World Life Expectancy.com (WLE) shows that in one decade between 1960 and 70 (Mao did not die until 1976), life expectancy in Indonesia was 47.9, India 49.3 and China 61.7.
Did you do the math and see the results of Mao’s policies regardless of the suffering during the Great Leap Forward (GLF) and the Cultural Revolution? From 1960 to 1970, China added 25.4 years to life expectancy while Indonesia only added 6.4 years (six “point” four in case you missed the dot) and India seven years.
Then by 1980, Indonesia was 54.8, India 55.7 and China 65.5.
In 1990, Indonesia was 61.7, India 59.7 and China 68.3.
In 2000, Indonesia was 67.5, India 62.5, and China 71.4
In 2010, Indonesia was 71.1, India 66.5 and China 74.5
NCBI.gov (the US National Institute of Health) says, “Since the establishment of a new social order in 1949, China’s attempts to feed and nurture its large population has been a topic of serious study in many disciplines… In 1949, the life expectancy in China was only 36 years. In early 1980s, it has increased to 68 years.”
Since the NCBI says life expectancy in 1949 was 36 years and in 1960, it was 36.3 years (according to WLE), it is safe to say that the mortality rate in China in 1960 was still closer to 38 per 1000 and not 10 per 1000 as Frank Dikotter, the author of “Mao’s Great Famine” claims.
This increase in life expectancy is attributed mostly to improved nutrition and lowering of mortality rates due to decreases in infectious diseases. In fact, during the most dramatic gains in life expectancy, Mao ruled China (1949 – 1976).
Overwhelming facts from reliable sources show that Mao’s policies increased life expectancy and decreased mortality rates during the era he ruled, which included the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
That does not mean suffering did not take place but it does prove that even during hard times, life expectancy in China improved dramatically while mortality rates dropped.
mentions the British caused famines in India/Ireland and who really managed the Great Leap Forward in China
This video makes a case that only three million may have died from the famine.
After reading Lu and Chen’s figures, which were supported by Judith Banister’s work, China’s Changing Population (Stanford University Press – 1987), along with facts from the WLE and NCBI.gov, I sat down with my wife, who as a child grew up in Shanghai during the GLF, and lived with the hunger but only remembers hearing of a few people that died of starvation in rural China and never saw anyone starving to death in Shanghai.
Continued on November 17, 2011 in Mao’s ‘alleged’ Guilt in the Land of Famines – Part 7 or return to Part 5
Recommended reading on this topic for those who seek the unblemished truth: From the Monthly Review, Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward? by Joseph Ball
From Griffith University, Australia, Poverty, by David C. Schak, Associate Professor
______________
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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You cant be that naive LL, famines are a natural cycle of life. Communists (Holodrom, Mao) orchestrate famines. There is a big difference between 8 million Americans dying during the 1930 (jeez, more Americans died of famine than Jews died in Holocaust. Amazing that you keep discovering these facts. That’s what, 10% of the country?)
Arguing with you is useless, since you just bring up new things instead of answering points which were proven to you as illogical.
I dont need to read a book on information overload to tell the difference between rain or someone pissin on my leg.
MCB,
It all depends on which sources you want to believe—the authors of books that voice opinions as if they are facts and inflate the same numbers available to everyone or the scholars that have studied the existing data and written books and/or papers on this topic such as the one quoted below that was presented at the International Economic History Congress, Helsinki, and 20-25 August 2006.
There is only the data that is found in China and all of the authors and scholars that have written on this topic use that data as their launching pad. If Mao were to be tried for deliberately murdering millions of people during the GLF by starving them to death, there would be no evidence to support the accusations and a jury would have to find him innocent. There would be no one to sit in the witness stand that could testify that he gave those orders and orchestrated those deaths.
As other reputable studies have reported, when questioned, peasants that lived in those areas do not support these accusations. Mao’s own bodyguards from those same villages where the famine hit worse report that Mao did not order those deaths and since it was their families and the people they grew up with, what reason would they have to lie after Mao’s death when they wrote their memoires.
After Mao died and Deng Xiaoping’s faction in the Party came to power, there was no love for Mao. Deng Xiaoping’s family suffered at the hands of the Red Guard during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Deng was one of the voices that spoke out against Mao’s policies and he paid a price for that when members of the Red Guard tossed his only son off the top of a three-story building leaving him paralyzed from the neck down for life. Deng then gathered his family and fled south to live under the protection of a PLA general until after Mao’s death. While he was in the south, Deng orchestrated and planned a coup (with other PLA generals) that would overthrow Mao’s wife and the Gang of Four, and Deng ended the Cultural Revolution, which he was against from the start.
The authors that inflate that data and accuse Mao of deliberate murder during the GLF perpetuate theories that feed the popular Western “politically correct” myth of Mao have a hungry audience that wants to believe what these authors write as they disregard the fact that what they are writing is an opinion based on inflated facts and conjecture that Mao ordered the deaths of those people.
It is obvious, that you are a member of that hungry mob that refuses to consider any material that does not agree with your biases.
Mao was guilty of many things but not the deliberate murder of peasants from starvation during the GLF. To achieve that would have required hundreds of thousands of troops to pull off and other Party members to carry out the orders. Mao could not have done it by himself and with that many people invovled, the world would have heard about it first hand without anyone in the West coming up with a theory that cannot be proven.
