province. My father was the governor of Henan Province from 1936-1938. He also commanded 250,000 Nationalist troops during that time. Henan and Shandong provinces were the first war zones with Japan after the Marco Polo Bridge incident in July, 1937. A full scale war broke out between China and Japan. China was so weak and kept retreating. As a kid, I still remember the tragic situation in the countryside of Henan Province and looking at the wounded soldiers. Xinyang was a poor city but as a kid I visited it several times in 1937.
15
Donald Trump and his Republican supporters use the same tools to control the narrative as Xi and CCP.
It tough to think 40 percent of our US population would eagerly consume propaganda and revisionist history like they do in China.
Only thing sparing Americans from huge military parades and CCP type control is that the Republicans have to deal with Democrats.
13
Still waiting for the glorious MAGA Leap Forward. Beautiful health care plan with lots of choices. Unprecedented infrastructure rebuilding (remember Infrastructure Week?). Massive economic stimulus from tax breaks to corporations and millionaires that blew up our deficit. Our own Great Wall paid for by Mexico. Still waiting. Still waiting. Still waiting.
17
It would be strange indeed for a country on a milestone National Day to adopt the propaganda of its greatest enemy to discuss its past. I doubt Mr. Buckley would consider it an authoritarian recasting of American history if President Trump made a speech in the South and failed to talk about the African Slave Trade (60 million dead), or made a speech in the West that failed to mention the genocide against Native Americans (20 million dead.)
China does not rewrite history; it learns from mistakes, corrects errors and moves on. I don’t think we do. Look at our “war on terror.” ($5.6 trillion spent, 500,000 dead)
9
Great Leap Forward spawned the biggest famine in modern times??
Nonsense. Nobody starved to death during the Great Leap Forward.
The El Nino event that caused New England's three year drought and halved Canada's prairie wheat crop also devastated China. But the kicker was America's grain embargo, which was intended to starve the Chinese people into submission.
There were certainly excess deaths, as demographers call them, of people aged over 60. But the average life expectancy was then 58, and those who succumbed to malnutrition had grown up malnourished and carried a heavy disease burden.
Remember that Mao had fed armies of millions, while on the march and under fire, so China's food logistics were superb. Everyone got something to eat every day and there was not a single death recorded from starvation.
The CIA was instructed to watch for signs of the embargo's success but found none. On 4 April 1961 The Agency reported[1]:"Widespread famine does not appear to be at hand, but in some provinces many people are now on a bare subsistence diet and the bitterest suffering lies immediately ahead, in the period before the July harvests."
2 May 1962: "Malnutrition is widespread, foreign trade is down and industrial production and development have dropped sharply. No quick recovery from the regime’s economic troubles is in sight."

[1] Prospects for Communist China. National Intelligence Estimate Number 13-4-62.
6
"the biggest famine in modern times, went unnoted in official reports ..."
The dead don't vote.
The living do, but to no obvious effect.
Certainly this doesn't come as a shock that the central committee has nothing to gain through meeting your expectation, does it?
The elderly Chinese who survived that terrible period, then the Cultural Revolution, never talk about its horrors: all they will say when asked is, “you cannot imagine what it was like”, and leave it at that.
5
Too many Chinese posters on this que. Mao murdered millions. I’ve been in China with guides who lived through the Cultural Revolution, and who survived to tell the truth as he saw it, plus the truth of the slaughter at Tienamen square. The Chinese eraser is not big enough to erase everything, though they try to keep the rest of the world away from the truth.
14
So let's see . The CCP was responsible for famine decades ago. It hadn't happened since, so perhaps, it may have happened on their watch, early, and did something about it, and has never since experienced hunger.
Same way northerners over 150 years ago fought the injustice of American slavery -- the loss of life was high, yet we survived and slavery eradicated. They did something about it.
I have no wish to extol the CCP. But this papers' never ending quest to spread guilt and hopes of contrition for the misery suffered long ago are very misplaced, and only serve to further modern political narratives, not correct whatever unjustice happen generations aho
7
The difference is we actually learn about slavery in American schools. Try asking about the great famines or even the Tianenmen Square Massacre in China.
18
Xi extols Mao to promote his own authoritarian rule, but the Western view of Maoist China is even more distorted. From 1949 to 1976, China’s GDP more than tripled, elementary school education and basic health care spread to the most isolated peasant villages, the nation united while protecting the rights of minorities, and China survived first U.S. then Soviet military threats and economic embargoes to become the most independent and powerful developing nation in the world. Mao placed political growth and egalitarianism over economic growth. Both the Great Leap Forward and ensuing famine and the Cultural Revolution were attempts at mass, democratic movements that failed, because the Communist Party was a highly centralized, top-down organization that Mao built then couldn’t democratize. China’s switch to state capitalism and entering the global economy since 1978, and subsequent economic growth to become a world power, was only possible because of the economic, cultural, and political foundation Mao built.
5
Xi is both the survivor and product of the Cultural Revolution, as much as Putin the product of the KGB. From the Machiavellian perspective, he is not wrong with respect to the USSR disintegration. People may revile Deng for the ordering the Tiananmen crack down, but perhaps Xi may be the true successor of Mao - and it is not a compliment - in the sense he is willing to sacrifice others in the quest of power.
The Great Leap Forward was in Mao's first ego trip and power play. A lot of young people, the equivalence of college kids these days, were willing to stick around to build the New China. Then Mao turned on them. That was the first purge, a prequel of the Cultural Revolution. Even if the Great Leap Forward is a man-made disaster, it pales in comparison to the horror of hogtied corpses floating down the river during the Cultural Revolution.
However, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang were no aberration; China could produce enlightened leaders as well. It is dangerous for observers to look at China in a one-dimensional framework, for it is not a monolith. Unfortunately, right now, the hardliners dominate and enlightened ones are lying low but the latter are not forever vanquished.
9
See ' Animal Farm' and ' 1984' by George Orwell
19
So?
See Apocalypse Now.
Even better, see Doctor Strangelove. Nothing like comedy to make a point.
6
The CCP's propaganda party on international media has a common method: false equivalencies between the US and China.
The fact the CCP trolls are allowed to publish comments on our media, using our institutions of democracy to fight democracy - I find particularly galling.
42
As a child living in Hong Kong during the China starvation years in the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward, I witnessed the widespread practice of sending care packages containing lard limited to two lbs per package. That was to avoid arousing hostility between the haves and have-nots in cooking oil distribution, on the part of the authorities. Live-in Cantonese maids who toiled all year long for Hong Kong families dressed in multiple layers of clothing and carried as much foodstuff and supplies as possible crowded the trains taking them back to their ancestral homes in Kwong Tong for Chinese New Year. The authoritarian command structure played its part in the decision processes that led up to wrong headed policies without consequential push back, bringing suffering to hundreds and millions. Few families if any were untouched by the era prior to the opening of China in the eighties. Xi and his father were victims as well. Nevertheless, for the purpose of consolidating his personal power at the present, he has decided to retrace the footsteps of Mao, the Great Tyrant that brought unprecedented misery to the Chinese people, this time equipped with state of the art technologies for surveillance and control. The consequence is unimaginable.
28
The NYTimes again resurrects tragedies of China's past to brash Chinese government today, but its accusation that CCP does not learn from history is petty and absurd. The truth is that few organizations on earth learn from mistakes better than the CCP. Drawing from the great famine, CCP learned the importance of food self-sufficiency. Drawing from the collapse of the Soviet Union, CCP learned never to trust the West and always implement reforms gradually. Drawing from the US's failed attempts at regime change, CCP learned to limit foreign intervention and respect sovereignty. Drawing from various states mired in the middle-income trap, CCP learned to invest heavily in education and research and clamp down on corruption. Much as the NYT like to slander the Chinese system, China's incredible progress speaks truth to the efficiency and competency of the CCP.
8
@Jason
Propaganda. What did the CCP learn from their efforts to steal American intellectual property, or forced transfer of industry trade secrets, or religious persecution of a million Uighers in Western China? The Chinese government continually demonstrates that it cannot be trusted, or be allowed to continue its business as usual. It seems many countries around the globe are now aware of China's malicious intent.
