Mao's Social Revolution and Great Famine

All right, here's Mao at his iconic moment.

He's proclaiming the victory of the Communists in the Chinese Civil War.

Once he won the Civil War, he imposed a social revolution.

What's that? It's more than a political revolution.

You're not just replacing the government, you're gonna wipe out entire social

classes. And I don't mean the, "Hey, here's your one-way ticket out of here,"

kind

of way. No, no, a social revolution is, "Here's a mass grave, dig it,"

and then you're in it, kind of way. If you look at these statistics of

Chinese deaths, it gets really quite ugly.

There are more Chinese civilian deaths than all deaths

in World War II. And then for those of you who think the

Chinese are all

great long-term strategists, you need to ponder these

numbers. How is it possible to kill so many of your

own? That's generally not a mark of good

strategy.

Moreover, most of them die during the Great Famine,

which was the

only nationwide famine in Chinese history. Why?

Because it's not caused by the weather. It's caused by policies set in Beijing.

During the Great Leap Forward, Mao put all the peasants on

communes. That meant the party was in control of the food supply, i.e.,

who lives and who dies. You don't get a meal, you're very dead.

In addition, he decentralized industry, and you can see these

backyard furnaces pictured here.

As a result of this, production collapses, agriculture

and industrial, but Mao keeps exporting food. Why?

Because that's his pocket change.

That is a major source of government income if he wants to be able to do

anything,

so they keep exporting food. As a result, forty million

Chinese starve to death, primarily in rural areas and

disproportionately peasant girls, the least valued members of

society.