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Over the last forty years, China has
- Gotten over 800 million people out of poverty
- Gotten their literacy rate up from 65% to 97%
- Gotten their GDP up from 191 billion USD to 17.7 trillion USD
- Became the world’s leader in manufacturing
Meanwhile, standards of living have gone backwards in the United States. What is China doing right that the US is incapable of doing?
tldr; Civil war happens. Man takes over Chinese government. Man decides that economic success is worth the sacrifice of any deaths that would happen from purposely starving the country. Plan miraculously works.
The story starts with Mao Zedong and the Great Leap Forward. The Chinese Civil War had been won by the side that would soon be known as the Chinese Communist
Party. When Mao became Chairman of the CCP, he started implementing laws that forced the country to abandon its agrarian economy for an industrial one. Mao realized that the modern era would be defined by industry and wanted to take advantage of that.
The Great Leap Forward did exactly what it was supposed to do, but led to the deaths of millions. Chairman Mao's plan was responsible for more deaths than many other events throughout history. (Mao is often ranked amongst some of the more deadly men throughout history.)
The last few decades have also seen China utilize perhaps the second most successful internal propaganda program. Propaganda is not exclusive to China, it's even utilized in The United States. (IE: "America is the greatest country in the world!") China just has a very successful campaign. It's also worth mentioning that East Asia has a reputation for having individuals with high work ethics. These two aspects combined with the Great Leap Forward have created a culture that feeds successful economic development.
Again, I want to emphasize how much death was initially caused by this shift in economic policy. It's estimated that 15 to 50 million people died as a result of a what was essentially a forced agricultural collapse. While the US could feasibly achieve similar results, neither the liberal or conservative sides would be okay with it outside of fringe radical groups. The conservatives would disagree with the communist aspects and the liberals would disagree with the moral aspects.
No. The communist revolution of China did not cause more death than Hitler. This is a horrible, horrible, take. And blatant holocaust denial. I throughly believe your statement is based in pure propagandized ignorance and not malice.
24 million Soviets
10 million Chinese
6 million Polish
300,000 Americans
4 million+ Germans
2 million Japanese
6 million Jews
Thousands of other Holocaust victims. This is Hitler’s and Fascism’s death toll on direct aggression and direct genocide alone. Not even to mention other atrocities done by fascist Japan, Italy, and Fascist movements around the world.
You are also using the absolute highest estimate for the deaths of the Great Leap Forward. The estimate is between 15 million and 45 million. With 30% cause attributed to natural disaster. Accidental scientific error caused a major play. Just as it did when Americans over tilled and caused their Dust Bowl. When Europe under-sanitized and allowed the Black Death to destroy themselves.
Read on Churchill’s forced famine on India.
Read on the US and NATO’s current imperialist death cult activity in the Middle East.
Why do you focus so highly on a historical disaster when China has made such obvious massive improvements to both their people’s lives and the 3rd worlds ?
I deleted my previous replies in order to condense them into a single one that (hopefully) comes across more clearly. I'll reply to your post in 3 parts.
After a quick Google search, I confirmed that you are correct. I had based my initial comment on research I performed over a year ago at this point. Perhaps most unsettling, is that fact that the Hitler vs Chairman Mao quote came directly from my university professor. (The 45,000 statement actually originated in my own mistaken memory, admittedly.) have since edited that portion of the comment to be more general and honest. It seems that the American propaganda that I reference in the above comment even effects historical events as major as this. I want to give my sincerest apologies for any misinformation. (American education very rarely covers Soviet/Russian history and Japanese history. I somehow doubt my highschool even compiled their death counts into the educational material. WW2 lessons almost always end with D-Day and the nukes.)
As for why I focus on the event, it is because I unfortunately associate the event with modern China's success. Similar to how I associate The United State's success to it's own negative events. Unfortunately, nefarious acts often lead to a country's eventually success. Historically, we've all committed heinous behavior. I don't actually dispute the success modern China has had. I would argue that in many ways, it's the most successful modern country. Perhaps I'm just being pessimistic.