13
Mao was perhaps the greatest war criminal in history. He deliberately starved a hundred million of his own people, locked up and tortured millions more, and inflicted an ecologic and economic catastrophe upon his people the likes of which has seldom been seen.
The Chinese can only succeed in perpetrating the myth of he glorious history of the Chinese Communist nation if we let them. Just as before the Beijing Olympics we did not let the Chinese treatment of the Tibetans be forgotten we must not let the suffering of millions of Chinese, Uighurs, Koreans, and Tibetans be forgotten.
Every public appearance of Chinese officials must be accompanied by peaceful protests reminding them we have not forgotten our fellow human Uighurs, Tibetans, or the residents of Hong Kong who only want what all humans are entitled to: liberty.
31
In reply to HGreenberg Detroit MI
Chairman Mao united China just as George Washington united the 13 colonies. Mao’s achievement is so vast it boggles the mind.
5
@John Murray
Obviously part of the Party’s propaganda corp. Every American knows the Washington didn’t unite the colonies, the united colonies hired him to lead their Army. He drove the British out, but didn’t stave tens of millions of Americans to death to do it. Mao was the Great Sociopath.
10
The Chinese government has thrived for years now on a propaganda culture. Unfortunately, the Chinese government continues to treat its people like children, telling them what they can and cannot say about political issues in public. As an English teacher in China I struggled almost daily to get my students to discuss the pros and cons of politically sensitive issues. Most of them simply refused to discuss these topics in public because of the danger. Let's face it, the Chinese government is afraid to let its people decide for themselves what they think about an issue - even afraid to let them freely access the Internet. There is no genuine freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press in China. This is a government whose goal - sadly - is to brainwash its citizens. This is why the Hong Kong people are so determined to stop this from happening to them as well. I have family connections to China and greatly admire its culture. But not allowing its people to openly discuss ideas and think for themselves will continue to be its great shortcoming. By the way, Chris Buckley is not an "anti-Sino" journalist (as someone accused him of being in this forum). He is simply trying to uncover the truth - something most Chinese journalists and people can't do publicly.
31
Mao has been a popular symbol in China for decades. Even during the 1990s, Mao's badges are collector's items in the early morning ghosts markets for folks who want to shop for used items or fake and real antiques.
Taxi drivers in China would put a statue of Mao on the dash board for good luck.
If the masses still like Mao, it is only good politics for Xi to honor him.
4
@Elizabeth
How is the market in anti-Mao buttons? No wait, that would get you in prison. Where people are not free to decide what they like and express it without fear, your comments about popularity are ridiculous.
6
I am guessing that they also didn't mention that this campaign to kill all "sparrows" was part of what lead to that famine. By destroying the ecosystems that sustain us we also kill ourselves. Governments that promote acts of cruelty towards wildlife trickle are also more likely to perpetrate and condone acts of cruelty against their people. We can't let the facts of histories atrocities be lost or re-written or we will continue to repeat them to our own downfall.
9
Without condoning Mao or his many crimes, he still remains a hero in China just as Stalin remains a hero to many in Russia and George Washington a hero despite being a slave owner. He was also a land speculator in American Indian national lands and being called the "town destroyer" because he ordered American Indian town's destroyed as part of a war. This means that I wouldn't particularly blame Xi for honoring someone who remains part of the Chinese tradition (however inadequate that term is for covering all of China).
2
@31today Excuse me, but are you seriously comparing George Washington to Stalin or Mao? Absolutely ludicrous
26
This return to Mao is a very good indication that the social undercurrents in China are not looking good.
13
The Chinese government is considering relocating the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong to a less prominent location. Xi's father had suffered tremendously during the cultural revolution and Xi himself was a victim of Mao and the Gang of Four. He knows the evil that Mao had done first hand. But, contrary to common believes in the U.S., Xi does not run the country alone; he has many peoples in the party to answer to and with whom he must work with. I think if it is up to him, Mao's portrait will probably be gone from the TianAn Gate.
7
This article's treatment of the Great Leap is an a-historical and unscientific parroting of conventional "wisdom" of anti-communism.
Indisputable facts not mentioned:
-- Pre-revolutionary China had been wracked by devastating famines for centuries (see the classic film The Good Earth for a depiction), this is a big part of what gave impetus to the revolution.
-- The Great Leap started less than 10 years after the revolution took power, after a period of nearly thirty years of civil war and Japanese occupation that created even more desperate conditions.
-- The years 1959 & 1960 were marked by unprecedented natural disasters in much of China, including a 100 day drought in the most affected area.
-- While there was indeed a terrible famine, due to the above but compounded by real errors on the part of the CCP (for which Mao famously said, "I take full responsibility"), a) the figures of--what is it 16, 40, 60 million deaths?--are wildly exaggerated and politically motivated.
-- By the mid-60s, the problem of meeting the basic food needs of the Chinese people had been solved.
-- Between 1949 and 1975 (Mao died in 1976 when oppressors like Xi seized power) life expectancy in China doubled (from 32 to 65 years).
For a fuller understanding, try http://thisiscommunism.org/ThisIsCommunism/ChinasGreatLeapForward.html. (The link NYT provides to "pro-Mao writers" is also useful--though in Chinese, Google gives a decent translation.)
8
@Jon
And the Cultural Revolution?
8
@Jon you’re saying the death-toll figures are widely exaggerated and political, while you at the same time are attaching a link to “thisiscommunism.org”? Are you kidding me?
13
@Kolding
I must note that none of the negative responses to my comment have even attempted to refute any of the facts I laid out. Nor apparently has any of these responders gone to either of the sites offering different analyses. You have been fed a fallacious narrative that won't hold up under critical analysis, so you just try to rule what I am saying off limits.
Go to the website, and then if you have a well reasoned disagreement, let's hear it. (The Cultural Revolution is also gone into and upheld there.)
On a related note, the Cultural Revolution was a struggle between those forces, led by Mao, who wanted to carry forward the socialist revolution aimed at at overcoming millennia of oppression and inequality vs. those who wanted to restore capitalism (in the form of state capitalism) making profit the end all and be all. When Mao died those forces took power, keeping the trappings of socialism because they were popular, while breeding exploitation and seeking to build an empire. The crimes of Xi, et al, are what Mao was fighting to prevent, but unfortunately he and the revolutionary forces were defeated.
2
Do Chinese people enjoy being seen as the most gullible, mis-leadable, pack-mentality folk on the planet? You'd think THAT would be a cause for them to lose face over.
12
To come to such conclusion,the Chinese people would need access to outside voices on the Internet, and it’s not clear that they do.
10
Let's not pretend. Chris Buckley couldn't care less about any Chinese or their death. The timing of this article shows it was written for only one reason: to attack China during its 70th anniversary celebrations.
Nothing illustrates China's dramatic success more than the desperate, frantic efforts of anti-Sino journalists to talk trash about it.
9
@Tim
Sure, because a million dead people is hardly something that should be acknowledged. Clearly we're just being mean, rubbing it in. Give me a break
24
@Tim
Are you denying the famine happened, and/ or who was responsible for it? Mr Buckley isn't the one who's pretending....
20
@Tim
Chris Buckley probably wished that his family magazine were still around and he could write about Trump and the Republican Party instead.
4
The material presented in this article is good as far as it goes, but it is old news to anyone who has seriously tried to understand China.
The history of the “Great Leap Forward” and the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” is well documented and described In numerous books, personal memoirs and even YouTube videos. The books by Frank Dikotter are especially noteworthy. Even Henry Kissinger’s book on China is a good introduction. There are many other good books on this subject.
Unfortunately, most Americans are ignorant of the whitewashing of their own history.
For example, most Americans do not know that prior to Pearl Harbor, FDR was waging an undeclared war against Japan, embargoing gasoline and other critical supplies and moving the Pacific fleet from San Diego into Hawaii, Guam, Saipan, Tinian and other areas within Japan’s sphere of influence. Those were hostile acts in and of themselves. An attack on Pearl Harbor should not have been a “surprise.”