The Welfare Consequences of the Great Leap Forward
Famine in China, 1959-61: The Stature of the Survivor
OUTLINE PAPER AND SELECTED TABLES AND
FIGURES
Stephen L MORGAN
The University of Melbourne
Session 123: Famines in History
International Economic History Congress, Helsinki, 20-25 August 2006
Conclusion
“Famine in China after 1949 cannot be explained singularly by simple appeal to the failure of weather or FAD or government policy, but by a complex interaction of all of these elements. It is not plausible to argue, as Becker (1996) does, that Mao and the CCP leadership sought to kill the population, say in the manner analogous to that of Stalin in the 1920-30s. Mao’s “crimes” may be judged severely by history, perhaps as the delusions of a visionary (for the “vision thing” was certainly a powerful driver of the policy of the period), but it does not seem reasonable to argue that his actions were, in a premeditated sense, deliberately murderous.”
Source: http://www.helsinki.fi/iehc2006/papers3/Morgan.pdf
“Talk about spin and propaganda and how a myth/hoax spreads until, as Hitler and America’s neoconservatives believe, say a lie enough and it becomes the truth.”
Exactly. I really think that neocon really studied Goebbels’ methods thoroughly, and also taken them to the next level
And, by the way..I just realized that maybe those same people that year after year raise the number of casualties of the famine, do so thinking “come on, it’s China, it has 1.4 billion inhabitants, who will be surprised about this huge – in fact completely out of the scale – numbers? It’s all huge and crowded over there”…but they maybe forget that chinese population doubled between the birth of the PRC and 1980, from around 500 million, to 1 billion…when GLF happened, the country’s population stood at more or less 600 million, probably little more. So, a 70 million death toll would have been a terrible blow (more than 10% of the total population at the time)….
“Howard Stern, Limbough (sp?), Sharpton, are all private citizens who are only on tv or radio because people listen to them and not the other 99,999 stations giving every opinion under the sun.”
Just private citizens, with people who listen to them, right?? Ahahahahahah, MCB, it appears that when it comes to “kaka” u have nothing to learn from anybody, and much to teach…Absolutely, no ties between political parties/politicians/economic powers and media…NOOOOOO, absolutely, those are all simple private citizens, sure!
And, by the way, u’d be surprised by the multitude and plethora of voices, papers, radios and televisions (not to speak of blogs, microblogs and the like) that exist in China…(of course u should at least be able to understand chinese a little…)
If u really think Limbough and the rest are really only private citizens..it’s even pointless talking with u, really.
Alessandro,
My thoughts exactly, and I also laughed when MCB mentioned these talking heads that perform as if they were circus clowns to attract the future brainwashed and of course laugh all the way to the bank. Limbaugh (with an estimated worth around $400 million) even calls his fans ditto heads and says he will do their thinking for them.
Maybe MCB should read what I had to say about Dennis Prager in “Dissecting an American Conservative Spin Master” at http://wp.me/pN4pY-2uW
Consider that all the books written about the famine, which by coincidence took place during the Great Leap Forward, are all based on the same spotty information that only exists in China and the first possibly inflated report was written by a Chinese citizen during Deng Xiaoping’s Beijing Spring (that period of time where the Chinese were allowed to criticize Mao and the Party openly) and that Chinese scholar reported 16.5 million deaths from the famine.
All the Western authors have written their theories and opinions based on the same data with the death toll growing as the years pass until the most recent numbers I’m seeing have hit 70 million. Talk about spin and propaganda and how a myth/hoax spreads until, as Hitler and America’s neoconservatives believe, say a lie enough and it becomes the truth.
So tell me Alessandro, if Howard Stern or Rush is not a private citizen, then are they government? army? police? no. People listen to them, so advertisers sponsor, they get paid. If you dont believe that, then you are just another loser conspiracy nut.
i was not born in usa, and never try to say its paradise,
I am not sure your point about plethora of voices, since each voice is the government’s. Censorship. Every day, a list of forbidden topics is delivered to television stations. In American that does not happen,
MCB,
When it comes to the media in the US, there are no forbidden topics (unless it might lead to court and an expensive settlement or judgment for libel or fraud and even that hasn’t stopped every media source from printing lies) and that includes the lies and exaggerations that are told daily by the Limbaughs, Pragers and Becks of the airwaves.
In addition, it has been proven that the media itself censors topics and even decides how some topics will be handled, which does not always stick to the facts. Fox and the rest of Murdock’s media empire does this daily. Murdock is a known neoconservative and the “noble lie” is one of the tools they use to achieve their political goals.
And I’m sure you have never heard of the CIA’s “Operation Mockingbird”.
Just because the media is protected by the US Constitution’s first amendment doesn’t mean what the media reports is accurate or the “real” truth based on the “real” facts.
For example, I know one author that was asked to write about China by a “major” US newspaper (several years ago) and she wrote a positive piece about how the Party has brought about many good changes in China over the last thirty years and this major east-coast newspaper rejected what she wrote and said they wanted something negative on China not positive. This author is a China expert that has written exclusively about China and her work has sold more than a million books in English while being translated into more than thirty other languages. She refused to write what that newspaper wanted and what she did write was never published.
