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The pragmatic and well educated Communist Party leaders have already been responsible for the death of over 15 million Chinese in the 1958 famine, when they mud

by nir 17y ago

The pragmatic and well educated Communist Party leaders have already been responsible for the death of over 15 million Chinese in the 1958 famine, when they muddled with nature to achieve unrealistic growth goals: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine No doubt, the Party is pragmatic (so pragmatic it supplied Sudan with weapons during the Darfur genocide, collecting their support in Copenhagen in return). It is well aware that to maintain its control over the nation it has to keep delivering the current high growth rate. This has a lot more to do with the politicians' power than the people's quality of life.

fleitz 17y ago
Obviously they didn't need their support in Copenhagen to get what they wanted.
chrischen 17y ago
Unfortunately short-sighted pragmatism could mean the death of us all.
lionhearted 17y ago
I'm as against communism and social planning as anyone you'll meet, but refencing 1958 isn't quite correct here. Deng Xiaoping's reforms began China moving towards a modern society. If anything, the general idea behind Copenhagen is more similar to the Cultural Revolution than walking away - it's trying to centrally plan what some people think would be a better world.
papersmith 17y ago
Only they were different leaders. Traditionally PRC had two factions. The Maoists and the rivals, let's call them the pragmatists. The Maoists were bent on communist doctrines and making great leaps. The pragmatists were more into what already works. The heads of the pragmatists were Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Shaoqi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Shaoqi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_xiaoping http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_xiaoping The famine as you mentioned was attributed in part to Mao's radical policies, and because so Mao stepped down while Liu Shaoqi took his chair for a few years. While Liu was in power he played with capitalist policies similar to those in place today (this was the early 60s), Mao got paranoid and ousted him and Deng, and cultural revolution was launched in part to undo their popularity. Liu died in house arrest. After Mao died in the late 70s, Deng took over and finally switched to market economy. The current line of leaders descended from his faction of pragmatists. Maoism is pretty much dead in China, a new split in the party is between the populists and the princelings, much more similiar to the dichotomy of liberals and conservatives in the west. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generations_of_Chinese_leadership http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generations_of_Chinese_leadersh...
- nir 17y ago
  They are obviously different leaders (and I suppose the PRC have changed quite a bit since 1958 in any case) but my point is a more general one - "the leaders know best" is never a good assumption. Assuming most HN readers consider themselves independent minded and skeptic towards authority it's disappointing to see the credit given here to China's leaders, who are chosen and operate mostly behind closed doors, as if they really operate with their people's best interest in mind (or even know what it is). I wouldn't rely so blindly on any Western leader, certainly not on a leader in a closed, one party system like China's.
  - papersmith 17y ago
    I don't think the OP ever implied that the leaders know the best. It was meant to be read from the viewpoint that there aren't good or bad politicians, there are only politicians making good or bad decisions. In fact from what I've read, the current generation of Chinese leaders aren't particularly smart as people have given them credit for. Though they do seem to know that they don't know enough to be visionaries, so they take the stance of non-interference. I can see the appeal of this kind of mentality has on HN, as I sense a lot of users here hold libertarian views.
est 17y ago
> The pragmatic and well educated Communist Party leaders Well, you can hardly call first generation of communist revolutionists educated. Most of them know shit about economy or industry. However, the generation after open & reform can be called pragmatic & educated
anigbrowl 17y ago
Your points are valid, and indeed 15 million deaths is the official estimate: scholarly opinions suggest the real number might have been 2 or even 3 times higher. But perceptions of such matters become skewed by context. Given that the population of China was at the time somewhere around 6-700 million, this loss of life probably seemed marginal to the leadership of the time, and we might also remember that half a century ago the quality of information was considerably poorer; sputnik was the bleeding edge of satellite technology, and it's doubtful whether China even had computers, never mind a nationwide telephone network or even adequate roads. Now this doesn't absolve them of responsibility, but nor do I think that such deadly economic calculus is limited to their adoption of communism. A century prior, when Britain was the leading global superpower, a famine wiped out the Irish potato crop for several years running (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Irish_Potato_Famine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Irish_Potato_Famine). The English government, which ruled there at the time, did nothing much about it, even though it could easily have been alleviated thanks to the proximity and availability of grain and other foodstuffs - indeed food exports from Ireland to England actually increased, because the native population were too poor to buy as crops had failed. The population collapsed, with about 1-1.5 million deaths (out of a population of only 8 million) and a similar number for emigration (which is why there are so many people of Irish descent in the US and Australia). Of course, in the context of the whole British Empire, this did not seem like such a significant number, and the government of the day viewed it as an embarrassment rather than a tragedy, to the extent of asking other countries not to bother sending food aid and attempting to blockade some that did so anyway. Now at the time Britain was a limited democracy by today's standards and practiced mercantilism rather than a true market economy, and knowledge of agriculture and economics was basic; but the scope and severity of the problem was well understood, as recorded in parliamentary debates. It's a sad fact that having the basics of modern democracy and economic freedom do not inoculate any government from presiding over or contributing to monstrous levels of suffering in a misguided assessment of where its interests lie. When we critique Marx and his intellectual heirs, as I agree we should, it's worth bearing in mind that he and his contemporaries had abundant reason to believe that capitalism was a morally bankrupt economic philosophy.