Or, how many Americans know that it was the Soviet Red Army that turned the tide of World War 2 by defeating the Nazii Wehrmacht at the 6 month long heroic winter batter at Stalingrad? That was the most important battle of the war and the US was not in it. By the time of D-day, Germany was already reeling.
While understanding Chinese history is important, especially in understanding the current imbroglio in Hong Kong, it is even more important that the American people understand their own unvarnished history.
18
@JTS
Yeah, but YOU choose to live in America. If China and Russia are so much better for their people choose one or both and bye bye. We know our own history. We all know Russia was key in ending WW2. We have since the atomic bombs, been responsible for totally rebuilding Japan and making it the world power it is today too. Include this in your history lesson. We also know that America's foreign policies and actions are always in their own self interests. America does not love Israel. Our leadership loves Israel's strategic location smack dab in the middle east, the weapons they build and Israel spies for America in the region. That is the truth too. Americans are far more sophisticated than you give them credit for. We also have free speech, denied to most around the world.
20
@This just in
No, Americans don’t know their own history. They only know the air brushed, PhotoShopped version which is analogous to what Mr. Xi is peddling in China.
If you don’t know the truth, you can’t make sound decisions.
7
@JTS. So, I agree in general that we need to understand our history first. But a single article on China today is not going to change that. Nor is, if I understand correctly, equating an embargo and moving the U.S. fleet to Pearl Harbor with an undeclared war while ignoring that Japan was waging an aggressive war in China. Have you ever heard of the rape of Nanking? If not, then I suggest you research it. The two atom bombs? I think some legitimate debate is possible about them, especially the second, and equally about the firebombing of Tokyo. But not the stuff you wrote. This sort of revisionist pseudo-history is what drives many people nuts, although it only disappoints me.
3
The Great Chinese Famine caused tens of millions of deaths during the period 1959-61. Mao's policies favored large families.
But after the rise of Deng Xiaoping in 1978, the Chinese government reversed course and instituted a one-child policy, although it often amounted to a two-child policy in practice.
China was a poor country at the time, and a certain level of coercion was used. But fertility rates dropped markedly.
The population continued to grow but at a slower rate. Smaller population growth enabled China to raise living standards as it industrialized.
In contrast, India, although democratic at least in name, has not had a one-child policy.
India's population has grown more rapidly than China's, and poverty seems more prevalent now in India.
I had the good fortune to visit both countries.
The crowdedness of India was particularly oppressive. Roads were crowded and the slow electrified rail from Delhi to Agra broke down during my trip.
China, on the other hand, has constructed 19,000 miles of high-speed electrified rail and continues to expand its network.
When I visited the Pudong region of Shanghai, I was amazed at the luxury goods available and the elegance of the hotel in the Jin Mao tower. The skyscrapers are higher than in Manhattan.
The world is on a collision course with global warming. Many parts of planet earth will become uninhabitable by 2100.
We need a one-child policy for planet earth to keep global warming from becoming ever worse.
15
@Jake Wagner "a certain amount of coercion" that is some wonderful glossing over of the appalling consequences this had on women in China. Also, how simple math would have told them that the bette option was to encourage people to have children later in life, after 30, instead of limiting the number of children allowed. Forced abortions and sterilizations, not to mention the selective abortions of girls, and abandonment of female babies in orphanages with no records of their births, and on and on and on. https://www.economist.com/china/2018/07/26/chinas-two-child-policy-is-having-unintended-consequences
"some degree of coercion"? Please do some basic google research on the consequences of this particular policy at the very least before suggesting this for the entire planet. Yes, reducing birth rates is absolutely the thing we need to save the planet, but a one child policy is NOT the way to do that. Look at factors that drive population dynamics. Also look at consequences of forcing things like one child policies. Educate women globally and give them all free and easy access to birth control and control over their bodies and the population growth rate would reverse quickly.
10
Curios how american media continue to trash China. I've been to China twice. Beijing, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Nanchang. Outside of a minor protest going on inside the forbidden city (inside mind you), not once did I see any expression of discontent. Rather, the first time we visited in the 90s, we encountered oceans of Mao suits. Now its much more Western, but the people still venerate Mao like a hero. Misguided journalists continue to paint Mao as some kind of evil monster. To the average Chinese, Mao is our George Washington, the founder of the modern state. I don't like Communism, i personally wouldn't want to live under Communism, but the Chinese version of it is about as waterered down, capitalist as it gets. Perhaps NYT should reflect a little more on our own horrendous behavior, e.g., nuking hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, Nepalming innocent children, Agent Oranging an entire country, not to mention ethnic cleansing the entire North American continent.
12
To not acknowledge that 1 in 8 people died in China during the Great Leap Forward would be completely irresponsible of NYT.
Also, they also published an amazing piece on a 1919 mass killing that took place here in the United States just today so to act as if they only write articles about auto cities commutes by the Chinese government is absurd.
22
@carloscastenada
I can recommend any of the trilogy by Frank Dikotter or the biography by Jung Chang to disabuse you of the idea that Mao was anything less than a psychopathic monster.
14
@carloscastenada Going over history isn't exactly considered "trashing" a country.
17
The Chinese Communist Party has been the enemy of the poor Chinese people. Decades of suffering and starvation cannot be whitewashed when we know the truth. I hope someday they are able to unshackle the manacles of the CCP and enjoy true freedom and peace.
15
I am not one to judge “the Chinese”, their culture, history and relationship of Maoist totalitarianism to today’s Communist state but I will say this: Any way you look at it, the Great Leap Forward was a tragic catastrophe on so many levels it absolutely boggles the mind. It also boggles the mind that so few people are really aware of what happened during this period in which almost as many people died IN PEACETIME as died in the entire Second World War. This absurd countrywide “experiment” in everything from social organization to steel production to farming practices to flat out corruption in which people facing starvation nevertheless had their farm commodities shipped off to Eastern Europe in exchange for hard currency as their government presented these commodities as surplus...was definitely in a class by itself. Eventually even the hardest hard liners saw the absurdity. Definitely deserves more exposure. The whole world.,,our whole species could learn a lot from this...one of the worst episodes of human malfeasance in history.
29
@Woodson Dart Literally everybody in China learns about the Great Leap Forward and knows in detail - not just a simplistic “China bad, CCP evil” narrative - what happened. I wouldn’t call 1.4 billion “few.”
2
I remember well when this paper and country gloated over starvation in China, and they will never stop criticizing You. But I congratulate you for overcoming all the destruction that over over a hundred years, the US , Brittan, France, Japan, and Germany visited and virtually destroyed your fine Country.
Congratulations for a job well done. What wonderful things you make, all of which I buy, because it is the best in this World. Congratulations again for not interfering in the internal affairs of other nations and exporting death around this World as the US famously does. The US should join me in Congratulating you, but they won't. Thanks again for all the good you do wherever you go. I like you alot.
9
@Phil Greene This article was about the destruction visited on the people of China by the Chinese Communist Party. Yet you do not address that at all. Why not?
7
@Phil Greene
" Congratulations...for not interfering in the internal affairs of other nations". Are you serious? In Australia the Chinese government closely monitors the actions of Chinese ( and English ) language media and is involved in directing the Australian political narrative to suit the Chinese government's agenda. Only this month a Chinese- Australian politician was revealed as being a former member of organisations directly linked to the Chinese Communist party.
Open your eyes.
7
Just like Mao killed millions because it suited his political interests, so Xi would, if needed and he could get away with it. The only thing that matters is for the Communist clique to cling to power. They are not honorable people, or people you can trust. You have to find a way to coexist, since they rule over 1.4 bn people, but do not expect them to be honorable, keep they word, respect laws, have any respect for human life. These are "bourgeois niceties" in their philosophy. This cold war is 100 times riskier and harder to win than the one against the Soviet Union.
9
@ThinkingAloud
What would you do if you are in Xi's shoes? China has been in much much worse hands since 1949. Believe it, Xi is actually a better leader than most. The only thing that made him more of a target is that, he is ambitious to make China a powerful nation that can compete on the world stage. He could do more and probably should do more in moving China into more of a Singapore model. But, please look at our own U.S. health care reform mess, you should be able to get an idea how impossible and difficult a task it can be to change a whole political system overnight.
