Ask Lemmygrad

By Xi Jinping's predecessor, who do you mean exactly? Hu Jintao, Jiang Zemin, Zhou Enlai? I know that Jintao was Xi's immediate predecessor, but I think it can be argued that it was more of a team effort that paid the way for Xi Jinping.

I'm not saying that you aren't saying it wasn't a team effort, I just mean specifically in this context.

I agree that idealizing the Maoist era isn't a good or helpful thing, and there were a lot of problems. And as I said, I don't know if there are actually more poorer people in modern China than during the Mao era, but I find it incredibly hard to believe that the modern era isn't the best of China's history, and I figure that for over 80 percent of the countries' population, their living standards are at their highest point in all of history.