{"id":27728,"date":"2014-09-08T00:01:57","date_gmt":"2014-09-08T04:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=27728"},"modified":"2014-09-07T12:02:06","modified_gmt":"2014-09-07T16:02:06","slug":"qotd-the-economists-whitewash-of-the-great-leap-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/09\/08\/qotd-the-economists-whitewash-of-the-great-leap-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: <em>The Economist<\/em>&#8216;s whitewash of the &#8220;Great Leap Forward&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>When Mao died, <em>The Economist<\/em> wrote:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p>\u201cIn the final reckoning, Mao must be accepted as one of history\u2019s great achievers: for devising a peasant-centered revolutionary strategy which enabled China\u2019s Communist Party to seize power, against Marx\u2019s prescriptions, from bases in the countryside; for directing the transformation of China from a feudal society, wracked by war and bled by corruption, into a unified, egalitarian state <strong>where nobody starves<\/strong>; and for reviving national pride and confidence so that China could, in Mao\u2019s words, \u2018stand up\u2019 among the great powers.\u201d (emphasis mine)<\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The current estimate is that, during the Great Leap Forward, between thirty and forty million Chinese peasants starved to death. Critics questioning that figure have suggested that the number might have been as low as two and half million.<\/p>\n<p>I am curious \u2014 has the <em>Economist<\/em> ever published an explicit apology or an explanation of how they got the facts so completely backwards, crediting the man responsible for what was probably the worst famine in history with creating a state &#8220;where nobody starves?&#8221; Is it known who wrote that passage, and has anyone ever asked him how he could have gotten the facts so terribly wrong?<\/p>\n<p>David D. Friedman, <a href=\"http:\/\/daviddfriedman.blogspot.ca\/2014\/09\/a-small-mistake.html\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;A Small Mistake&#8221;, <em>Ideas<\/em><\/a>, 2014-09-07.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Mao died, The Economist wrote: \u201cIn the final reckoning, Mao must be accepted as one of history\u2019s great achievers: for devising a peasant-centered revolutionary strategy which enabled China\u2019s Communist Party to seize power, against Marx\u2019s prescriptions, from bases in the countryside; for directing the transformation of China from a feudal society, wracked by war [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,7,28,41],"tags":[780,477,293],"class_list":["post-27728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-history","category-media","category-quotations","tag-communism","tag-magazines","tag-obituary"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7de","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27728"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27729,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27728\/revisions\/27729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}