The Dust Bowl is a noteworthy mention. The American highschool/secondary school system very rarely mentions this event. I always found that to be a horrific oversight and wouldn't be suprised if this was a purposeful decision to mask negative connotations. And Churchill is a very much disliked figurehead in my household. My fianceé grew up being told about what he did to India. Churchill was a coward who was lucky that the Americans and Soviets were on his side.
I haven't done any reading on the last subject you mentioned. It wouldn't suprise me in the slightest, however. The US government likes to meddle in affairs it has very little reason to. We should have left the middle east over a decade ago.
Are there any reading sources you specifically recommend? I like learning about history and the best way to find the truth is to find the common factors from the various countrues involved.
I see. I had seen the original comment at 6 am and it immediately struck a nerve as holocaust denial and fascist rhetoric is at a high these days I just wanted to bite it in the ass as soon as I saw it.
The “worse than Hitler” argument has always been very prevalent in Western circles. I think a large portion of people have heard the “Communism killed 100 million people” quotation online and from the older generation and I think it is very important to kill this myth immediately as it pops up, as well as where it came from.
The “Communism killed 100 million” line originated from the book The Black Book of Communism written by self-described anti-communists back in 1997, the book was written as the retaliating response to the 1944 Russian book The Black Book of Soviet Jewry which was a documentation that followed the Nazi atrocities on the eastern front and was written for the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee that existed during WWII.
At time of release, the Black Book of Communism became very popular among large media circles, but was immediately criticized by academic spheres for its blatant inflation of numbers, direct comparison of Fascism and Communism, and historical inaccuracies. They pulled the number out of their ass, and everyone ran with it because it was catchy.
You must remember too, the McCarthy Era War on Communism and Red Scare propaganda, McCarthy was incredibly successful on this propaganda front. Famines have, for whatever reason, successfully been linked to Communism and treated as if it is unique to it, which is incredibly silly if you pay attention to famines that swept across feudal nations, and “economic famines” (any starvation in modern day due to inability to purchase food) which are bluntly obvious.
Russians, Chinese, hell the majority of Asian nations, are stereotypically indifferent when it comes to PR, Asians have always had a ‘keep your head down’ attitude when faced with prejudice, this carries into the “lack of defense” seen in political arguments. Also language barrier.
There is reason Fascism and Nazism is glossed over, told not to be touched as it is taboo, and described simply as “Racist, antisemitic, bad” without explaining exactly how nations are put under fascism and that fascism can have many different colors and faces.
I will find some material for you, all of my reading has been in Russian. My wife is Chinese, she was born and raised in China, I will ask her. We both do not regularly read English literature so I must find something translated and digestible for what you can understand.
In true Leftist fashion I’ve rambled
I figured that most of your reading had been done in other languages. It would only make sense to read in your primary one. Regardless, thank you for the clarifications.
I'm still a bit irritated that my professor would make such statements without it being true, but I suppose I shouldn't be suprised. A refresher course on the second world war might do me some good. (Particularly one that covers more than the American side of the war.)
Propaganda in the USA isnt just "USA is the best country in the world"
One difference in propaganda in the USA is the hysteria against "toxic masculinity" where in China they're teaching masculinity classes in school to young men. Here we are moving towards teaching gender studies.
The USA is going down the shitter. I think you're smart and you'll see it when you get older and once you do you wont be able to unsee it. We arent setting ourselves up to be competitive. We are fighting over non issues while our competitors are kicking ass. What pop culture is fighting for is only making us weaker.
I could go on fairly long rants about American propaganda. I just didn't want to bog down a comment with an unrelated trivia piece. I mainly mentioned the one form of it as it's the most famous form of American propaganda.
Politics is built on the back of successful propaganda campaigns. Both the left and right and using them, but only the left seems to be targeting the younger generations in a positive outlook. The conservative parties need to stop demonizing youth; at least if they want younger voters to turn red. This is coming from someone who mostly leans Democrat. The recent midterm election was almost disastrous for Republicans purely because it had a higher than average young voter turnout.