2
@Julia how about xi declaring free elections and hands-off hong kong. its hard to change a political system overnight when the dictators dont want to give up power.
9
@jibaro
Look at what the US get for "free" elections--- Gerrymandering and DJT.
2
Long since before Xi's leadership, history textbooks in China never mentioned the starvation so is the real reason of Mao's “ long march of ten thousand li” during the Japanese invasion and civil war (running away from fighting). This is not a unique creation by Xi, but a party tradition and a norm since 1949.
5
After I read this touching article about Xinyang in Henan Province, it brings back my childhood days memories. From 1936-1938, my father was the governor of Henan and Anhui provinces. The provincial capital of Henan was Kaifeng. My father sent his family to Jigong Shan (Rooster Mountain) to avoid the Japanese bombings. Rooster Mountain was a summer resort for westerners during their summer vacations in China. It is a very small but a beautiful mountain resort with beautiful views. Xinyang (信阳）city was not too far from the Rooster mountain. It was part of the Longhai Railroad to Wuhan, Hubei Province. As a child I witnessed the Japanese atrocities in Henen, Hubei and other cities. I will never forget those wounded solders without arms and without food for days. My mother prepared Chinese bread (Mantou) and boiled eggs to feed them. Those wounded solders just kept kowtow to my mother. Henan is one of the poorest provinces in China. Eighty years later I am here to read this starvation story and it makes me feel I am so lucky I am still here living in the U.S., the most democratic country on earth. How many Chinese and how many westerners still remember that China was a semi-colony under the European powers? American secretary of state John Hay's open door note in 1900 saved China from carving up by European powers. Does Xi Jinping knows this friendly gesture from an American? When I watched China's TV last night , Xi Jinping made no mention about American's friendship.
8
@Tysons2019
The civil war between the National Party and the Communist party prior to 1949 was largely a war between the U.S. and Russia for dominance (with Japan setting the country on fires at the same time). Xi is the leader of the current communist party, maybe he can thank the U.S. for not beating up Russia? Maybe while he is at it, thank Japan for invading so that the communist party army can hide in caves while the national party fought Japan alone? Mao was a very smart and brutal man with no regard to his fellow Chinese. Xi cares about the people at least.
3
Conveniently forgetting a horrendous past of dehumanization is an awful reminder of the atrocities we are able to accomplish...and then try to forget. This is called hypocrisy. And cowardice. And perhaps an invitation for impunity if not a chance for a repeat performance....if we allow the shameful erasure of history.
2
If America had answered the Chinese National Party's plead for support from 1930 to 1950 fighting Japanese invasion and the communist party (Stalin Russia). Communist China won't exist and China now will very likely be a democratic country just like the U.S. or Taiwan. In the issue of China, America had long gave up the war to Russia. What do you expect is gonna to happen? Why are you all act outraged and surprised now?
4
@Lin. Perhaps you should remember we won WWII during that time period.
1
@Lin
You are living in fantasy land, sir. The US wasted a lot of resources on nationalist China to no avail.
8
@Jackson
You have a good point. The ally did win the overall war but just short of stopping Mao and Stalin at the the crucial moment. China has doomed to chaos starting with the first opium war at 1840 invaded by the British out of greed and need for domination.
You know, the normal human stuff, same old same old.
The Chinese have memories short. Or else they just like to distort a time when their nation was facing starvation while Mao got as fat as a wart.
8
A well researched. Congratulations on an excellent article.
4
Xi is sending a message. He will not back down from his power grab. Like Mao, he will either sit on the throne, or he will burn the palace down around him.
9
I feel sorry for the Chinese people. The tens of millions starved to death on account of the inept mismanagement of Mao and his crony communists during the Great Leap Forward. Only to be followed by tens of millions tortured and murdered in Mao’s purges during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. And now, the good people of China are being brainwashed that the democracy protesters in Hong Kong are the enemies of the State. Xi Jinping is China’s newest Emperor Mao and will engage in any and all disinformation, propaganda, and lies, in order to elevate himself to godlike status and retain his grip on power.
9
Another very well written article on Communist China by the NYTimes. If the West think this country is our “ friend “ they are sadly mistaken!
Mr. George Orwell’s prescient 1984 is alive and well....
8
While reading this piece, I momentarily thought that I was reading a piece about Trump. There are similarities to XI that speak to what this nation could resemble were he to remain in office indefinitely or be followed by someone much like him. It can't happen here? It can.
4
@blgreenie. Is it so impossible for leftists to avoid commenting on Trump regardless of the topic?
5
@Jackson They are not leftists. They are CCP trolls. And there are many of them.
They have taken over the Guardian and many of the comments on these pages are made by them.
It is just not possible for a non-indoctrinated mind to prefer the Chinese system over the US.
The Hongkongers dont, for example.
7
@Jackson
Why is anybody who criticises Trump " leftist"?
3
There are many things to criticize about China. No question about it. But putting it as if we are the ones that are in a better (from an ethical point of view) position to judge Xi and Mao is a joke. I am sure if the Norwegians, Swedes or Danes of today could pass judgment (funny enough they won’t) about China and their dictatorial regime is one thing but it is a joke for us with Trump as President and the GOP running the Congress and the Judiciary for the 0.01 Percenter oligarchs to do the criticizing.
5
@Blunt, the Scandinavians have been quite critical of China? Where do you get the view that they think millions dying in a famine is OK?
4
I don’t think you understood my comment.
We as a nation have so much baggage that if we were to criticize China people may tell us to first check our history.
Scandinavians have been relatively spotless therefore if they said something critical about Mao and Xi they could be a little less ridiculous than us. Got it?
Think what we were doing when Mao was busy with the Cultural Revolution. Plus or minus a few years we were nuclear bombing innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, interning Japanese Americans in concentration Camp, Napalming children, keeping black people in the back of buses and away from white people’s toilets to name few glorious actions. And of course the inactions of not bombing the railroad tracks that led to Auschwitz and other death factories when we could.
Still didn’t get it?
5
I hesitate to wade into the middle of this conversation. However, you must have forgotten that the Vikings caused convulsive suffering for centuries when they traded, then invaded, eastward into Russia (Moscow‘s origins are as a Viking trading post), westward into Europe, southward across the Mediterranean into Sicily, and finally eastward again into Jerusalem in the form of the Crusades, when you describe Scandinavians as having a spotless past.
No “country”, no “people” have “clean” histories.
Consequently we can’t leave history to the blameless nor criticism to those without a stake in the game. The world is too small and fragile for that.
I understand how & why a country cleanses its history and maintains its internal self-justifying myths. We do it. Every country does it.
But shouldn’t someone remember? Shouldn’t someone remind a country when it is reveling in its current glory that the present moment came at a tremendous cost?
3
History cannot be ignored.China's occupation of Tibet or claiming Hong Kong or Taiwan to expand is ignorant of what happened to humans in that country.China still is poor at its core in villages and poor neighborhoods.They just built some show cases to impress the world.That is what North Korea is doing to hide its past.If past is revealed to full extent like India the leaderships will be ousted and new leader s WILL BE PICKED BY PEOPLE.Democracy is necessary for that to happen and china still does not have that possibilities.
6
You are making me laugh, you talk as if US hasn’t expanded their territory by stepping on the flesh and blood of the native Indians...
6
From "Harrowing memories" on we are reading a prejudiced article. How prejudiced New York Times coverage on China is can be found in the comments articles elicit. The disdain for or antipathy towards China expressed in comments quickly becomes too overwhelming for me to go on reading.
As for me, the knowledge and experience I have of China fills me with respect and admiration for my Chinese friends and acquaintances and for what has been accomplished.
7
This is Mr Xi placing the final touches on the deeds that have already ensured the eventual collapse of the Chinese Communist Party.
3
There are some parallels between rural China and rural America and reading Donald Ray Pollock can leave you reeling.
And this is the world’s next hegemon? No thanks!
1
Isn’t this narrative similar to American patriotic myths about our revolution? Does ours deserve the same level of reporting?
4
@Michael Munk Do you need a VPN to bypass a firewall? Is there a list of specific words you can't submit to your search engine? Do you have a social credit score to maintain? Do you know what false equivalence is?
