this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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TBH I don't really understand why OP in the picture is focusing so much on stuff that happened over 60 years ago in China. Like yes the events are real, but relatively few people are alive today who lived through them. They also enjoy hindsight, and the CPC today recognizes the excesses under the cultural revolution (even under Deng already). But I don't really see how it's relevant what the average Chinese person thinks of those events. They didn't live through them and they don't really inform the CPC's politics in this day since they've distanced themselves from the cultural revolution and leap forward. It would be like asking me what I think of the hippy movement, idk bro. I'm sure some hippies were serial killers too.
I take issue that "countless" people died during these three events. First of all because the "great" famine (lmao it was nothing compared to what famines happened in China pre-CPC) was the last one ever recorded in China and was absolutely natural. South China had always been less arable than the North China plains and famines were common there, especially if the Yangtze flooded; there was no will to actually kill people, at most detractors point to the fact that it was a combination of both natural events and "mismanagement of land" if they're actually being good faith. Except it wasn't mismanagement of land, it was a radically new system like happened in the USSR that disrupted production in the early days. And then production stabilized, and no more famines EVER. But they never talk about that.
The deaths in the GPCR and leap forward are greatly exagerated and like I said, the CPC recognizes where they went wrong and where there were excesses. I should also note most of the excesses during the GPCR were committed by common people, with the CPC being unable to control them somehow. We could argue it was their fault for starting it and not taking into consideration that they could not reign in the excesses, but like I said, it happened over 60 years ago.
Tl dr seems like the most contrived point to make to attack China on.