I left out a lot of more advanced information such as the exact nature of what the Great Leap Forward entailed, but the above contains enough information to truly understand the basic context of China's modern success.
If you really want to learn more, look up Maoism, The Great Leap Forward, and the Chinese Civil War.
Cant forget the one child policy that's now hardcore screwing over china. At first it seemed like a good idea, capping population so the food supply could meet demands. Problem was that theres now a gender gap and you now have like 40 million men who are condemned to die alone. All that pent up energy creates instability. As well as seriously bottlenecking the population to the point where the chinese manufacturing base will grind to a halt, ultimately collapsing their system.
Not only that, let me give you even more advances of China
- China is the absolute dominator of progress in Green energy by massive margins. China upgraded more renewable electricity capacities than the US, EU, and India all put together. China has upgraded facilities to produce over 280 added gigawatts of renewable energy in just the last 2 years. Last year, more offshore wind powered generation was added than the rest of the world combined.
4 out of 5 solar panels in the entire world are Chinese produced.
China’s new nuclear power producer capacity is larger than the rest of the world combined.
China’s per capita emissions are lower than the US and even with 30% of the worlds entire industrial share it’s emission share is less than 27%
China is the world leader in forestation and converting bare land into forest.
- China’s life expectancy has nearly doubled, and since the founding of the CCP has gone from 40 to 78
- China has been polled as the Most Optimistic country in the world, based on the poll question “Do you believe the world is becoming a better place?”
I mean I could keep going on. As well as China eliminating debts in 3rd world nations, peacekeeping abilities, their education and health programs booming, tourism, athletic excellence, innovations, on and on and on.
Sadly though, China's growth has been going too fast. Like, crazy fast. They'll have to get as much out of it as they can before their population is dominated by old and retired people while having low birth rates. This will have huge consequences for the entire world.
The most important thing to ensure the future of your country is to raise the youth we to run the country. Can anyone argue we are doing that in the USA? We arent investing in our kids enough here. We are teaching them happiness and a life free of being offended is the most important goals.
The West is filled with sjw degeneracy atm, which is weak; plus we have a weak form of goverment in the West. China's goverment is sinister, and far from optimal, but you can't say it's weak.
When you start with basically nothing it's pretty easy to appear to be prosperous. Almost every nation in the world has been on board to help china become a properous nation.
In contrast when you are considered the top or even close to the top it becomes very hard to stay there much less show double or triple improvement.
Just take sports as an example the best teams will most likely lose half their assistance coaches to the lower ranked teams. It's hard for the top to find the replacements because if you are that good somebody has probably offered a head coach position not an assistant position.
China hired, bought, and stoled western leadership and ideas, and many Western or advanced countries willingly gave or helped them.
They are also repeating some of the same mistakes. When the Chinese people willingly and successfully start objecting and demanding concessions they will repeat what the UK and USA went through in the 1960s through 80s. Wages will triple, condition improvement, (job,home,living, and treatment) will be demanded, and companies as well as the production will move to another third world country where it is less expensive to do business.
I mean china did grow rapidly but I dont think they can continue with that momentum. Their growth was slowing down even before the pandemic.
They got a housing crisis, a human resource crisis, on top of a over abundance of male crisis. Also china has a nasty habit of building cities with an intention of them having a pop of a few million only to have only 80k people live there. So the construction spending is just to keep the employees employed, but they cut corners in order to line their own pockets. Leading to buildings collapsing and being fire prone.
All of this is worsened by the fact they have no real allies they can count on in war. They know their screwed if they get naval blockaded. They bullied and alienated their neighbors while hurling death threats seasonally to their neighbor that gets under the table support of every country that perfers to not be under chinese control.
In conclusion china looks good on paper and might even be a solid short term investment solution. But when it crashes, and it will crash. it will crash hard and probably not be able to survive the internal turmoil.
I'm open for china to fail. Sure things will be more expensive but I care about the future humanities saved of not having an overly authoritarian system controlling 16% of the population, committing a genocide, and blatantly devaluing peoples lives beyond what would be necessary for governmental functions.