RocksteadyDotNet
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- Jul 29, 2008
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I spent the entire night last night reading about the recent history of China, from the Cultural Revolution onwards. I think both yuchai and rchiu are right. It's a mix.
But holy shit.
Mao Zedong was severely misguided at best and the entire system was nuts. Here's what I can recall off the top of my head:
1. Mao was extremely suspicious of intellectuals and bourgeoisie philosophies. He also believed that more people meant more manpower and thus, more might and productivity. He told everyone to breed like rabbits and even awarded people with large families. Hence China's overpopulation problem.
2. He believed that the key to a prosperous China was to maximize grain and steel production. He thought that it would be easy to catch up to a country like the UK in 15 years.
3. His game plan was to make all of China produce grain and then use that money to industrialize and produce more machinery and steel.
4. He took all private land away. Farmers could no longer work for themselves and they were all forced to live and eat in communes. IN ALL OF CHINA, a country larger than the US. Imagine every one of us living in a commune.
5. He put all of them to work producing grain and placed party members in charge of reporting on production numbers in their respective areas.
6. He enacted new farming methods that did not work.
7. The party members all wanted to gain favor with Mao, so they always over reported grain production (sometimes by a factor of 10) and reported that Mao's new farming methods were actually working.
8. Mao saw these numbers, figured production was huge, and proceeded to export 1/3 of the reported grain while refusing imports of food and aid. He even gave grain away to allies for free. And of course he had shipments of grain sent to the capital.
9. So he exported away 1/3 of the over-reported amount of grain. This meant the *actual* grain that was shipped out of the countryside was almost all the grain the people had.
10. People all over the place started to die of famine because Mao was shipping away all their food due to the over-reporting. When they said they were starving Mao thought that it couldn't be the case (he was only take 1/3 of the reported amounts, right?) and thought some people were hoarding food. So began a series of violent investigations to find who was hoarding food.
11. Meanwhile the party members continued to over report food production.
12. Mao figured everything was peachy so he moved a lot of farmers away from food production into steel production. He didn't know jack shit about making steel and believed some guy who said high quality steel could be made in small backyard furnaces (it can only be made in huge refineries).
13. Mao took away a lot of these farmers and turned them all into impromptu steel-makers making steel from these tiny backyard furnaces.
14. What resulted was that there was now even *less* farmers producing food for a country that was already in deep, deep famine. And the farmers who were now producing steel were making shit quality useless value-less steel from their useless backyard furnaces. Even more people died. But of course Mao didn't know the reality because the reports were all lies designed to gain favor with him.
15. Mao also had a deep distrust of intellectuals. To him, this meant anyone in middle school and above. So he shipped EVERYONE with a middle school education or higher to the countryside where they can "learn" from the farmers and become re-educated. My parents' entire family were among these people. This is the "lost generation" that you hear about. All they managed to do during this period of re-education was avoid starvation and work in the fields. Many people died.
16. Also during this time a group of you college students indoctrinated with Mao philosophy began spreading the word of Mao within the intellectual community. Mao liked this and officially backed them. Groups formed throughout the nation, and thus formed the Red Guard. Yes, the Red Guard was a bunch of young students.
17. Mao sent the Red Guard to re-educate and persuade non-believers to believe in Mao's teachings. The Red Guard did this through violence instead.
18. Factions built up within the Red Guard and they were causing enormous discord, so Mao ordered them to go back to school. Those that persisted were squashed by the army.
19. Even more people died, obviously.
20. Eventually Mao lost power or some shit and the government came to its senses and enacted some capitalist principles. They also squashed religion and superstition, telling the populace to only trust reason and science. They had a propaganda war on religion and the old ways. Books were burned. Museums destroyed. The religious were persecuted.
21. The economy started to recover but it was mismanaged and there was rampant inflation.
22. Many people, especially students, demanded reforms in government. Greater transparency, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly. They went on hunger strikes across the nation, most notably Tienanmen Square.
23. The Chinese government tried at first to compromise with the protesters but everything was too disorganized and there were too many demands.
24. The government, fearing it was building up to a coup, sent in armed soldiers and tanks. They used live fire to kill and clear out the protesters.
25. Rebellion squashed.
26. As a result, the government learned from this mistake and freedoms *decreased* and censorship *increased* and transparency *decreased.*
27. Modern China.
I'm sorry this is news to you.
China is a shithole country, full of useless people with a backwards culture.
It's like India but not so bad.
They would have been better off it Japan hadn't lose the war. Some cultures just need intervention from a higher people.
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