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The destructive civil war between 1927 to 1950 between the Kuomintang and the CCP had a big impact. So did the 1930s Japanese invasion. Most damning of all, Ma

The destructive civil war between 1927 to 1950 between the Kuomintang and the CCP had a big impact. So did the 1930s Japanese invasion. Most damning of all, Mao's bad economic policies directly killed more than 35 million people, mostly through starvation. He killed more people than Stalin or Hitler. But the CCP does not discuss these much. It's harder to accept that another 30 years of humiliation (from 1949 to 1979) was the leadership of China shooting itself in the foot. Remember that second and third order effects are difficult to measure. EVERYTHING is first, second, third etc order effect of something that happened in the past. China's current growth can only occur in the post WW2 US world order that allows all nations to lift themselves out of poverty through trade. For other readers: parent account is 10 months old with only 1 other comment. This is an indication of a 50 cent army member or at least someone who has been influenced by CCP propaganda, which has grains of truth but systematically exaggerates the influence of certain things. It is though an interesting question to what China would be like if the Opium Wars never happened.

IllogicalLogic 8y ago
The secret treaty between President Roosevelt (relation of the leading drug pushers) and Japan, giving the Japanese permission to invade Korea/China in 1905 didn't help either. Many historians believe reversal of this treaty caused Pearl Harbor and started WW2. Quite embarassing for the Nobel Prize winning Roosevelts indeed. https://www.c-span.org/video/?290682-1/the-imperial-cruise https://www.c-span.org/video/?290682-1/the-imperial-cruise Most people don't know history, so it's easy to sweep under the rug.
- gdfgsdfhsdfgeaf 8y ago
  Did not record password to 'asdfasdfklj' throwaway acc. I agree that great power horse trading before and after WW1 has caused a lot of issues. A rules based world order is an improvement on that. I wish USA followed the rules and did not invade nations such as Iraq. I forgot to mention relative GDP is a bad measure. Absolute GDP (on a log scale) is a much better measure. The relative GDP graph will falsely make it look like India and China declined far worse than they did around 200 years ago. The reason is the industrial revolutions, which separated population size from a nation's GDP (at least until recent globalization). One nation growing due to industrial revolution by itself does not make a stagnating non industrial economy weaker in absolute terms. I think a large fraction of that relative decline would have happened even if there was not an absolute decline due to misdeeds of certain British and American people in the 1800s.
  - IllogicalLogic 8y ago
    Quite the contrary, colonizing all of Africa, South America, India, and drugging China (at about the same time) did a lot to boost GDP... Industrial revolution works even better if all prevailing exporters all of a sudden fall off a cliff. "Mean reversion", word of the century. Interesting bonus fact for economic historians, in 1890, 30% of Britain's GDP was illegal opium smuggling to China. Would be interesting to see the numbers for the USA (by some accounts, the biggest exporter by that point)... Courtesy of Aaron Swartz: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3112527 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3112527

IllogicalLogic 8y ago

The secret treaty between President Roosevelt (relation of the leading drug pushers) and Japan, giving the Japanese permission to invade Korea/China in 1905 didn't help either. Many historians believe reversal of this treaty caused Pearl Harbor and started WW2. Quite embarassing for the Nobel Prize winning Roosevelts indeed. https://www.c-span.org/video/?290682-1/the-imperial-cruise https://www.c-span.org/video/?290682-1/the-imperial-cruise Most people don't know history, so it's easy to sweep under the rug.

gdfgsdfhsdfgeaf 8y ago
Did not record password to 'asdfasdfklj' throwaway acc. I agree that great power horse trading before and after WW1 has caused a lot of issues. A rules based world order is an improvement on that. I wish USA followed the rules and did not invade nations such as Iraq. I forgot to mention relative GDP is a bad measure. Absolute GDP (on a log scale) is a much better measure. The relative GDP graph will falsely make it look like India and China declined far worse than they did around 200 years ago. The reason is the industrial revolutions, which separated population size from a nation's GDP (at least until recent globalization). One nation growing due to industrial revolution by itself does not make a stagnating non industrial economy weaker in absolute terms. I think a large fraction of that relative decline would have happened even if there was not an absolute decline due to misdeeds of certain British and American people in the 1800s.
- IllogicalLogic 8y ago
  Quite the contrary, colonizing all of Africa, South America, India, and drugging China (at about the same time) did a lot to boost GDP... Industrial revolution works even better if all prevailing exporters all of a sudden fall off a cliff. "Mean reversion", word of the century. Interesting bonus fact for economic historians, in 1890, 30% of Britain's GDP was illegal opium smuggling to China. Would be interesting to see the numbers for the USA (by some accounts, the biggest exporter by that point)... Courtesy of Aaron Swartz: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3112527 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3112527