9
You may be right. But the key difference here is that your posting this comment calling for an honest review of our country's history will cause zero personal risk to you. But if a Chinese called for the same thing in China, she would become a political prisoner.
8
@Michael Munk
No, the Americans and Chinese revolutions are not comparable.
The Chinese revolution established a totalitarian party state. One of its first acts was mass murder against rural landholders, resulting in millions being killed simply because of their social station. Communist political and economic ideology led directly to the deaths of millions of Chinese throughout the 50s, 60s, and 70s. It was only when the Communist Party started to move away from the revolution’s communist ideology that stability and prosperity (though not liberty) came to China.
In such a light, it’s hard to view 1949 as a year to be celebrated. The economic and social legacy of the revolution has been largely abandoned. Indeed, the only major legacy of the 1949 revolution still in place is the Communist Party’s domination of government and public life. As such, this anniversary is largely self-congratulation by the Communist Party, rather than a commemoration of the Chinese nation or any ideology associated with the revolution.
Whether you hate or love America’s current system, you at least have to admit that it’s largely faithful to the original spirit to the revolution. Not so much for China.
12
"If only the Tsar knew!" It will be fun one day to kick apart Mao's corpse and scatter it to the wind along with the dust of the Chinese Communist Party.
5
On the Internet, history can be changed with the click of a button. And it seems to work, so long as there are no dissenting viewpoints and the population is rewarded by its political correctness.
2
It speaks volumes about the essence of a sovereign state when the president for life of a nation as large as China bans images of Winnie the Pooh because he is defensive about his own similarity in appearance to the story book character.
15
@David H: Xi, Who Must Be Obeyed
4
Print diverse comments. Some views may be orthogonal to yours. That should be ok as long as they are civil, correct?
4
Within a generation, China lifted more people out of poverty than any other nation or civilization in the history of the world over any period of time. If anyone deserves a spot in the pantheon of great Chinese leaders, it is the figures who engineered China’s explosive economic growth.
Mao was not one of those figures. The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution are national shames on par with Nazi Germany, Japanese militarization and expansionism during the same period, and the American South’s rebellion to preserve slavery. The failure of Maoism doesn’t make China any less of a great nation—it actually makes it more like the countries it emulates.
Xi blames the Soviet Union’s collapse and Russia’s subsequent decline partly on “liberal historians.” But the difference between Russia and China is that, after Mao, China prospered. Liberalization worked. I suppose that’s what Xi’s afraid of: that, if Chinese nationals knew the real history of modern China, they’d realize that concentrating power in the hands of one strongman, as Xi is currently attempting to do, is a recipe for disaster.
25
@Mssr. Pleure, as well written a post as I have read on these comment pages.
@Mssr. Pleure China’s “liberalization” was not one of liberal democracy as was the case for Yeltsin, to the deadly perils of Russians after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And the architect, Deng Xiaoping, of such “liberalization” had more power than Xi today, as he was neither the General Secretary of the CCP or the President of China. Yet he ruled supreme for 14 years.
And if you ask Chinese people, who supposedly necessarily knows less about China than the omniscient American, they will say that Mao was still the greatest leader in Chinese history for uniting the nation, despite his grave lack of competence in governance.
Happy Birthday "China". I hope news that the disgusting practice of organ harvesting, the taking of hearts, kidneys, lungs, and skin from Uighurs and persecuted religious groups, attract enough outrage to bring about sanctions. Meanwhile in Hong Kong, the arbitrary searches and arrests of children, brutal beatings of protesters, injuries of journalists, all the tear gas grenades indiscriminately lobbed upon innocent civilians in enclosed spaces, from the air, at point-blank range, directly violating international norms of crowd control, will mark another chapter in the CCP's long list of crimes against humanity.
And while you may continue to spend billions or trillions on your cyber army, armed with the same clumsy and repetitive scripts of deflections, whataboutisms and false equivalences, I sincerely hope the coming economic downturn will expose how corrupt you really are, and that your "support" is only as strong as the fragile loans and economy made of whimsically printed play money robbed from your citizens who can't search share or express themselves like normal humans in a truly free society.
18
@M. Paire Still waiting for the evidence for Uyghur organ harvesting that does not derived from the Epoch Times (note that China Tribunal/ETAC is a front organization of and staffed by the Falun Gong mouthpiece).
North Korea 2.0.
8
The Chinese Communist Party continues to stoke the apparently malleable passions of the Chinese people, telling them that they should despise Great Britain, Japan, and America for the many humiliations that China has suffered at those countries' hands.
Remarkable that during the "Great Leap Forward" 40 million died in two years at the hands of the Chinese Communists who were solely to blame for those deaths: not other countries, not the weather, just the Chinese Communist Party. By comparison, Japanese occupiers in 1938 murdered 300,000 in Nanjing. Guess who the Chinese people hate?
Somehow, it only seems to matter to the Chinese people who is doing the killing. That would explain their utter indifference to the fate of the one million Uighurs in concentration camps, the oppression of Chinese Muslims, the ghoulish mass murder and harvesting of body parts of Falun Gong followers, and, of course, the running over unarmed students with tanks in Tienanmen Square. As long as the Chinese Communists are killing Chinese citizens, the Chinese people are happy happy. No national humiliation in that, apparently.
18
@NorthernVirginia your comment grouping all Chinese as a monolithic population that thinks alike is a gross generalization and stereotype, and because of that, it is repugnant. You cannot group all Chinese together any more than you can all Americans. There are too many nuances; the population is too diverse.
Also, by "the Chinese," as you describe, you are also including the much-oppressed Uighur population, which I'm sure the majority of which would not agree with you including them with all "Chinese people."
As for the annihilation of so many millions of Chinese, you are spot-on, and that historical fact and others should not be censored from Chinese history taught in China any more than the United States should censor its genocide of Native Americans, its systematic oppression of African-Americans, and its discriminatory policies and actions regarding Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Chinese-Americans and the list goes on and on.
4
@Akhenaton Yes keep bringing up past injustices of other countries to deflect from current atrocities, like organ harvesting and genocide Uighurs. Even if they're not ethnic Chinese, they're human beings, and they don't deserve to be cut up for parts like a used car.
When your boss criticizes your work, and you bring up your coworker's poor performance, how well do you think that would go?
6
@Akhenaton
Leave it up to your great uncle Xi to ensure that any diversity within China will be eliminated. Take what he is doing to the Uighers in Xinjang or to Tibet as a shining example. The Han do not value diversity, it appears they want world domination.
Right out of George Orwell: "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength".
13
Forgive such criticism, but New York Times coverage of China is wildly prejudiced. I am no longer surprised, just continually disappointed and distressed that Times coverage of China has become a form of Hearst newspaper "yellow journalism."
8
@Nancy While I don't have empirical evidence of The New York Times' alleged bias, I will say, anecdotally from my own reading, much of the coverage that I've read — from a variety of sources — often neglects the diversity of Chinese people. From a country that once had The Chinese Exclusion Act, I suppose I shouldn't expect any better, even in 2019.
4
@Nancy There are even more critical articles on American politicians, but when you're only searching for subjects that pertain to your own nationality, probably from a lifetime of being indoctrinated to "love china", you tend to have tunnel vision that only focuses on that.
4
@Akhenaton
Thank you. As for empirical evidence begin with the opening words of the article "Harrowing memories...."
1
Blah, blah, blah.
Empty rhetoric, like when a Republican drones on in tribute to the Founding Fathers or the Constitution.
Though China is still communist on paper, in the last twenty years it has made the jump to fascism. (By "fascism" I mean the national combination of socialism, capitalism, and militarism).
8
@Alex Cody as in the United States' military-industrial complex?
3
@Akhenaton
Yes, although their system is more authoritarian.
Xi has "acted on the belief that to control China he must control its history" much like many Instagram users continuously 'curate' their profiles and digital reputation, picking out the less desirable parts to leave only an image and digital reputation they want others to embrace and approve of.
5
A great book about the Great Chinese Famine is “Tombstone” by Yang Jisheng. Using actual records kept by the government, the book painstakingly covers the missteps and terrible choices that led to millions of people starving to death, while the Party bosses were protected and promoted. It’s ugly but very informative. A good read on this anniversary.
