this post was submitted on 21 May 2026
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The famine during the great leap forward wasn't due to communism though? It was due to China being a backward country thanks to the century of humiliation (caused by capitalism) leading to lacking the necessary technical knowledge (there's a reason it was the last famine China ever had).
It was a rapid industrialization attempt by the CPC
Ah I didn't realise industrialising was a communist policy or that industrialising caused famine.
The actual reasons for the famine in reality were natural causes mixed with agricultural plans made with poor agronomic knowledge due to the backwardness of the country coming from the century of humiliation and a degree of poor reporting tradition held over from the feudal and landlord years.
None of these are "communist policy".
I had a professor who explained this (as well as I can remember so long after) that the people over-reported yields because they wanted to please Mao (not out of fear of punishment, but out of gratitude). Is that what you mean by poor reporting, or was this professor off-base?
To say 0 of this happened would definitely be untrue but I would say that coming from a time of sadistic landlord/warlord rule and the Aristocracy before that who could and would torture and murder you and possibly your family if your reports displeased them was a larger contributing factor as habits and traditions built up around saving you from this fate would be incredibly hard to shake in such a short time. A beaten dog in a new loving home still flinches at sudden movements. But also if you think of the wider culture such necessity would foster, of reporting accurate information being entirely secondary to pleasing the one being reported (generally at threat of terrible painful torture and or death). This culture of pleasing the one being reported to being more important than the actual information feeds back into both points anyway.