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Interesting article, but I find this part a bit disingenuous: Within a few years, farms all over China adopted the principles in that secret document. People c
by guano___ 15y ago
Interesting article, but I find this part a bit disingenuous:
Within a few years, farms all over China adopted the principles in that secret document. People could own what they grew. The government launched other economic reforms, and China's economy started to grow like crazy. Since 1978, something like 500 million people have risen out of poverty in China.
Though not explicitly stated, the passage seems to imply that the rise from poverty is wholly due to the capitalistic reforms, and a china without these reforms would not have seen any (at least major) similar change. Now this is a china that just decades earlier was destroyed by both the japanese and a civil war. Improvements take time, and these kind of cheap tricks ignore both that and a historical perspective.
Sorry for the rant, but these tricks are all too common, and I think we can afford ourselves some more intellectual honesty rather then let things pass with these ideological slants, unintentional though they may be.
- jacques_chester 15y agoWestern Europe was destroyed by the bombing campaigns of World War II, yet sprung back to wealth within 20 years. China was devastated by Japan, by civil war, and by ruinously stupid communist policies. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were directly imposed by the CCP with Mao as the leading figure. It is not a "trick" to point out the objectively verifiable consequences of the decisions made.