In fact, Sterling Seagrave, when he was researching for “Dragon Lady”, discovered that most of what the London Times published about China in the latter half of the 19th and early 20th century was all based on lies, but that material is still used in school textbooks and is still considered bedrock scholarship by many even in China.
MCB ur statements are nothing more than a childish list of empty slogan by a prejudiced, self-righteous mind. I could easily say the same of the US (with some differences being it a different country and culture) or of other countries if I wanted, but it would be no less empty and no less superficial than what u just wrote.
“They are usually much more reliable and trustworthy than western’s.”
Westerners cant be trusted? So whitey no good? Can’t depend or trust em most of the time? Chinese government you can trust because its transparent, protects speech, religion, a junior police officer can arrest a senior officer without losing job, media outlets don’t receive list of censored topics for the day, and trial by jury in open court for citizens is the norm.
I agree. I would trust a judge in a secret government court to decide my fate any day over a jury. Life in a totalitarian regime is marvelous, and in fact there is too much freedom for my taste here so I’ll be moving to North Korea where you can be sure that tomorrow will be just as perfect as today. You can rely on that.
MCB,
Explain why more than two million Americans are in prison with a US population of 330 million.
Explain why China only has about one million in prison with a population of more than 1.3 billion.
Explain why India, the world’s largest democracy, has 90% of the world’s worst poverty, and corruption in India is about half of the nation’s GDP.
The CIA (the US Central Intelligence Agency) Factbook says the worst poverty in China is about 2.5% of the population while it is 25% in India and 15% in America.
“Although Chinese statistical data often raises many an eyebrow in the west, I’m a firm believer that the Chinese versions of events more often than not turn out to be closer to the mark than those of their western counterparts.”
I too would take chinese versions of events (especially on chinese events) over western ones every single day of the week, sundays included. They are usually much more reliable and trustworthy than western’s.
Official Death Rates for China 1955-1964
Year Death Rate(per thousand)
1955 12.3
1956 11.4
1957 10.8
1958 12.0
1959 14.6
1960 25.4
1961 14.2
1962 10.0
1963 10.0
1964 11.5
(Source: Statistical Yearbook of China 1983)
With known population numbers for those years the number of deaths during the GLF years 1958-1961 is about 15.5 million more than what it would have probably been.
Although Chinese statistical data often raises many an eyebrow in the west, I’m a firm believer that the Chinese versions of events more often than not turn out to be closer to the mark than those of their western counterparts.
Aussie in China,
I notice that the death rate for 1960 is much lower than Banister’s. Did she inflate that number as so many of Mao’s critics have done? It appears that each new book on the topic of the GLF famine inflates the numbers in the previous book, which were also inflated.
If this keeps up, the day will come when a book claims more people than lived in China at the time died from that famine.
Joseph Ball in his article of 2006 goes into some depth of how Banister claimed gross under-reporting of deaths and inflated the Chinese official death rate statistics with her own figures.
The article is still available online at:
http://monthlyreview.org/commentary/did-mao-really-kill-millions-in-the-great-leap-forward.
In all honesty, I doubt that even the Chinese know the exact impact of the GLF and it would be a mind-boggling exercise for even the Chinese to go back and examine what records are still in existance to prove or disprove the official statistics of that era.
Furthermore, it would be naive to deny that there were no instances of under-reporting deaths in some areas especially at a time when the distribution of foodstuffs etc was controlled by food coupons (liang piao) and tied to household numbers. But the extent of any under-reporting of deaths intentional or not is pure speculation and no one will ever come close to knowing the exact figures.
At the end of the day, all we have to work on are the official Chinese statistics. Those with other agendas will no doubt resort to the worst case scenarios.
I recently noticed a paper November 2, 2005
Gregory Chow, Princeton University that concluded (albeit mainly dealing with economic matters) that data provided by the Chinese National Statistical Bureau is by and large reliable,
Aussie in China,
Thank you for the link to Ball’s piece. It is well written and I detected no bias. Instead, I sensed the author’s care in writing a piece with well researched support and evidence without resorting to speculation, inflated claims or inflammatory language that appeals to the emotions of any politically correct mob.
In fact, I’m going to go back and add a recommendation and link to this article in both series of posts I’ve written on the topic of the GLF and Mao.
A suggestion, you should make a post about Chinese Medicine. One of the big things today is people are tossing out the modern meds for ancient methods (herbs, massage, acupuncture, etc).
I wish there was a Chinese Medicine place in my hometown. Chinese Herbal Tea may taste like a garbage can of dirty gym socks and yesterday’s regurgitated lunch…but I can say it cured my head cold. Actually it did more than that. It dried up my nose so much that it bled! Usually when that happens it is the signal that my cold is done.
I stll think it’s sad that the famous medicine man, Hua Tuo, was tossed in prison. His books on medicine that were legendary and said to have cured anything….were lost when the prison guard’s wife used them as tinder for starting a cooking fire. The prison guard did save 1 page, but I dont see how curing a cow of an ailment applies to humans.
