There was a recent post talking about famines under Communist leaderships, so I figured I’d respond with my own post addressing only one of them, as doing both would take too much time, and very few would read the entire thing anyway.

Firstly, yes, there was a famine in China under the Communists. That’s true. Was it entirely man made? Absolutely not. China also regularly seen famines for years prior to the Communist revolution, however, for some reason, people on both the Right and Left, ignore the famines that happened prior and focus solely on the famine under the Communists in attempts to make it out to be something unique with the Communists; while at the same time ignoring the fact that the Communists ended famines entirely in China, yet receive no credit for doing so.

Secondly, it is true that Mao holds a good deal of responsibility for various policies he implemented during that time, but to place full blame on Mao while ignoring other contributing factors is simply dishonest and ahistorical. For instance, China during the GLF experienced one of its worst floods of the century in many areas, as well as severe drought in others, thus making agriculture (the prime mode of production at the time) incredibly difficult. There was also a brutal winter that hit as well in 1958, of which Mao does hold responsibility for the quick and dramatic collectivization of agriculture during that time, which was, admittedly, a poor decision made by him (at that time). There were also tons of people who refused to cooperate (predominantly the former land owning class). And often times local and regional officials would lie about their agricultural outputs to Beijing in order to further and advance their careers. All of these things taken into consideration, to say the famine was “entirely man made” is just simply untrue.

Thirdly, the death toll. Estimates range from 30, 50, 70, to a 100 million. Any of which would be impossible to hide, or cover up, no matter how hard the Communists tried (if they even tried to do so). What’s funny, is that these figures have no basis whatsoever. We know for a fact that it’s not the 50, 70, or 100 million, as most academics have now acknowledged that the highest accepted figure is around 38 million. However, even the 38 million figure is disputed for a variety of reasons:

(1) There was no reliable demographic censuses to make possible an accurate figure.

(2) It’s hard to know whether some casualties were deaths by hunger or premature deaths due to hardship.

(3) Some estimates try to assess the ‘missing’ population on the basis of normal death and birth rates and therefore may have included millions of those who might not have been born.

(4) For some reason, natural disasters such as floods and droughts aren’t considered a factor for the famine (we all know why) when discussing the Great Leap Forward.

To recap, does Mao and the Communists hold responsibility for their actions? Yes. Did they make some drastic mistakes? Yes. Did they orchestrate a famine as some kind of extermination policy to kill millions of people? No. And no modern evidence suggests this either.