15
The famines caused by the Great Leap Forward were terrible and I would prefer that Xi and China, through its history book, were honest about them. I suspect that in the party leader's schools in China, they do learn about the famines.
The US has a few bad incidents in its history too... black neighborhoods burned and black citizens murdered, say in the draft riots in NYC or in the Elaine, Arkansas race riots.
A lot smaller body count, but maybe it is not body count but betrayal of our founding principals that is the useful measure.
In the US we focus on all the good we have done... WWII, freeing the slaves in the Civil War, economic dynamism. China focuses on all the poor and destitute under previous Chinese governance who are now far batter off. Their economic dynamism is now comparable to the US.
I love our commitment to freedom in the US, but unfortunately, that is also the freedom to starve. China tries to address the freedom to starve its way, by not being as confident as the enough to admit all its weaknesses and failures. I sure hope the US pulls ahead again in the end.
1
China suffered many famines and crimes under colonial oppression and also suffered under the Japanese occupation. And then years of civil war.
All this history is whitewashed to attack Mao and the Communist revolution he led. There were mistakes made during the “Great Leap Forward” and this was compounded by the fact that the Soviets withdrew all technical aid and support because of the
ideological rift.
Those who want to bury Communism and promote capitalism imperialism or state capitalism (China today) as the best of all
possible worlds will continue to vilify Mao in whatever manner
they can.
I would invite these people to take a scientific approach and list
all the brutal crimes committed by the colonial powers in Africa,
Central and Latin America and Asia. One example would be Churchill’s role in brutalization of Kenya.
I’m sure their silence would be deafening.
M
6
@Michael
The people of Hong Kong clearly prefer the British way to the Chinese way. It's not even close.
10
@Michael
It is one thing to be oppressed and famished because of war or occupation. It is different for a government to provoke a famine through ideological rigidity and incompetence.
2
Great. I am sure they would love to have Boris Johnson run the country (to the ground).
1
This is a little too cute for my taste. Do we mention each time a US president extols the virtues of our heritage in Gettysburg, Independence Hall and Liberty Bell, Monticello or Washington’s House, does he menton the theft of land from the Native Americans or Slavery?
4
To even attempt to juxtapose the United States and China in any way, shape, or form, is an exercise in ignorance. The USA Is a financial, military and political superpower in every sense of the world. China is one large Potemkin village. And in my opinion, it is destined to remain one, forever.
6
I hope you are not a representative of our young nation. China was an empire of might while most of Europe, where we come from was not even in the Dark Ages.
Ignorant indeed :-)
2
Social progress does not always follow a straight path. We should not expect the Chinese political system to modernize without reversal. Indeed, the search of a modern political system for the Chinese society started over 100 years ago by the end of the Qing dynasty. An appropriate comparison may be the religious reformation movement of 15th century in the west. It is difficult for a large country to fundamentally change its civilization. One reason Mao and Xi were able to control a vast country like China is to rely on Chinese feudal tradition. The Henan peasants are not entirely wrong, Mao and other top communist leaders were not the only people responsible for past disasters, but the local officials were more directly responsible. The culture of worshiping emperor is deep and ingrained in the Chinese society. However, things are fundamentally changing in China. When people can travel freely to countries with democratic government, they can see for themselves the advantage of a modern political system. An organic change of the Chinese society is taking place. This change cannot be accelerated by outside pressure nor stopped or reversed by Xi. Even in an authoritarian system, people know how to show their true preference. Deng was successful in his reform movement not entirely because he was somehow a visionary but because he saw the aspiration of the Chinese people. Xi will be gone soon enough and the Chinese will continue their search for a modern political system.
9
China is celebrating 70 years , and most Americans are not even aware of their political timeline. In this context,
I am glad NYT helps educate us about the Great Leap Forward, an event that took place in my lifetime but I never learned about in school or from the media. The more we understand about China, their culture and their history, the better we can work with them to bring up all people, and protect the planet.
5
If you have a plan to thwart the Chinese intent to turn the rest of the world into their Hong Kong in the process, do tell!
3
Since Qin dynasty, China had one one rules the country. If history is what one knows, today's China is not ready for a true democratic government. The system of everything and everyone serves a single party and one person will not change for the foreseeable future.
2
Not only is China not ‘ready’ for democracy, (they will most likely never be), they look at how we are in decline, even only in terms of education, (17th in Math?), how we force our students into lifetime indentured servitude to banks, who contribute very little positive to society, etcetera, and see it as proof it is not a desirable system in any way.
Even posing this statement would be seen as patronizing, from the perspective of our political superiority. We have a lot of work to do.
4
@Frank wrote: "If history is what one knows, today's China is not ready for a true democratic government."
Where in the rule book is that written? I seem to have lost my copy.
1
@Lilly
Seeing that their elites send thier children here, I don't think they look at our educatoinal system quite like that.
If you want to talk about dysfunctional educaitonal systems, you can include theirs that limit your lifetime opportunities based on the province/region in which your family is from and your performance on a single standardized test. (No, not like our SATs, theirs explicitly limit your career choices)
8
But put the 1958 famine in perspective. Before the communists government was established famine was a regular occurrence in China; hunger was the norm. When I think of the role of the U.S. and Britain, running in opium in the 1800s, invading during the Boxer Rebellion, supporting the corrupt government of Chiang Kai-shek, the Communist government's liberation of China from foreign rule looks a lot better. Yes, the famine was a result of human stupidity. Just like people starving in the first years of our Great Depression was the result of human stupidity. Stupidity trumps both capitalism and socialism.
30
@William Meyers
Give me a break with your revisions history.
There is simply no comparison between the Great Depression and the Great Leap Forward.
The US never had anything to do with running opium.
The GLF wasn't just "stupidity", it was brutal repression.
15
@William Meyers don't forget the French and the Russians demanding war reparations that bankrupted the coutry.
1
@William Meyers
Starving millions of its citizens was a grievous crime by the Chinese Communist Party. To downplay that does a grave injustice to the victims.
13
As per 2019 Human rights report by Freedom House, Tibet (score 1, out of 100) ranks the worst in Human Rights violation, jointly with Syria (1/100).
China's human rights violation is not much different than North Korea (score- 3/100), Saudi Arabia (7/100), Afghanistan (27/100). Yet, we hear almost no global condemnation, leave alone steps by major global powers to put pressure on China to address the issue of rampant human rights violation by that Permanent member of UN Security Council, which makes such violation far more serious than any other country.
Western democracies, mainly USA and EU must stand up against China's abuse of power and engaging in ethnic cleansing in Tibet and many other provinces, only to impose Han Chinese and autocratic communist rules of rampant discrimination and suppression of human rights.
39
If Biden becomes President do you think he'll pressure the Chinese? The EU is a talking shop and will do nothing. China's only hope is rid itself of the Han ethnic purist. There isn't a country in the world that likes China and the Chinese don't care and are ill informed, they will take you over and turn your country into a vassal state.
7
@bonku I'm sorry but while I feel the same way I am compelled to ask. Where were the cloths you are wearing made? Did you pay a fair price for them? Perhaps China is the 737MAX of the globalists economy? Lets hope not and that before too much global dimming occurs or the Ocean's fisheries collapse or before violent weather destroys too many harvest seasons that we recognize a new economic system where intermediation is considered bad taste.
1
@Newsbuoy
China's growth story seems to be over. China under Xi is back to the days of Mao's China. I've no problem to buy more expensive food/consumer goods if that means opposing human rights violation or providing level playing field for US companies.
Market seem to love strongmen & autocratic regimes. That why communist countries like China, Vietnam etc became the darling of western investors while poorer democratic nations lost the race. But at the same time the companies & market also love prosperous consumers who have money. That's besides market's desire for a more stable sociopolitical climate. It does not matter if that clam is achieved by fear/torture, & rampant abuse of human rights.