Hua Tuo’s books would be of great help to me about now. I’ve got bouts of dizziness, tightness in my cheek…when I went through a run of dizziness which almost knocked me on the floor, I noticed a red mark under my ear as my face heat up. A month ago my left eyelid fluttered constantly for almost 2 weeks. In all, I’m trying to understand what going on specifically and how to fix it.
As the Immunologists state….we are a part of nature, as such, any disease/illness can be treated by something. Like Taoism….ALWAYS an opposite….ALWAYS balance. Or Christians would say, “God put us here on this earth as well as the essential tools to survive.”
Merlin,
I have written about Chinese medicine in a number of posts. However, with more than 1400 posts (and growing daily), it may not be easy to find them all.
Here’s are a few:
“Cupping” – an element of Chinese Medicine
Posted 01/29/11 at 12:00
Health Care Without Drugs
Posted 3/9/10 at 16:00
Yin Yang
Posted 4/11/10 at 08:00
I know that there are others but if the title doesn’t have medicine or herbs in it, then finding them is a challenge. In fact, there is a post about a Chinese scholar that dedicated his life to studying herbal medicines and wrote a HUGE book on the topic. Too him like forty years to research and write. I read that Darwin had a copy of this book on his global voyage.
“In 1949, the life expectancy in China was only 36″. Interesting statistic, bet they got another for second hand smoke deaths during that year as well.
If Western countries today are not sure of the makeup of China’s politburo, are you saying that in 1949 a census was conducted in China? and that proves Mao was a swell guy? Musolini made train run on time and after Pol Pot, Cambodia now has the lowest percentage of the population who need prescription glasses.Wait till you hear of the swell things Hitler and Stalin did for their people!
And you comparing an internal non-transparent census conducted in Indonesia to a Chinese census? In early 1980s KGB and CIA didn’t know who was a member of China Politburo but knew census data to three significant digits?
I liked it better when you endlessly repeated that Wikileaks proved that Tianemen Square was a lie orchestrated by the racist CIA. You refuse to believe that a famine existed in the 1950s caused by Mao’s incompetence despite a dozen world caliber scientists saying flat out that Mao was not on the sidelines.
Yet a 1949 census and Wikileaks you believe as though Mohammed notarized while Jesus and Moses witnessed.
The words of a junior South American diplomat, whose story is relayed in Wikileaks is the truth and nothing but the truth so help you Mao?
A second hand account from the devil USA embassy relaying a story of Paco, a junior diplomat from Cortahenya saying that he swears by Santa Cleopatra that not one hair was touched on a protester’s head at Tianemen Square.
Yet other cables said things you discard as propaganda which were written by the same person.
Repeat after me class. Hereditary communist rulers who are above the law are good. Anyone who says otherwise works for the CIA. Simon Says.
Your point is that a 1 party system is a good thing since he is wise and kind and knows whats best and anyhow he gets elected internally. The Chinese people are too different from Americans, Koreans, Taiwanese, Japanese to be able to function under a representative democracy anyway.
They shouldn’t even try, since freedom to elect politicians is overrated and causes headaches such as campaign finance reforms.
Are you saying the Chinese should not even try a multi-party system because they are … incapable of electing a leader they want? They will just mess it up?
So why was the Emperor bad again and how does having 20,000 hereditary rulers better than having one? so now the Chinese are stuck forever with the Rolls Royce driving hereditary ‘communist’ rulers and you advise them to just sit back and enjoy it because San Francisco is such a mess on election day?
Wow. I bet if the US government censored 1 word of yours you would squeal. Why can’t they, you hypocrite?
Note from Blog host: To dispel this sort of ignorance — recommended reading on this topic for those who seek the unblemished facts: From the Monthly Review, “Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward?” by Joseph Ball
http://monthlyreview.org/commentary/did-mao-really-kill-millions-in-the-great-leap-forward
From Griffith University, Australia, Poverty, by David C. Schak, Associate Professor
Click to access 57906_1.pdf
MCB, you accused me of refusing “to believe that a famine existed in the 1950s caused by Mao’s incompetence despite a dozen world caliber scientists saying flat out that Mao was not on the sidelines.”
Actually, the droughts and floods that caused crop losses leading to the famine took place between 1959 and 1961 and evidence supports the fact that because of Mao’s actions, the loss of life was ended early (it could have lasted longer) when the CCP made a deal with Canada, Australia and France to import wheat to feed China’s starving peasants in a few of China’s rural provinces.
The worst year in this famine was 1960 and there was a dramatic recovery in 1961 even though crop yields had not recovered.
Where did I say a famine did not take place during the Great Leap Forward? Of course, a famine took place.
Where did I say that Mao wasn’t in some way involved? I didn’t. He was involved.
What I’m saying is that Mao did not deliberately set out to butcher his own people as some historians have claimed with bogus theories in an attempt to paint Mao as a monster instead of a leader that promoted flawed policies that did not cause the famine but may have contributed to it being worse than it would have been.
As for your dozen “world caliber scientists”— These so called “world caliber scientists”, as you call them, are mostly Western scholars or university professors writing books and promoting a theory with inflated claims that Mao was a monster who butchered tens of millions of his own people.
I suggest you read “Poverty” by David C. Shak for the “real” situation. Shak is an Associate Professor at Griffith University in Australia. He is also a scholar but he deals with facts and not theories that perpetuate a hoax and a myth.
