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It should not be ignored that “growing pains” means ~10 million dead from state-caused famines and imprisoned for thought crimes.

Fricken 5y ago
Yes, the transition to modernity was almost as much of a shock for China as it was for the west. Nonetheless, the net effect is raising about 800 million people out of poverty in a little over a generation, an achievement that has no historical precedent.
- logicchains 5y ago
  >Nonetheless, the net effect is raising about 800 million people out of poverty in a little over a generation, an achievement that has no historical precedent. Taiwan, Singapore and Korea started from around the same starting point as China after World War Two, and all became developed countries much faster (compare their GDP per capita now to China's). You could say "their populations aren't as big as China", but in that case wouldn't the ideal solution have been to split China up into a bunch of smaller countries that could grow just as fast as Korea etc?
  - Fricken 5y ago
    What? What sort of mental gymnastics is this?
    - logicchains 5y ago
      All the "East Asian Tiger" countries achieved much faster economic development in terms of GDP per capita (per head) than China did: search for China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Korea on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi.... There's no theoretical reason a political region should develop slower if the population is larger, if anything economic theory suggests the opposite (a common argument for why America's GDP is higher than Europe's is that it has a larger homogenous internal market). So China's size can't be used as an excuse for its slower development.
      - jessaustin 5y ago
        You reject population as a factor in modernization (along with, apparently, initial development level, initial education level, initial infrastructure, etc.) and you offer instead... longitude? Why are you comparing China to Singapore?
        woah 5y ago
        China developed more slowly than its neighbors, unsurprising given the communist party’s crushing of free communication and enterprise and the killing of tens of millions of people. You’ve gotta be playing really dumb to pretend there’s anything complicated about that.
        wayoutthere 5y ago
        Huh? China literally slowed its pace of development intentionally so they didn’t kill millions more. They learned that the Great Leap Forward was too fast so they slowed it down and made it a multi-decade project. Interior China was largely subsistence farming 50 years ago and now boasts some of the largest cities in the world. They have industrialized incredibly quickly given the scale of the challenge. You can’t bootstrap enough industry to modernize 1.6 billion people overnight; it takes decades to build. They haven’t gone faster because a country like Singapore can buy enough industrial output from Japan or the US to bootstrap their industry. Nobody has enough spare capacity to build at the scale of China, so the Chinese had to cultivate industry over a period of decades. Given that most of the worlds manufacturing is done there now, I’d say they’ve been quite successful.
        jessaustin 5y ago
        "Neighbors"? Singapore is 2000km from the closest part of China! I'm not "playing" dumb; in this entire thread you have given us no reason to expect Singapore and China to have similar modernization performance. Less charitable people than myself might suspect that your personal reason is one you can't mention in polite company.
        5y ago
  - simion314 5y ago
    Din't US dump tons of money in South Koreea?
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  Sure, but that only happened after they abandoned the communist economic system. Under Mao, it was constant famine, genocides, and wars.
- alkonaut 5y ago
  So what we are saying is that the dropping of socialism and adoption of capitalism lifted 800 million people out of poverty in a generation? I don't think that's a bad review of capitalism at all.
logicchains 5y ago
Even by official Chinese numbers ~10 million is a pretty low estimate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward Wikipedia has it as "between 15 and 55 million" deaths just to the Great Leap Forward alone.
wayoutthere 5y ago
Yeah, that’s what happens when you try to undo 200 years of colonial rule. It’s actually a surprisingly low number as a percentage of population when compared to Russia or Eastern Europe.
- logicchains 5y ago
  That's ridiculous. Most of the deaths were due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward; how could any part of that be justified as "undoing 200 years of colonial rule"? That wasn't even a justification used by the Commmunist Party at the time.
  - wayoutthere 5y ago
    There’s no playbook for undoing colonial rule at mass scale. Said colonial rule prevented China from participating in the industrial revolution, so converting an agrarian economy to an industrial one is in fact undoing colonial rule. So yeah, they made mistakes and a lot of people died. I’m not going to glorify Mao but you can’t argue with results. The Great Leap Forward largely succeeded, they just realized it needed to be rolled out at a smaller scale over a longer period of time.
    - logicchains 5y ago
      By what metric did it succeed? China's GDP per capita is still around a quarter of comparable countries like Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.
  - janeroe 5y ago
    Well, when the youth wing of Lumumbians started practicing a nutritionary democracy (that is, murdered and had a nurse from the West for dinner) this was exactly the justification used by the socialists. "They are undoing the colonial rule", -- they said. That's even more ridiculous and yet they find this theory convincing. So, I don't think it can be helped.
- fallingknife 5y ago

