>1949 to 1970s, China did a lot of things to reform the nation to be a unified nation in all aspects To me these years seem to be the darkest. Early - 1949->5

>1949 to 1970s, China did a lot of things to reform the nation to be a unified nation in all aspects To me these years seem to be the darkest. Early - 1949->51 saw the apex of the first wave of landlord killing, possibly 30M were killed. Then, in the late 50's and early 60's we have The Great Leap forward plan, and the consequential three years of famine. Estimates have been made that gauge The Great Leap Forward as having killed 18M to 56M chinese people : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine To round things off five years later The Cultural Revolution kicks off, you can visit university campus's in China today where you can still see where red guard factions fought each other in grenade battles. Maybe 10M Chinese died. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution Deng was really trying to get food round the country; the development of farmers markets was a way to do this - black cat, yellow cat - it distributes food.