Click to access 57906_1.pdf
Here’s the link. Don’t skip a word, which it appears you did as you read my post.
When you finish, you may come away with a different picture of what was going on in China at the time and have a better understanding of China’s history with famines and the suffering and horrid poverty of rural Chinese. Mao’s policies may have played a role in making the situation worse but if the droughts and floods had happened with Chiang Kai-shek’s government, the loss of life may have been much higher. However, if the famine had taken place on Chiang’s watch, there would have been no outcry in the West since there was no outrage when his troops slaughtered about 30,000 in Taiwan in 1947.
LL, Dr. Schack is an anthropologist specializing in Taiwan Buddhism.
So your advice is to ignore world caliber peer reviewed publications and experts in this field because they “are mostly Western scholars or university professors (who all are out to besmirch Mao’s legacy even if they are from different races, religions, nationalities, countries?)
Instead I should listen to an American scholar and university-professor specializing in Taiwan Buddhism? I sent Dr. Schack an email (d.schak@griffith.edu.au) but academics hate getting into a debate with amateurs.
communists and famines are two peas in a pod, and its mighty kind of you to give Mao the benefit of the doubt. Chiang was a Soviet trained communist puppet as was Mao. So Chiang’s and Mao’s purges,
prison colonies, indiscriminate slaughter, terror etc.. in the name of a utopian state and greater good for future generations should not be surprising.
But why talk about Chiang, since his bones are dust and Taiwan has open multi-party elections while Chinese hereditary rulers continue calling themselves communists only to remain in power, passing their titles to their children as if feudal barons.
For you to prove MAO was not covered in blood as was his mentor Stalin, I am sure you can find a sympathetic professor to reference who is notable. They all can’t be colluding together. Think occam’s razor – ever growing global conspiracy, or you trying desperately to see something that was never there, not wanting to admit that Mao, Stalin, and Pol Pot are cut from the same cloth.
MCB
“world caliber peer reviewed publications and experts in this field”
An example of how flawed this argument is comes from Sterling Seagrave when he proved how faulty bedrock scholorship was during his research for “Dragon Lady, The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China”.
Seagrave proved that the original material that was used by Western peer reviewed publications and experts on the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi was all lies yet history textooks quoted the lies as facts and still do because correcting history once it has been written in books by experts for more than a century is hard to do. In addition, even the history textooks in Communist China’s public schools quote these experts on the Tzu Hsi.
The reason that all of that primary evidence from Tzu Hsi’s era was based on lies was becasue of the propaganda campaings being waged against China in England at the time to demonize her and China, which justified the British Empires goals of global expansion. Seagrave proved that the London Times journalist in China who was used as the primary source of material and informaiton about China at that time lied when he found the man’s personal journals admitting and bragging what a great job he was doing inventing truth.
In recent years, journalist have been caught doing this same thing to gain notoriatiy, fame and wealth. The most recent example a book that just came out on the raid in Pakistan that killed Osama Ben Laden. This author must have counted on the secrecy that surrounds US Navy Seals teams to get away with his fraud. For the London Times journalist in China in 1900, it took about a century to reveal his fraud and I wonder how many peer reviewed publications and so-called China experts based what they wrote on what he wrote.
I suggest you read “Blur: How to Know What’s True in the Age of Information Overload” by Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach.
http://www.npr.org/2011/09/01/140118092/as-media-lines-blur-everyone-must-be-an-editor
The first question to ask is, ‘Where am I? Am I listening to a propagandist? Is this a news show? Is it an opinion show? What land am I in?’ … Because journalism itself is no longer this homogeneous product.
MCB, A good piece that examines the questionable validity of “Peer Reviews” may be found at
http://www.linfo.org/peer_review.html
Here are a few pull quotes copied and pasted from that site (link provided above) to give you an idea that “Peer Review” doesn’t mean they are right. [I suggest clicking on the link and reading the entire piece to discover how flawed and questionable so-called peer reviewed publications are].
Peer Review says, “Many of the individuals responsible for the world’s greatest discoveries and inventions were originally mocked and ridiculed by their peers. Among the more famous examples are Darwin’s discovery of evolution in the nineteenth century, the discovery of continental drift (also referred to as plate tectonics) by Alfred Wegener and others in the early 20th century, and the Wright brothers’ first heavier-than-air flights at Kitty Hawk in 1903.
“Peer review is used extensively in a variety of professional fields, including academic and scientific research, medicine, law, accounting and computer software development.
“In the case of peer reviewed journals, which are usually academic and scientific periodicals, peer review generally refers to the evaluation of articles prior to publication.
“Despite its advantages, there have also been some criticisms of peer review.
“Some critics believe that peer review has a built-in bias against highly original works and results because reviewers (as do people in general) tend to be more tolerant of works and results that are consistent with their own views and more critical of those that contradict them.
“It should be kept in mind that history is replete with examples of innovations that were originally ridiculed by their peers because they contradicted the common wisdom of the day. The bias by academics against highly innovative work may be in part a result of the fact that they have vested interests in maintaining the status quo after having spent many years or decades supporting it.
