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"Even now, 50 years on, Chinese official history insists the famine of 1958-61 was a natural disaster."
by tjaerv 14y ago
"Even now, 50 years on, Chinese official history insists the famine of 1958-61 was a natural disaster."
- fleitz 14y agoAsk your government what happend during the dustbowl years and what lifted the people out of starvation... Ask them whether people starved to death because of crop failures or the agricultural policy of the new deal... then try to figure out why crops would be burned while people starved.
- danso 14y agoGovernment offices are closed today because of Thanksgiving, so what's the answer? In the book "Tombstone" (the book by the author in the OP), the author reiterates the claim that no democracy has ever suffered from a major famine, but are you asserting an equivalency? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/opinion/chinas-great-shame.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/opinion/chinas-great-shame... > The reason is political: a full exposure of the Great Famine could undermine the legitimacy of a ruling party that clings to the political legacy of Mao, even though that legacy, a totalitarian Communist system, was the root cause of the famine. As the economist Amartya Sen has observed, no major famine has ever occurred in a democracy.
- pebb 14y agoPretty much all famine are caused by government policies.
- baltcode 14y agoIf you read Amartya Sen's work on the Bengali famine, it is clear that imperialist democratic countries can cause famines in their colonies.
- berntb 14y agoAccording to Wikipedia, it seems to be a perfect storm of incompetence, weather and (understandable) preoccupation with WW II. Also, your reference doesn't fare to good there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
- fleitz 14y agoI believe the potato famine would count as a famine occurring in a democracy.
- anthonyb 14y agoIreland under UK rule was hardly a democracy.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]