Just last week there was a opinion article on in NY Times, titled, "Why Wall Street Loves Strongmen"
Now these 2 aspects (sociopolitical calm & support for strong/autocratic regimes vs long term stability & lure of prosperous consumers) to run a profitable company or a growing economy of a country is so delicate that high growth rate & huge profit tend to falter once autocratic regimes start to lose its grip over power or challenged by growing public frustration (as in Hong Kong), &/or consumers/Govt in other countries start demanding accountability or level playing field. The same country, which once offered such high profit for various industries, lose its attraction. Investment and money tend to leave even faster when things get sour, as is happening with China under Xi.
1
We remember the Soviet Famine of 1932, 1933. Millions died in that country including Ukraine. Venezuela is experiencing similar problems at this point in time. Fortunately they share a porous border with Colombia. China is a dictatorship They know that the Mao's way of thinking regarding the economy was absolutely wrong, and for that reason they need to hide that shameful part of their history. Communism is bad: no food and no freedom.
16
@M Martínez remember how Herbert Hoover mobilised aid for the Russians and save millions during that period.
6
I am glad that this article was written. But will the ordinary people in Xinyang and elsewhere who are quoted, and identified by the reporter, face repercussions from local and national officials? They have few if any effective remedies or recourse to legal protection if that happens.
9
I lived in a small city in China, and 9 out of 10 people I know here are patriots loving the Chinese government. and it is their belief that they could have been living in dire poverty had the ccp not come to their rescue. many of them, when in their youth, toiled in factories for over ten hours a day yet they think nothing of their own contribution. I had argued over the evilness of the ccp with many of my friends, trying to educate them about what the government did not want them to know. sadly it is futile, and many of them are no longer in speaking term with me because they see me as a brainwashed sycophant of western powers.
CCPs censorship has worked pretty well, leaving the majority of Chinese people blithely ignorant of what happened in the past and what is happening now. they filter out any information that might be at odds with the official narrative.
96
@xin, Thank you for your comment. If it's any consolation, I would point out that critical thinking and overcoming ingrained beliefs, biases and loyalties is difficult for people everywhere.
10
Think majority of the people in China. Are they better off today than before 1949? The recent Chinese history since opium wars determines the thinking of majority. You should talk to Korean friends and ask what they are thinking about Japan. @xin
11
@xin
evilness?? idealistic maybe. also famine was not simply caused by idealism. "toiled in factories for over 10 hrs a day yet they think nothing of their own contribution"- they were (are) the backbone/pillar/foundation of the modern China. They were (are) the heroes of the modern China.
9
What people don't realize is that another famine in China is imminent and the cause for that is the one child policy the communist party has pursued for 2 generations now. Thanks to the one child policy, Chinese kids have no siblings and because their parents were only children also, they don't have any first cousins either. Because of this inverted population pyramid, each of these individuals will be supporting 2 aging parents and 4 aged grandparents as the Chinese are living well into their 80's. If they find a spouse, their spouse will be doing the same. Though the communist party has stepped back from their one child policy, the damage is already done. The real reason the Chinese economy grew fast is because the dependency ratio came down rapidly with the one child policy. As the population ages the dependency ratio will climb up faster than any nation has ever seen and abandoning these old people will become commonplace. When the Soviet Union collapsed 30 years ago, a lot of old people died of starvation as there was not enough food to feed everyone. China will face a similar crisis within the next 10 years.
26
@Rahul Indeed, China has been collapsing for the last 30 years. It will keep collapsing for the next 30!
The Democrat's Green Agenda will guarantee that millions of Americans will suffer greatly. I read Warren's agricultural policy over the weekend and can guarantee you we will have severe food shortages if her plan is implemented. It's the same central planning agenda used by the Russians and Chinese. More importantly, a battery powered tractor will never be able to pull a plow or disk more than 100 yds before dying.
Just to show that some things never change, here is a quote from the 2013 Guardian story about the Great Famine.
"When the head of a production brigade dares to state the obvious – that there is no food – a leader warns him: "That's right-deviationist thinking. You're viewing the problem in an overly simplistic matter.""
Liberals will still blame the Conservatives for their failures, even when they know we are right.
6
Elizabeth Warren believes that capitalism is the great engine of America's success. She simply thinks we ought to put the brakes on polluting with heat-trapping gasses. People who believe that's anything like Maos cultural revolution have bought into fossil-fuel industrialists' propaganda. We have a choice. Slow pollution down; or, continue full speed ahead over a cliff by falsely comparing the regulation needed to a centrally-planned government. Reasonable people like Elizabeth Warren prefer responsible regulation.
30
@Jon Galt
From the name and the text I am fairly sure that nothing will get through to you, but for those skimming the comments here are a few points. Warren has policies based on an detailed understanding of the american economy, the fact that she has proposed legislating and regulating sections of it does not make her a communist, just as having government run police and fire departments don't make America a communist nation. Her environmental plan does not call for anything resembling collectivization, no one is going to take over your farm. The claim that you cant run tractors on batteries for some reason is literally just wrong, and an odd point to chose as your example. Transportation is already switching over to other energy sources, not only because they are green, but because they are just better in many ways. Eventually this will be just as true for farm vehicles.
You have some kind of persecution complex where you think anyone who has left leaning views is out to get you. They are not. Claiming that every green policy is equivalent to the great leap forward is like claiming that every conservative policy is fascist. Obviously neither is true.
You call yourself Galt, but maybe instead of reading Rand, you should try Adam Smith. Even the father of capitalism realized that some regulation and oversight was necessary for a functioning economy.
54
@Jon Galt Are you suggesting/implying members of the CCP are liberals? Sorry but based on the facts- as Joe Friday would insist- they are about as conservative as they come. Of course - such mis-attribution is something that conservatives are especially interested in fostering.
6
We might graciously acknowledge that the Chinese invented political doublespeak to cover the evil of considering up to 40 million deaths to be acceptable for establishing the power of a few, before it showed up in our literature and ‘aspirational’ political strategy in the West.
In our country, we have a dialogue that we recognize we must get right, about reparations for the damage caused to our national soul.
In China, the deaths of tens of millions is not only not discussed or acknowledged, but the perpetrator is celebrated.
29
China was for centuries the most populous and richest country on earth, with advanced art, culture, and technology. The Brits managed to break into China's markets with the help of opium. The US joined in with its White Fleet and gunboat diplomacy. By the time the Japanese invaded, much of China's technology and wealth was gone. It is not entirely correct to lay the suffering of the Chinese at the foot of Communism or Mao; colonialism was a brutal system of exploitation as well, and its effects still impact the Americas, Africa, South and East Asia. Indeed, the US legacy of colonialism still lingers in its Nationalistic impulses to control the world economy through covert means, and slavery capitalism has been replaced with wage capitalism, with most of the gains in the economy since 1980 going to the .01%.
66
@Fran Cisco This is a western-centric rewriting of history. I don't dispute the damage done by the somewhat coerced opium trade and subsequent war, or the US's colonial intentions, but China predates these Western powers by thousands of years. There is a long history China collapsing from runaway wealth disparity, and subsequent unrest, between the coastal regions that are most active in trade and the rural interior. You would attribute all of their current situation to Western actions, and none at all to their own culture, geography, or historic place as the regional power in Asia.
21
@Steph I agree that China's long history is more than the recent victimization narrative. It is in fact a "human story" with lessons for all societies. We would all do well to pay attention and see if we can absorb the lesson(s) without having to again go through the hard parts.
4
@Steph
Yours is a "western centric" response.
And you're mistaken.
A terrible tragedy, obviously, but "...the biggest famine in modern times..." ?
We're forgetting about the Soviet famine of 1932–33 when 10 million people died, also as a result of political machinations. Perhaps the '30s, 25 years before the Great Leap Forward, aren't considered modern times?
11
@MTe Dude. The Great Leap Forward have an estimated death toll of 30-55 million deaths caused by the famine. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that is 'bigger' than 10 million.
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@Inuk Petersen
And, relevant to today, not only are the estimates of death much more than 10 million, the deaths centered on the Ukraine, a fact not forgotten by the people of the Ukraine.
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@Inuk Petersen
You're right! I stand corrected.
I got caught thinking only about the Henan region...
Thanks.
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As regards comparisons between China’s history and our own, there remains one huge difference between the two countries: we can openly learn about and discuss our past and present, in a way that would be unimaginable to the Chinese. I think the protesters in Hong Kong understand that.