“Moreover, it has been suggested that peer review is not always good at detecting fraud, particularly in the case of articles submitted to scientific journals. One reason for this is that the reviewers often do not have immediate or full access to the data on which the articles are based (except perhaps in fields such as mathematics where it is easy to provide the data and attempt to replicate the results). However, longer term peer review (i.e., after the articles have been published) has proven to be much better at detecting fraud.”
In addition, here are a few links and some pull quotes to posts about “Peer review and fraud”
http://www.naturalnews.com/028465_scentific_fraud_medicine.html
“Scientific fraud, however, is rampant amongst nearly all of the sciences and no “peer review” is immune. In fact, peer review is the problem.
“This brings into question the so-called scientific process of peer review that is often cited as if it were holy writ and the end-all, be-all of truth. “It`s peer reviewed,” they scream when anyone questions their research or evidence. The rejoinder should ask, “Peer reviewed by whom?”
“Peer review, however, has no such requirements. It is merely the opinion of the reviewing scientists who read the original work and give an editorial on it. No tests or double-checking of facts or methods are required. Basically, with peer review, someone writes a study paper and it is then sent to a group of scientific critics to either blast or praise it.
“Professor Charlton is right. Peer review is bunk and is just editorializing in the name of science. It is because of this practice that the rampant fraud and misleading conclusions of scientific research is so prevalent today.”
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7122/full/444971b.html
http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-8/iss-6/p12.html
“The peer-review system is supposed to guarantee that published research is carried out in accordance with established scientific standards. Yet recently, an internal report from Lucent Technologies’ Bell Laboratories concluded that data in 16 published papers authored by researcher Hendrik Schön were fraudulent.”
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17464
Why is the problem so rampant in the Peer-review community today? What can be done to fix this? What exactly is the concept behind “peer-review”, is it to pigeon hole any theory or paper that hasn’t been reviewed by these journals and/or assocations that are riddled with fraud? What exactly are the standards of peer-review, are they always applied, are they universal, and do they correct themselves generally on their own or does it require a whistle-blower/expose to get them to fess up on errors? What is the overall fraud rate in scientific research? Who are these scientists who are fed up with the “Iron grip” (Why do they call it an “iron grip”) of the establishment that are threatening an alternate peer review system?
http://www.convergence-cpt.com/FraudPeerReview.html
MCB, you claim “communists and famines are two peas in a pod”.
REALLY!
Then explain why there has not been a famine-related death in China since 1960 but for almost 2000 years there were famine related deaths in China on an annual basis.
However, in India, about 5,000,000 children die each year from starvation and India is not a communist state but the largest democracy on the planet.
In fact, during America’s Great Depression, when 25% of the workforce was unemployed, millions lost their homes and had no money to buy food or pay rent, and US citizens did die of starvation.
The researcher, Boris Borisov, in his article titled “The American Famine” estimated the victims of the financial crisis in the US at over seven million people. The researcher also directly compared the US events of 1932-1933 with Holodomor, or Famine, in the USSR during 1932-1933.
In the article, Borisov used the official data of the US Census Bureau. Having revised the number of the US population, birth and date rates, immigration and emigration, the researcher came to conclusion that the United States lost over seven million people during the famine of 1932-1933.
“According to the US statistics, the US lost not less than 8 million 553 thousand people from 1931 to 1940. Afterwards, population growth indices change twice instantly exactly between 1930-1931: the indices drop and stay on the same level for ten years. There can no explanation to this phenomenon found in the extensive text of the report by the US Department of Commerce “Statistical Abstract of the United States,” the author wrote.
The researcher points out the movement of population at this point: “A lot more people left the country than arrived during the 1930s – the difference is estimated at 93,309 people, whereas 2.960,782 people arrived in the country a decade earlier. Well, let’s correct the number of total demographic losses in the USA during the 1930s by 3,054 people.”
Another site claims 10 million Americans may have died of starvation during the Great Depression and goes into detail of the methods used to come up with that number.
http://www.cherada.com/articulos/10-million-americans-disappeared-during-the-great-depression-time
In addition, here is a piece on World Hunger from Santa Clara University in the Silicon Valley.
http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v5n1/hunger.html
The authors write, “Between now and tomorrow morning, 40,000 children will starve to death. The day after tomorrow, 40,000 more children will die, and so on throughout 1992. In a “world of plenty,” the number of human beings dying or suffering from hunger, malnutrition, and hunger-related diseases is staggering. According to the World Bank, over 1 billion people—at least one quarter of the world’s population—live in poverty. Over half of these people live in South Asia; most of the remainder in sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia (Note: for East Asia, probably North Korea)”.
It these deaths were taking place in Communist China, I’m sure the authors would have mentioned China by name since critics of the CCP on the West seldom miss a chance. In fact, China sends food to North Korea to alleviate the suffering and hunger.
MCB says, “For you to prove MAO was not covered in blood as was his MENTOR Stalin…”
Wrong again, MCB. Stalin was not Mao’s mentor. Mao never went to Moscow to be trained as others in the CCP did. In fact, Mao and Stalin did not see eye to eye and the CCP and the Soviets had a falling out since Mao wouldn’t do what Stalin told him to do, which is the reason President Nixon visited China.
Nixon saw a chance to gain China as an ally against Soviet Russia and the rest is history.
