After a decline that started in the 16th century about the time Portuguese traders obtained the rights to anchor ships in Macao, and 22 years later established a permeant settlement there, in 1912, China’s last Imperial Dynasty, the Qing, after more than 2,200 years of Imperial rule, collapsed followed by chaos, anarchy, and widespread suffering, and mass deaths.
Sun Yat-Sen attempted to form a republic in China but failed. Not long after his death, China was plunged into a Civil War in 1927 (with a short break to fight Japan during World War II) that raged between the Nationalists under a brutal dictator called Chiang Kai-shek, an American ally, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led by Mao Zedong until 1949 when Mao’s CCP won.
The Rape of Nanking offers a brutal snapshot of what happened to China after Japan invaded in 1937.
In addition, David C. Schak reports, “Throughout most of Chinese history the majority of Chinese have lived in poverty. As the hundreds of famines that have killed millions of Chinese attest, Chinese poverty has often been absolute, i.e., lacking the very material resources needed to sustain life and maintain health.”
In 1949, the population of China was 562 million, and the average life expectancy was 36 years. In 1976 when Mao died, the population had reached 930 million and average life expectancy had increased to about 65 years.
But for his 27 years as the leader of China, the West had repeatedly blamed Mao for murdering 60 million of his own people by letting them starve to death during what’s known as Mao’s Great Famine of 1958 – 62. The CCP admits there was a famine but says that only about 3 million died. Henry Kissinger says it was closer to 20 million. Where did all of those estimates come from – 3 million, 20 million, and 60 million? From the same data that the CCP made available for the world.
What was happening in the West in the 1950s and 60s: The Cold War, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee and mass hysteria over the perceived threat posed to Capitalism by Communism. It was known as the era of The Red Scare. There was a war against the spread of Communism in Korea (1950 – 1953) that ended in a stalemate ,and then another war in Vietnam that the U.S. lost, because the government in Vietnam today is a Communist one, the same one the U.S. fought from 1955 to 1975.
Five U.S. Presidents fought the Vietnam War from Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953 – 1961) to Gerald R. Ford (1974 – 1977). In between were Presidents John F. Kennedy (assassinated), Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon (resigned to avoid being impeached).
Few in the West know that America’s leaders refused to lift an embargo on China during what’s known as Mao’s Great Famine, and help feed those starving Chinese once Mao and the CCP discovered what was happening and asked for help from the world.
The only help came from Canada and France, two countries that broke ranks with the United States to help save lives in China.
To end Communism in China, America’s leaders were willing to let millions of Chinese starve to death, and then blame Mao even though China is known as the Land of Famines, because Imperial records for more than 2,000 years recorded that China has had droughts, floods, famines, and loss of life annually up to 1962 when under the leadership of the CCP, the Chinese haven’t suffered from one since, a first in Chinese history; a first most of the global media outside of China has not reported on.
Continued in Part 6 on January 18, 2017 or return to Part 5
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the unique love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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