Fricken 5y ago

Yes, the transition to modernity was almost as much of a shock for China as it was for the west. Nonetheless, the net effect is raising about 800 million people out of poverty in a little over a generation, an achievement that has no historical precedent.

logicchains 5y ago
>Nonetheless, the net effect is raising about 800 million people out of poverty in a little over a generation, an achievement that has no historical precedent. Taiwan, Singapore and Korea started from around the same starting point as China after World War Two, and all became developed countries much faster (compare their GDP per capita now to China's). You could say "their populations aren't as big as China", but in that case wouldn't the ideal solution have been to split China up into a bunch of smaller countries that could grow just as fast as Korea etc?
- Fricken 5y ago
  What? What sort of mental gymnastics is this?
  - logicchains 5y ago
    All the "East Asian Tiger" countries achieved much faster economic development in terms of GDP per capita (per head) than China did: search for China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Korea on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi.... There's no theoretical reason a political region should develop slower if the population is larger, if anything economic theory suggests the opposite (a common argument for why America's GDP is higher than Europe's is that it has a larger homogenous internal market). So China's size can't be used as an excuse for its slower development.
    - jessaustin 5y ago
      You reject population as a factor in modernization (along with, apparently, initial development level, initial education level, initial infrastructure, etc.) and you offer instead... longitude? Why are you comparing China to Singapore?
      - woah 5y ago
        China developed more slowly than its neighbors, unsurprising given the communist party’s crushing of free communication and enterprise and the killing of tens of millions of people. You’ve gotta be playing really dumb to pretend there’s anything complicated about that.
        wayoutthere 5y ago
        Huh? China literally slowed its pace of development intentionally so they didn’t kill millions more. They learned that the Great Leap Forward was too fast so they slowed it down and made it a multi-decade project. Interior China was largely subsistence farming 50 years ago and now boasts some of the largest cities in the world. They have industrialized incredibly quickly given the scale of the challenge. You can’t bootstrap enough industry to modernize 1.6 billion people overnight; it takes decades to build. They haven’t gone faster because a country like Singapore can buy enough industrial output from Japan or the US to bootstrap their industry. Nobody has enough spare capacity to build at the scale of China, so the Chinese had to cultivate industry over a period of decades. Given that most of the worlds manufacturing is done there now, I’d say they’ve been quite successful.
        jessaustin 5y ago
        "Neighbors"? Singapore is 2000km from the closest part of China! I'm not "playing" dumb; in this entire thread you have given us no reason to expect Singapore and China to have similar modernization performance. Less charitable people than myself might suspect that your personal reason is one you can't mention in polite company.
        5y ago
- simion314 5y ago
  Din't US dump tons of money in South Koreea?
BurningFrog 5y ago
Sure, but that only happened after they abandoned the communist economic system. Under Mao, it was constant famine, genocides, and wars.
alkonaut 5y ago
So what we are saying is that the dropping of socialism and adoption of capitalism lifted 800 million people out of poverty in a generation? I don't think that's a bad review of capitalism at all.

logicchains 5y ago

Even by official Chinese numbers ~10 million is a pretty low estimate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward Wikipedia has it as "between 15 and 55 million" deaths just to the Great Leap Forward alone.

wayoutthere 5y ago

Yeah, that’s what happens when you try to undo 200 years of colonial rule. It’s actually a surprisingly low number as a percentage of population when compared to Russia or Eastern Europe.

logicchains 5y ago
That's ridiculous. Most of the deaths were due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward; how could any part of that be justified as "undoing 200 years of colonial rule"? That wasn't even a justification used by the Commmunist Party at the time.
- wayoutthere 5y ago
  There’s no playbook for undoing colonial rule at mass scale. Said colonial rule prevented China from participating in the industrial revolution, so converting an agrarian economy to an industrial one is in fact undoing colonial rule. So yeah, they made mistakes and a lot of people died. I’m not going to glorify Mao but you can’t argue with results. The Great Leap Forward largely succeeded, they just realized it needed to be rolled out at a smaller scale over a longer period of time.
  - logicchains 5y ago
    By what metric did it succeed? China's GDP per capita is still around a quarter of comparable countries like Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.
- janeroe 5y ago
  Well, when the youth wing of Lumumbians started practicing a nutritionary democracy (that is, murdered and had a nurse from the West for dinner) this was exactly the justification used by the socialists. "They are undoing the colonial rule", -- they said. That's even more ridiculous and yet they find this theory convincing. So, I don't think it can be helped.
fallingknife 5y ago