In fact, a few years before Nixon went to China, the Soviets sent a communication to Washington D.C. declaring that the USSR was going to launch a nuclear strike on Communist China and Nixon told Russia if they did, the United States would consider it an act of war since China was vital to American interests even though the US had a complete embargo of China at the time, which was lifted soon afterwards before Nixon visited Mao in Beijing.
MCB’s opinions are so full of holes, we could drive a fleet of trucks through them.
MCB,
More on Mao and Stalin’s non-relationship, which didn’t last long.
“Modernization and Revolution in China: From the Opium Wars to the Olympics” (East Gate Books) [Paperback]
June Grasso (Author), Jay P. Corrin (Author), Michael Kort (Author)
“It appears that by 1957 Mao Zedong had decided to terminate any policies that continlued along lines set down by the Soviet-style first Five-Year Plan. Mao’s relationship with Moscow had deteriorated steadily since the anti-Stalin campaign.”
Source: http://www.amazon.com/Modernization-Revolution-China-Opium-Olympics/dp/0765623919/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321738513&sr=1-1
Grasso, considered to be one of the most prolific Chinese scholars alive today, believes China’s problems comes solely from the West. Confucianism is deeply ingrained within the Chinese culture and every event should be analyzed through a Confucian lens, especially 20th century China which rejected Confucianism.
Note: I have something to say about “China rejecting Confucianism in the 20th century.”
Mao did conduct a propaganda campaign to reject Confucianism. However, Confucianism travels two tracks—the family track and then the political track, and although Mao waged war on both tracks, he expected the people to obey him as their leader expecting total obedience, which is an obvious misinterpretation of what Confucius meant about the relationship between the leaders of China and the people.
Mao wasn’t the first East Asian to do this. Just about every emperor and dynasty from and including the Han Dynasty also laid the propaganda down heavy along the political track.
Chiang Kai-shek did it when he ruled mainland China and then in Taiwan after the KMT lost the Civil War.
The Japanese attempted using the political track of Confucianism in a failed attempt during World War II to gain the blind obedience of the Chinese people they had conquered.
Although Mao waged his hypocritical war against Confucius, in the end, he did not uproot it from the Chinese family where the values that Confucius taught mostly remains strong today. In fact, the CCP in recent years had revived Confucius.
MCB, you wrote, “Are you saying the Chinese should not even try a multi-party system because they are … incapable of electing a leader they want? They will just mess it up?”
Here’s my answer to your questions.
I agree with America’s Founding Fathers such as George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, etc.
Since America was founded as a one-party Republic and the Founding Father’s detested democracy and believed it would lead to mob rule, I believe that if China copies the US as it is today, they will regret they ever did it. It wasn’t until Thomas Jefferson ran for president against John Adams that America had more than one political party.
The United States started out as a republic. In the beginning, only ten percent of the population was allowed to vote. To be eligible to vote, you had to be a white man that owned property. The Founders had a poor opinion of most people’s ability to make rational decisions when voting and felt strongly that most people should not have the right to vote. I agree with them. Many in America should not have the right to vote.
If we were to compare “today’s” China under its 1982 Constitution with the America of 1776 to the Civil War in the 1860s when America freed the slaves, China would be a better place to live.
In fact, “today’s” China would be a better place to live for children. In America all the way to the 1930s until the Child Labor Laws were passed, parents could sell their children into servitude and many Americans living in poverty did just that—sold one or more of their children as young as seven years old to coal mines or factories to work 12 hour days six days a week and girls as young as 9 in some states could be sold into prostitution. The average age was 12 for this.
In addition, for women, “today’s” China would have been a better place to live up until the 1920s since in America women were still the property of men and could not own property or vote. If a husband died, the nearest male relative inherited the property and if he didn’t support the wife, she was destitute. Women in the US earned the right to vote and own property in the 1920s.
In the 1930s under President Wilson, the US transitioned from being a republic to the democracy that the Founders detested. It was in the 1930s that President Wilson was the first president to refer to the US as a democracy instead of a republic. It was in the 1930s that the Senate changed the way Senators were selected. Prior to 1930s, US Senators were appointed by each state legislature and were not elected by a popular vote. Appointing people to office using merit as a measurement to promotion is the way China does it today within the CCP.
By contrast, in the US, every election is a popularity contest and merit has nothing to do with who wins elections.
Today, in America, what the Founding Fathers detested has happened and the US is no longer a republic but is a democracy.
Why did the Founding Fathers detest democracy?
Because history shows that democracies do not survive and eventually will become a dictatorship of some sort (when the “voting”, ignorant mob demands it to restore order during a crises of some kind), which is why America’s Founding Fathers did not want a democracy in America. They wanted a republic that would stand a better chance to survive much longer—a republic closer in structure to the one that exits in China today.
If I were to advise China of anything, I would tell them to avoid become a democracy but stick to being a republic.
Mao was a dictator. Some refer to him as the modern emperor. He ruled China for 27 years between 1949 to 1976 when he died. Even when the Party disagreed with him, he went ahead and did what he wanted anyway. In fact, the entire Politburo of nine men right under Mao in the leadership hierarchy, disagreed with his Cultural Revolution and they all paid a brutal price for that disagreement.
