China’s Last Great Famine: Part 1 of 6

March 17, 2015

The loss of life during China’s last Great Famine—in the West and especially the United States—has been blamed on Mao and the Chinese Communist Party, but finding blame on a famine in China isn’t that easy when you know the history of droughts and famines in that country.

It’s no secret that many in the United States think that Mao was a monster worse that Adolf Hitler or Stalin, and that Mao was responsible for killing 30 to 60 million people during what is known as China’s Great Famine.

Until recently, I also believed this because that’s all I have ever heard through the U.S. media—the details that may have caused this famine are not common knowledge, and it appears that no attempt by the Western media has ever been made to reveal them.

However, after discovering what happened in China and the world during Mao’s Great Leap Forward, what was once a certainty—at least to me—is now a mystery and possibly another hoax equal to the hoax that Tibet was never part of China before 1950 and there was a massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989, which Wiki Leaks recently proved wrong.


There’s no mention of drought, floods and severe weather that cut crop yields, and the number of deaths quoted in the video cannot be supported with evidence. In fact, evidence that does exist supports far fewer deaths. Everything else is based on guessing.

I think discovering why Mao might be a victim of this hoax is worth examining, because in 1949 when Mao came to power, life expectancy in China was age 35, but by 1960 life expectancy had improved to age 60, while the population of China had increased by 19.5% with child mortality rates improving dramatically.

If Mao’s policies were responsible for these improvements in life expectancy and population growth, how could he also be the monster responsible for causing a famine that killed millions?

My research revealed that other factors might have contributed to the deaths and all but one of those factors did not deliberately cause people to die of starvation.

After learning of these other factors and completing the puzzle, it is obvious—at least to me— that Mao and the Communist Party did not order the deaths of 20 to 70 million mostly rural peasant in remote areas of China, and the numbers quoted in the West vary widely because different people have made different claims without valid evidence to support those claims. However, there is evidence that supports the lower number. In fact, the actual number of Chinese who starved is probably much lower than what is commonly believed in the United States.

Continued in Part 2 on March 18, 2015.

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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 lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

Finalist in Fiction & Literature – Historical Fiction
The National “Best Books 2010” Awards

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Honorable Mentions in General Fiction
2012 San Francisco Book Festival
2012 New York Book Festival
2012 London Book Festival
2009 Los Angeles Book Festival
2009 Hollywood Book Festival

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China’s Holistic Historical Timeline


Mao’s ‘alleged’ Guilt in the Land of Famines – Part 8/8

November 18, 2011

More than one book has examined this topic from a scholarly perspective (instead of inflammatory unsubstantiated and inflated claims), but Mao’s Western critics have mostly ignored this work.

In China: Land of Famine (published in 1926 by the American Geographical Society) by Walter H. Mallory , we have a book that casts doubt on the inflammatory claims, which have been popularized in the West about the post-1949 Mao era. Mallory offers another perspective for understanding what really may have happened during Mao’s Great Leap Forward.

Then from Stanford University Press, in the Economic Cold War by Shu Guang Zhang (August 2002), “the author argues that while the immediate effects (of the complete American embargo of China) may be meager or nil, the indirect and long-term effects may be considerable; in the case he reexamines, the disastrous Great Leap Forward and Anti-Rightist campaign (The Cultural Revolution) were in part prompted by the sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies.”

In other words, if the West had been supportive of China by lifting the complete embargo after the Korean conflict (1950 – 1953), these events may never have taken place.

Once all the facts are taken into consideration and weighed without bias and emotional baggage, there is only one conclusion to reach regarding the editors of “Eating Bitterness” and the authors of “Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine“,  “Catastrophe and Contention in Rural China” and “Mao’s Great Famine“.

These books are frauds supporting a hoax.

It is also a fact that there are millions of people with closed minds that will refuse to accept this verdict that if Mao was guilty of anything, he was guilty of distrust and/or incompetence and not murder — at least not the deaths from the famine that took place during the Great Leap Forward in China: Land of Famines.

If you have watched the nine videos embedded with this series, ask yourself, who is guilty of starvation murder today? That “old” friend of mine I mentioned in Part 1 is against abortion and believes we should trust in God in all things, which is based on this “old” friend’s interpretation of the Bible.

World Hunger.org reports, “Poor nutrition plays a role in at least half of the 10.9 million child deaths each year, which is more than five million deaths.” This means every three to nine years, the number of children (not counting adults) that die from hunger in the world equals the 15 to 45 million that Mao’s critics claim died of starvation in China  during the Great Leap Forward (the actual number may be closer to three million).

