Source: quora.com
Original title: How did Mao manage to kill ~78 million people?
I’m researching this extraordinary claim for a book and I’ll add to my answer as I uncover more information. Please feel free to suggest changes in the comments.
Tzu-kung asked about government. Confucius said, "Sufficient food, sufficient armament, and sufficient confidence of the people." Tzu-kung said, "Forced to give up one of these, which would you abandon first? Confucius said, "I would abandon the armament." Tzu-kung said, "Forced to give up one of the remaining two, which would you abandon first?" Confucius said, "I would abandon food. There have been deaths from time immemorial, but no state can exist without the confidence of the people. Analects (12:7).
I call the claim ‘extraordinary’ becaus
- During his 40 years service Mao doubled China’s population, life-expectancy and caloric intake and quadrupled GDP and literacy. Such accomplishments are rare amongst mass murderers. Nobody praised him for that. Nobody even noticed. Here’s a snapshot of China’s Death rates compared to similar developing countries, by Gwydion Madawc Williams (United Nations Data):
- The Chinese typically dislike murderers, especially mass murderers. Yet Mao retained the confidence of the people and retains it still. The Chinese people, who lived with him for 40 years, loved him and regarded him as a hero. Today their descendents regard him as a greater hero than Deng Xiaoping, the father of China’s current prosperity, who didn’t kill anybody.
- The violence during civil war was largely the responsibility of factions opposed to Mao. (Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, 8/8/66 in People’s China: Social Experimentation, Politics, Entry onto the World Scene 1966 through 1972. NY: Vintage Books, 1974. p. 277.)
- 78 million people would have been 15% of the entire population of China yet the Chinese people didn’t notice? Or object? Or care? Grumble? Have hard feelings?
- The US ambassador to China 1946 - 1949, John Leighton Stuart, said that 3–7 million people starved to death every year in China during his tenure. In 1946 over 10 million people starved to death within three provinces that he knew about. Famine was endemic but nobody mentioned it until ‘The Communists’ won the war.
- 22 million Chinese died of starvation during World War II thanks to Japanese imperialism and the murderous U.S.-backed regime. (Associated Press; Ann Arbor News, 10/1/89, b9). Nobody complained about that.
- Mao took responsibility for 800,000 deaths: "Whom have we executed? What sort of people? Elements for whom the masses had great hatred and whose blood-debt was heavy." (Chairman Mao Talks to the People, NY: Pantheon, 1974, p. 77). These were popularly sanctioned executions after people’s trials against the most hated landlords and pro-Japanese traitors who had terrorized the peasants during World War II and its aftermath. 800,000 is a lot of people, but it came after 100 years of invasion, civil war and occupation. Mao also called for fewer executions in the future. (Ibid., 78).
- I cannot discover Mao’s motive for killing people he’d risked his entire life to save. Was it because he’s a Communist? And Communists love killing people? Did he hate Chinese? Was he just a psychopathic, blood-crazed killer who loved to see others suffer?
- For a psychopathic, blood-crazed killer who loved to see others suffer, he seemed obsessed with their wellbeing. The majority of China’s population was poor and illiterate then, with little access to basic needs, education or medical care. In 1965 Mao said, "Medical education should be reformed.There’s no need to read so many books. ... It will be enough to give three years to graduates from higher primary schools. They would then study and raise their standards mainly through practice. If this kind of doctor is sent down to the countryside, even if they haven’t much talent, they would be better than quacks and witch doctors and the villages would be better able to afford to keep them. ... the way doctors are trained is only for the benefit of the cities. And yet in China over 500 million of our population are peasants." (Directive on Public Health, June 26, 1965)
- The census figures don’t support mass deaths unless you use 1953 as the base year, when random sampling (not a census because of shortage of money) showed that the population of China had risen from 450 to 600 million in six years.
- The Chinese demographer, Ping-ti Ho, Professor of History at the University of Chicago, in Studies on the Population of China, 1368-1953 (Harvard East Asian Studies No.4, 1959) mentioned numerous flaws in the 1953 census: It was not a census in the technical definition of the term; the separate provincial samples show a population increase of 30% between 1947-1953, a period of heavy revolutionary struggle. The claim that 17–30 million people were missing in 1960-61 is probably worthless if there was no certainty about the existence of 600 million Chinese. The ‘missing’ people didn’t starve in 1960-61; they never existed.
- In 1963 the Chinese press called the famine of 1961-62 the most severe since 1879. In 1961 China imported 6.2 million tons of grain from Canada and Australia. In 1962, imports decreased to 5.32 million tons. Between 1961 and 1965, China imported a total of 30 million tons of grain at a cost of US$2 billion (Robert Price, International Trade of Communist China Vol II, pp 600-601). The Chinese government tried to import more but US pressure on Canada and Australia (where I was living and where indignation towards the US policy was high) to limit sales to China, and US interference with shipping prevented China from importing more. Australia, with a huge surplus, was eager to provide unlimited credit to China for grain purchase but US prevailed and millions starved – but didn’t die – in China. (It is US standard operating procedure to cause havoc in a country whose government they oppose, then blame the havoc on the target government).
- In the United States, a developed country where conditions are nowhere near as difficult as they were in China between 1949-1976, there are 20,000 murders and 75,000 deaths of Blacks annually because of systematic oppression, and a work-related death every five minutes, and a death of a child every 50 minutes for lack of food or money(Historical Triumph: Capitalism or Socialism?). Yet we almost never hear that the victims of such capitalist violence were "killed" by presidents Reagan, Bush, Clinton etc. as we are apt to hear with regard to famine deaths under Mao.