However, even then, Mao implemented some good policies that improved health care and life in China. In fact, he led the first government in China’s history to set goals to attempt systematically to reduce both inequality and poverty.
To make sure this wouldn’t happen again, in 1982, China wrote a new Constitution that set term limits and an age limit for holding a public office (two five-year terms and mandatory retirement at 67–something even the glorious US doesn’t have). This means that the presidents of China may only serve two, five-year terms and in addition, this Constitution has an impeachment clause so if a future president attempts anything like Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the People’s Congress can impeach him before his term runs out.
It also clearly points out that political and religious freedom of speech in China are limited and every child is taught this so anyone that steps outside those limits is breaking China’s laws and deserves jail time.
In fact, most people even in the United States have no idea what freedom of speech means in America. Freedom of speech in the US means if someone criticizes the government, they won’t get locked up or killed. It does not guarantee freedom of speech in the workplace or even on this Blog. As the Blog host, I may, at my choice delete comments I find unacceptable for the forum that I want this Blog to be. In addition, in the US, you may not slander someone in public or you may find yourself in court and an expensive bill to pay if a judge finds you guilty.
Today, in China, one man does not rule as Mao did. The Chinese Communist Party has 80 million members and decisions are made by consensus — not a popular vote at a ballot box as in the US where any idiot, even if he or she cannot read or reason, has a vote, which is what the Founding Fathers feared and detested.
On that note, did you know that more than half of America’s population has never read a book and the average American reads at the fifth grade elementary school level, which means most American adults cannot understand complicted contracts and concepts necessary for making decisions even when it comes time to vote. In fact, millions of Americans rely on their priest/pastor or a conservative talk-show host such as Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, who are more than willing to tell millions of people how to think and vote (If this were to happen in China, Americans would be screaming it was brain washing).
In China, merit is also considered when the Party decides who moves up to higher political posts—-not a popularity contest as in the US. Again, these decisions are made within the Party and by consensus.
America’s Founding Fathers were very wise men. China should pay close attention to their advice about a democracy.
LL, we sort of finally agree on something. Like you I also originally thought some people should not be allowed to vote. However I realized that there is a better way.
Everyone should be allowed to vote BUT each vote should have points based on education level, military service or volunteer community work, etc.
This way, those who chose to remain uninformed can still be a part of the process yet perhaps 100 such people’s votes would equal just one from those who are capable of choosing leaders based on qualities other than a brilliant smile or a golden tongue.
Ancient Rome had tribes, with each tribe having but one vote for yearly elections but some tribes had very few members and were made up of senatorial and knight classes who were educated so their votes counted 1000 to 1 compared to the overcrowded plebe tribes.
Such a system of course can not work in a multicultural society without affirmative action which would distort the whole point of voting right based on qualifications.
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Unfortunately the rest of what you wrote is kaka. The founding fathers were in uncharted territory with only Roman and Greek models to work with. If they didn’t want political parties, then they unknowingly set up a system in which it is impossible to gain power without them. Political parties would have been prohibited in the constitution. They wanted parties to ensure that no single person would be able to become J. Caesar or Sulla or Marius.
The Roman senators had no political parties because it was every man for themselves so only temporary alliances were created and broken. Romans had to advance through the cursus honorum to reach Senate which was based on family status and the founding fathers wanted no aristocracy. Also Rome also had hereditary patron/client obligations, while in America only a group could work together to elect one who partially shared a philosophy or in exchange for a boon.
Even if the system wasnt designed with political parties in mind, the parties were unavoidable.
Political parties were already in place in 1791 with Hamilton/Franklin Federalists vs. Madison/Jefferson democrat-republican-Jeffersonians.
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If you took the 1982 PRC constitution and the 1786 US Constitution and give one to Egypt and another to Lybia of 2011, today, you would still have Sharia laws in 10 years in both places.
Soviet Constitution in 1937 was hailed for its fairness and right granted to residents. Hitler was a strong champion of socialized medicine. Lincoln wanted to ship every freed slave to Africa since he thought them incapable of living in harmony with whites on an equal footing but he was shot. in 1830 there were no slaves in New England,
I agree that flavors of democracy practiced throughout the world mixed with socialism, monarchy, capitalism or theocracy are flawed, the answer is not to revert to some pseudo-oligarchy or feudalism but to have a convention as outlined in the constitution of all 50 states, and fix the problems.
Howard Stern, Limbough (sp?), Sharpton, are all private citizens who are only on tv or radio because people listen to them and not the other 99999 stations giving every opinion under the sun. NPR gives a steady diet of very hard left views, and is taxpayer sponsored. Fox is Right, CNN Left, MSNBC Left, BBS Left, ABC, CBS, NBC are Left… Stern is on satellite radio and I have no idea about where Limbough or Sharpton broadcast.
Your analogy with China is very faulty as you are comparing American private citizens with PRC controlled propaganda that first must be vetted by censors.Since you have to resort to half-truths, crooked analogies, misdirection and other rhetorical tricks in an attempt to discredit valid arguments and obfuscate rather than defend your views.
Your tactics demonstrate that you don’t really care if what you say is true or not, factual or not, or even makes any sense as long as you confuse enough simple minded people to believe you. You are disingenuous and very confused.