In fact, between 13 and 18 million men, women and children die of starvation each year, which is one person every three and a half seconds.

Nevertheless, World Hunger.org says, “The world produces enough food to feed everyone. World agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase.”

Ask yourself, will God feed the thousands that starve in the world daily, while 75% of Americans are overweight and 25% are obese.

Meanwhile, a few well-fed authors are writing books that perpetuate a hoax about Mao, who has been dead for 35 years, so who will they blame next? Maybe they should look in a mirror.

Return to Mao’s ‘alleged’ Guilt in the Land of Famines – Part 7 or start with Part 1

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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

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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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Mao’s ‘alleged’ Guilt in the Land of Famines – Part 7/8

November 17, 2011

When I asked my wife her opinion [who lived through the Great Leap Forward (GLF) as a child and then was a teen in Shanghai and spent a few years in a labor camp during The Cultural Revolution] she doubted if the number of people that died of starvation in China during the GLF were anywhere near the massive numbers Western authors such as Frank Dikotter claim.

My wife then mentioned a few memoirs she had read of troops from Division A-341 of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which guarded Mao, the Forbidden City (where Mao lived) and Beijing during the GLF.

The memoirs of a number of Mao’s personal PLA bodyguards from Division A-341 revealed that when Party members told Mao that rural Chinese in a few provinces were starving due to droughts and low crop yields, Mao did not believe what he was told.

However, to verify these claims, Mao sent people he trusted [troops from PLA Division A-341 that came from rural China] to their villages to investigate the claims of famine.


one in eight children in the United States go to bed hungry daily

When Mao’s trusted bodyguards returned in late 1960 or early 1961 and reported that the claims were true, Mao acted swiftly, cancelled the GLF several years early sending the peasants back to their villages from the collectives, and directed the Party to seek help from other countries to feed the people.

As my wife said, (due to Piety—considered the First of all Virtues, which I wrote of here) the Party would never have ordered an end to the Great Leap Forward without Mao’s permission. The orders had to come from Mao and according to the memoirs of his personal bodyguards, he was the one that made the decision to end the GLF, five-year plan early and have China ask for outside help, which started to arrive from Canada and Australia in 1961.

In fact, Roderick MacForquhar wrote in his book, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, that in May 1961, China entered into long-term arrangements with Canada and Australia to insure grain supplies until production in China recovered in addition to imports of American grain laundered through France to avoid the complete American embargo.

Continued on November 18, 2011 in Mao’s ‘alleged’ Guilt in the Land of Famines – Part 8 or return to Part 6

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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

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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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Mao’s ‘alleged’ Guilt in the Land of Famines – Part 6/8

November 16, 2011

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

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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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Mao’s ‘alleged’ Guilt in the Land of Famines – Part 5/8

November 15, 2011

To wrap up his rebuttal, Amazon reviewer W Y Lu of Hong Kong says, Dikotter gets his 45 million by (a) inflating mortality rates gleaned from the archives by 50%, and (b) assuming a ridiculously low ‘normal’ death rate (the same as developed countries in the West) – even though China throughout the 1950s was one of the most wretchedly poor countries on earth.

A second review by M Chen uses similar evidence to refute Dikotter’s bogus claims of what happened in China during the Great Leap Forward (GLF) as mass murder.

Chen says 10 per 1000 deaths annually was the mortality rate in the advanced industrialized West in 1960, while mortality rates for the other big Asian countries in 1960 for India was 24 per 1000, Indonesia 23 per 1000, and Pakistan 23 per 1000

Chen says, “Dikotter claimed the GLF started early 1958 and ended in late 1962.”  However, Judith Banister proved that theory false showing that the famine ended as early as 1961, while other valid evidence proves the droughts and floods that caused the famine and loss of life didn’t hit until 1959.

If China lowered the mortality rate between 1949 and 1958 from 38 per 1000 to 10 per 1000, a miracle must have taken place because the mortality rate Dikotter claims as normal for China was lower than the UK (11.5 per 1000) and France (11.4 per 1000) in 1960.

In addition, World Life Expectancy.com shows that in 1960, life expectancy in China was 36.3 years while India was 42.3 and Indonesia 41.5, which supports the higher mortality rate in China that Lu and Chen defend.

Continued on November 16, 2011 in Mao’s ‘alleged’ Guilt in the Land of Famines – Part 6 or return to Part 4

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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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