- Applying the same methods to the USA in 1986 as Western scholars and media used to analyze China’s famine, 75,980 Blacks died from inadequate health care. (Statistical Abstract of the United States 1989, p. 74). If America had as many Blacks as there are Chinese that would produce 2.5 million deaths in 1989 and every year after that, for a total of almost 70,000,000 deaths from neglect. Can that really be the case? Does anyone care?
- Recently an American drug company killed 500,000 people with a drug whose toxicity they already knew about but refused to report. Nobody complained about that.
- High mortality figures for China are based on comparing projected population size with actual population size. This method assumes constant population growth, which is far from reality during tumultuous periods like revolutions. The statistics are also based on figures supplied by China’s enemies. Here are the CIA’s internal reports on the famine:
- ECONOMIC SITUATION IN COMMUNIST CHINA. National Intelligence Estimate. Director of Central Intelligence. 4 April 1961. CONCLUSIONS 1. The Chinese Communist regime is now facing the most serious economic difficulties it has confronted since it consolidated its power over mainland China. As a result of economic mismanagement, and, especially, of two years of unfavorable weather, food production in 1960 was little if any larger than in 1957—at which time there were about 50 million fewer Chinese to feed. 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 June harvests. The dislocations caused by the “Leap Forward” and the removal of Soviet technicians have disrupted China’s industrialization pro-gram. These difficulties have sharply reduced the rate of economic growth during 1960 and have created a serious balance of payments problem. Public morale, especially in rural areas, is almost certainly at its lowest point since the Communists assumed power, and there have been some instances of open dissidence. (Paras. 7-25). PROSPECTS FOR COMMUNIST CHINA: National Intelligence Estimate. Director of Central Intelligence. 2 May 1962. CONCLUSIONS: The future course of events in Communist China will be shaped largely by three highly unpredictable variables: the wisdom and realism of the leadership, the level of agricultural output and the nature and extent of foreign economic relations. During the past few years all three variables have worked against China. In 1958 the leadership adopted a series of ill-conceived and extremist economic and social programs; in 1959 there occurred the first of three years of bad crop weather; and in 1960 Soviet economic and technical cooperation was largely suspended. The combination of these three factors has brought economic chaos to the country. 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. (Paras. 5-14).
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Mao explicitly ordered that the Cultural Revolution be non-violent. Central Committee Party directives stated, "Debates should be conducted by reasoning, not by coercion or force" and, "As regards scientists, technicians and ordinary members of working staffs, as long as they are patriotic, work energetically, are not against the Party and socialism and maintain no illicit relations with any foreign country we should continue to apply the policy of unity-criticism-unity.(Talks to the People, p 281)
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Do you know what happened to those responsible for the illegal killings? Song Binbin murdered her high school principal, the first teacher in China’s history killed by her own students (in a Confucian society that reveres teachers). Song was not a Party member. Her teacher, Bian Zhongyun, was a famous educator and the school’s Party leader. Song Binbin fled to the USA where she was embraced as a ‘political refugee’.
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Mao’s enemies in China directly blamed Mao and his followers, the so-called Gang of Four, for a total of 34,000 executions or deaths by repression during the ten years of the Cultural Revolution. If Mao’s enemies are correct, should the 34,000 have been executed? The Revolution still had lots of enemies within China and lots more outside China working to overthrow the Party.
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Mao never claimed that the Great Leap Forward had been without mistakes and Mao himself wrote self-criticisms on some practices of the Great Leap. Unlike the Soviets, the Chinese admitted when their goals had been too high or unreasonable. Mao was grumpy when called on to admit his screwups, but he did admit them. How many national leaders have ever been willing to do that? Have you ever heard of one?
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Many of Mao’s own enemies who were purged (expelled) from the party survived. Deng Xiaoping, d. 1997, survived being purged as the number two revisionist and was sent to re-education camp, as was President Xi’s father. Both returned and continued serving their country. The Chinese have always been remarkably frank about those tough times. Here’s Xi Jinping himself talking about them: ““People who have little experience with power, those who have been far away from it, tend to regard these things as mysterious and novel. But I look past the superficial things: the power and the flowers and the glory and the applause. I see the detention houses, the fickleness of human relationships. I understand politics on a deeper level.” [Chinese Times, 2000]
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The Chinese who reported atrocities were almost all emigres whose status was undermined by the Revolution and who found a warm reception in the West when they reported them. This is common with all emigre elites, as we saw with Iraqi emigres before the Iraq War.
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- Amartya Sen – who won a Nobel Prize for his study of famine – observed that India and China had "similarities that were quite striking, including death rates" when development planning began 50 years ago. "But there is little doubt that as far as morbidity, mortality and longevity are concerned, China has a large and decisive lead over India" (in education and other social indicators as well). He estimates the excess of mortality in India over China to be close to 4 million a year: "India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame, 1958-1961” (‘An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions’ Dreze and Sen. 2013). In other words, India has killed 100 million people than China since development planning began. Nobody uttered a word of criticism.
Lots of People died in China. Lots of people die in big nations every year and we know lots of people died in China, and we know there was a famine. That’s about all we know.
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