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Did you read the recent articles about visitors to plantations in the South? They complained the focus was "too much" about the people who toiled, suffered and died there. So technically we CAN talk and think about our troubled past, maybe it's just that so many of us don't want to.
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@Carr Kleeb There's more than a "technical" distinction between attempted social pressure and the risk of being thrown in jail by the government.
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@Carr Kleeb wrote: "So technically we CAN talk and think about our troubled past, maybe it's just that so many of us don't want to."
Freedom of choice is a lot different from Hobson's (Chairman Xi's) choice.
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All nations have calamites in their histories, Germany is perhaps alone in its sustained historic penance.
On the eve of China's 70th anniversary and national celebration, the timing of this article is unbecoming of a great publication.
Memoirs of slavery, native American genocide, Vietnam and wealth distribution are seldom welcomed by the U.S. populace. Less so on the 4th of July.
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The difference is that we don’t try to rewrite history to suit the political needs of those who violently suppress speech and behavior to maintain a grip on power.
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@Mark
Our president is doing it now, Mark.
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@john
The Great Leap Forward and, not mentioned in this article, the Cultural Revolution were specific to the actions of a political party in a single country. And resulted in tens of millions of deaths through intentional government policy in the span of a decade or so.
America was and is imperfect, but there is no moral equivelance. Slavery is as old as humankind and continues today. It has been practiced in all corners of the globe. The slow-rolling genocide of indigenous peoples was horrific and was not specific to America.
To equate our myriad sins, which are just a part of the sins of humanity (not that that excuses our country's participation in these actions), with the murderous policies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) over the course of about a decade in the 20th century is either uniformed or evil.
BTW, what's happening in China to this day, including placing a million ethnic minorities in concentration camps, make it clear that the evils of the CCP didn't die with Mao.
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Chinese history in a nut shell. More individual freedom, more prosperity. Less government power, less mismanagement and poverty.
That is why Xi doesn’t want people learning history. He wants to take credit for the amazing work that the people of China have accomplished with their new found freedoms.
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...while destroying that work and those freedoms.
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Following the science and telling the truth is difficult for political leaders today even as it was then. When facts are contradicted by faith or ideology, the latter usually wins.
Take for examples: the GLF in 1950s China and climate crisis deniers today.
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China in gluing in to Communist philosophy demonstrates it has intentions of expansion and domination.. coupled with thievery and the recent 20th century elimination of hundreds of million of its population .. add in repression of thought and compression of freedoms and the result is a country not friend to the world... The West has ill compounded the situation historically by pointless endgame actions as with the Viet Nam war ..
]
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Depending on how you look at it, Chinese history is full of ups and downs. Xinyang of Henan is one of the downs. One can blame the central government or most likely the ignorant and incompetent local officials in the local government. But that was the past.
We always look up at the future. Nobody wants to talk about bad memories in the past such as 2008 financial crisis, the weapon of mass destruction, or water torture etc. What helps the future, we will do it. That is why we want to spend our tax dollars on education, infrastructure, high-tech, and research and development.
We like to talk, and we talk big such as MAGA. But few activities in the government actually helping this country. On the other hand, China is doing things to promote education and research. Not learn from their mistakes, we should try to learn from their recent success such as 5G, quantum computer, and AI applications.
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@Usok
Sadly, China has more downs than ups. After the brutal disaster of the Great Leap Forward came the Cultural Revolution. Things got better under Deng, but that has now been quickly repressed by the age-old solution of Chinese leaders - control the people and keep out foreign ideas.
So, it's China that's not learning from its mistakes. Innovation and change is dangerous for the leaders in Beijing. So that will be suppressed soon enough.
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Plenty of countries honor leaders who were far from great. In fact usually when you have great after your name, you are usually not great.
Alex. the great conquered the world, not exactly a Lincoln.
Peter the great loved torture.
Roman emperors slaughtered people right and left. Napoleon conquered Europe.
Having said that Mao rises to the level of the worst of these "great" leaders causing millions of people to starve and/or disappear/and/or be executed.
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@Paul
All of those historical leaders you cite brought civilization, culture, and order that is still present today. Mao brought chaos, starvation, laughable inefficiencies and impossibilities (smelt steel in your backyard!), mass murder, and terror of the masses, to name a few.
Alexander, Peter, Rome, and Napoleon created systems that brought enlightenment; Mao compelled total ignorance.
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@NorthernVirginia-Thank you for your reply. You are kind of agreeing with me except you see black and white, I see shades of gray. Alex., Peter, Rome and Nap. certainly had their up sides but also brutal down sides.
Mao, as mentioned, was the "worst of the greats". The Chinese still honor him so he must have done something right.
It is sort of like some southerns today who honor Jefferson Davis, Lee etc. instead of looking at them for what their were, traitors who threatened the first major democracy in 2,500 yrs., over the evil institution of slavery.
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@Paul
The major distinction is that none of the organizations you cite still exists and rules over people. None except the Chinese Communists, who still rule over a people that they have thoroughly and shamelessly exploited, brainwashed and, when convenient, murdered by the millions. The good news — and this is where I know you and I are in complete agreement — is that the twisted goons who lead the Chinese Communist Party, and the pusillanimous miscreants that make up the party membership, won’t be in power much longer.
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Purging the country’s history? Sounds like what the Republicans in every local government and state house of trying to do in this country.
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@Patrick Sewall I don't see Republicans tearing down statues or renaming buildings.
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There’s a profound difference here and I suspect you know it when you’re honest with yourself.
@Sci guy Your point? First, a reasonable argument can be named to tear down a statute or rename a building. And, as with most reasonable arguments, people can in good faith disagree. Second, surely you don't think tearing down statues or renaming buildings are the only way to purge history. Indeed, that method is only one among many. Calling enslaved people "workers" and rape "a few minutes of action" are, sadly, among others ways to give a false or grossly misleading account of the past.
I continue to be bewildered by why any Americans continue to support the Republican Party in its present guise. Of the explanations that I've heard, plain old fear, racism (another manifestation of fear), greed, low intelligence, and acting from one's worst self seem to ring true. As humans, we are all capable of any of these things and need to be vigilant. People who continue to support the Republican Party, the current president and the Republican platform give the rest of us an opportunity to improve our own character and to act on it. Regrettably, many are not seizing that opportunity.
Of all, the despots of the 20th century including Hitler and Stalin, Mao was probably the worst. He continued to believe his Communist propaganda despite the total devastation that it caused.
Xi, is just following in Mao's footsteps - the people must be controlled in ever possible way to make sure that they follow what the Communists believe to be true.
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@Grace
The Japanese Empire led by Emperor Hirohito invaded and occupied China and killed 30 million Chinese in the deadliest holocaust of World War II.
Nazi Germany killed 27.5 million citizens of the Soviet Union.
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@Grace Yawn. The Cold War called. It wanted its stale propagandas back.
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What has been great in China, over long history--what has put China ahead of the distant west in so many ways time and again--is that it always had a blend of top down and bottom up influences. The top down structure has made it a society able to mobilize for great efforts and to spread ideas broadly, while resisting every wind that blows, but there has also been an effect produced by the insulation of the ruling "classes" from practical concerns. Those with formal power have needed Sancho Panza figures to be realistic and creative, and have considered their contributions in light of the bigger picture. But repeatedly, crude, alien and purely top down ways have been clumsily imposed on the sophisticated Chinese organism, always with disastrous consequences. The poorly integrated grafting on of Marxism is only the latest clumsy bump to kill millions. Had the hierarchy been more responsive to local complaints solutions might have been more forthcoming.
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The self-serving, self-promoting, authoritarian Xi Jinping is worthy of Samuel Johnson's observation that "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."
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@tencato
Oh, pardon me, I thought you were referring to Donald Trump.
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@Mimi All of those words do fit Trump it's true, but they also fit Xi just as well. They're cut from the same cloth.
@tencato
Which American state, territory or possession is named China?
How many members of the U.S. Congress represent American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands?
With 5% of humanity, America is first in prisoners with 25 % of the world's total, more than China with 20% of humans.
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