by nir 17y ago

fleitz 17y ago

Obviously they didn't need their support in Copenhagen to get what they wanted.

chrischen 17y ago

Unfortunately short-sighted pragmatism could mean the death of us all.

lionhearted 17y ago

I'm as against communism and social planning as anyone you'll meet, but refencing 1958 isn't quite correct here. Deng Xiaoping's reforms began China moving towards a modern society. If anything, the general idea behind Copenhagen is more similar to the Cultural Revolution than walking away - it's trying to centrally plan what some people think would be a better world.

papersmith 17y ago

Only they were different leaders. Traditionally PRC had two factions. The Maoists and the rivals, let's call them the pragmatists. The Maoists were bent on communist doctrines and making great leaps. The pragmatists were more into what already works. The heads of the pragmatists were Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Shaoqi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Shaoqi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_xiaoping http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_xiaoping The famine as you mentioned was attributed in part to Mao's radical policies, and because so Mao stepped down while Liu Shaoqi took his chair for a few years. While Liu was in power he played with capitalist policies similar to those in place today (this was the early 60s), Mao got paranoid and ousted him and Deng, and cultural revolution was launched in part to undo their popularity. Liu died in house arrest. After Mao died in the late 70s, Deng took over and finally switched to market economy. The current line of leaders descended from his faction of pragmatists. Maoism is pretty much dead in China, a new split in the party is between the populists and the princelings, much more similiar to the dichotomy of liberals and conservatives in the west. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generations_of_Chinese_leadership http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generations_of_Chinese_leadersh...

nir 17y ago
They are obviously different leaders (and I suppose the PRC have changed quite a bit since 1958 in any case) but my point is a more general one - "the leaders know best" is never a good assumption. Assuming most HN readers consider themselves independent minded and skeptic towards authority it's disappointing to see the credit given here to China's leaders, who are chosen and operate mostly behind closed doors, as if they really operate with their people's best interest in mind (or even know what it is). I wouldn't rely so blindly on any Western leader, certainly not on a leader in a closed, one party system like China's.
- papersmith 17y ago
  I don't think the OP ever implied that the leaders know the best. It was meant to be read from the viewpoint that there aren't good or bad politicians, there are only politicians making good or bad decisions. In fact from what I've read, the current generation of Chinese leaders aren't particularly smart as people have given them credit for. Though they do seem to know that they don't know enough to be visionaries, so they take the stance of non-interference. I can see the appeal of this kind of mentality has on HN, as I sense a lot of users here hold libertarian views.

est 17y ago

> The pragmatic and well educated Communist Party leaders Well, you can hardly call first generation of communist revolutionists educated. Most of them know shit about economy or industry. However, the generation after open & reform can be called pragmatic & educated

anigbrowl 17y ago

Your points are valid, and indeed 15 million deaths is the official estimate: scholarly opinions suggest the real number might have been 2 or even 3 times higher. But perceptions of such matters become skewed by context. Given that the population of China was at the time somewhere around 6-700 million, this loss of life probably seemed marginal to the leadership of the time, and we might also remember that half a century ago the quality of information was considerably poorer; sputnik was the bleeding edge of satellite technology, and it's doubtful whether China even had computers, never mind a nationwide telephone network or even adequate roads. Now this doesn't absolve them of responsibility, but nor do I think that such deadly economic calculus is limited to their adoption of communism. A century prior, when Britain was the leading global superpower, a famine wiped out the Irish potato crop for several years running (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Irish_Potato_Famine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Irish_Potato_Famine). The English government, which ruled there at the time, did nothing much about it, even though it could easily have been alleviated thanks to the proximity and availability of grain and other foodstuffs - indeed food exports from Ireland to England actually increased, because the native population were too poor to buy as crops had failed. The population collapsed, with about 1-1.5 million deaths (out of a population of only 8 million) and a similar number for emigration (which is why there are so many people of Irish descent in the US and Australia). Of course, in the context of the whole British Empire, this did not seem like such a significant number, and the government of the day viewed it as an embarrassment rather than a tragedy, to the extent of asking other countries not to bother sending food aid and attempting to blockade some that did so anyway. Now at the time Britain was a limited democracy by today's standards and practiced mercantilism rather than a true market economy, and knowledge of agriculture and economics was basic; but the scope and severity of the problem was well understood, as recorded in parliamentary debates. It's a sad fact that having the basics of modern democracy and economic freedom do not inoculate any government from presiding over or contributing to monstrous levels of suffering in a misguided assessment of where its interests lie. When we critique Marx and his intellectual heirs, as I agree we should, it's worth bearing in mind that he and his contemporaries had abundant reason to believe that capitalism was a morally bankrupt economic philosophy.