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"Great Leap Forward"? Improvements only came when they abandoned communism, and came up with a fig leaf of 'mao was 80% correct' It is hard to rewrite history
by brc 11y ago
"Great Leap Forward"?
Improvements only came when they abandoned communism, and came up with a fig leaf of 'mao was 80% correct'
It is hard to rewrite history with a different set of rules, but I think it's fair to say that given the experience of Hong Kong, China would have been better off without 30-40 years of communist rule.
- monort 11y agoNot only Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore too. It's an experiment with control groups.
- brc 11y agoYes in my haste I forgot that Taiwan is the perfect A/B test control group, because of the postwar history. It had a lot of the same issues to overcome. I am biased towards Hong Kong having visited and loved the place, so it's always the first one I think of.
- mikeash 11y agoWell yes, I covered that in my last paragraph. It may well be fair to say that. But it doesn't change the fact that the Chinese Communist Party presided over a period which took China from the world's punching bag to a strong, independent power. Maybe they made it happen, maybe it happened despite them, maybe it's a mix, but they get a lot of credit from the population for being the ones in control while it happened.