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
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.
Subscribe to “iLook China”
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page.
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
iLook China 