Thanks to effective propaganda of western mass media, it is now common to quote that Mao Zedong caused the death of around 30-40 million Chinese people during the Great Leap. But I bet you don’t know Jiang Zemin caused the death of over 80 million Chinese people. I come to that conclusion by calculating the mortality rate of China. I will just use a textbook text to explain mortality rate “Mortality rate, or death rate, is a measure of the number of deaths (in general, or due to a specific cause) in a particular population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit of time. Mortality rate is typically expressed in units of deaths per 1,000 individuals per year; thus, a mortality rate of 9.5 (out of 1,000) in a population of 1,000 would mean 9.5 deaths per year in that entire population, or 0.95% out of the total.”
During Jiang’s presidency from 1989-2002, China’s death rate is around 6.5. Which mean that over 7 million Chinese died every year. The figure is huge simply due to the fact that in 1989, the population of China is 1118.7 million. Despite the number of death every year, China’s population grow to 1280.4 million in 2002.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/china/death-rate-crude-per-1-000-people-wb-data.html
And as China’s base population increases under Hu Jintao (president of China from 2002-2012), the number of death under Hu is close to 100 million. Currently, China’s population is still growing. So by the time Xi JinPing’s presidency ended in a decade, well over 100 million Chinese will die. China’s population stood at 1376 million in 2015. And with a median age of around 37, China’s death rate has actually increased to over 7.
A very useful information for China’s population research. Bear in mind that the figure is for mainland China only.
http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/china-population/
The most malicious argument I have seen used against Mao and the CPC is that they caused more Chinese death than the Japanese invasion, and thus inflicted even more harm to China than any foreign invaders. In pretty much every encounter with naysayers of China, it is a common theme that China would be better off without the CPC. And for them, to bring up GLF, CR, Tiananmen etc is pretty much a certainty. They would actually pull out the distorted death rate figure as an argument. So much so that they believe during the last 8 years (1937-1945) of the Japanese invasion of China the death toll is 20-25 million. However, they would in a moral high horse state that Mao and CPC caused the death around 40 million people in 3 short years, some would even increase the figure to 50 million or higher. Of course when dealing with Communist China, the larger the figure the merrier they seem to feel.
Allen’s previous systematic analysis of figures point to a serious distortion of fact. However, I doubt any one hell bent on demonizing the CPC would bother to think or discuss the matter logically. This is why I suggest simply make a mockery of their baseless accusation. For example simply quote the following:
Jiang Zemin 1989-2002 (90 million death)
Hu Jintao 2002-2012 (100 million death)
Xi Jinping 2012- (over 100 million death)
So the conclusion is that all Chinese leaders are mass murderers. In fact, one might even go one step further by stating that during Mao leadership of China from 1949-1976, he caused the death of over 100 million Chinese. Hmmm, it seems China’s leadership has become much worse. It takes 27 years under Mao for 150 million Chinese to die but only a decade for his successors since Jiang Zemin. The CPC is certainly the worse government on earth.
China’s life expectancy increased from around 35 years in 1949 to 77 years in 2015. Everything is meaningless without a proper comparison. Even in a much richer country like the US, the death rate is pretty high due to the fact that the median age is higher than China. China’s median age in 1955 is 22 years while in the US it is 30. The death rate for US is currently, over 8 and mostly hovers above China even from the 1960s to 1990s. So in every decade around 18-25 million American died. Wow, isn’t the figure just 1/4 that of China? Yes, the population of the US is only 1/4 that of China. However, as we see China’s life expectancy has caught up and is now 77 years compare to 79 years of the US.
To be honest, initially I want to compare China to other developing countries after WWII. As I feel that China belongs in the same development category with countries such as India, Indonesia, Brazil etc. However, after some comparison I feel it is more apt to compare China to the US as the latter annual death figure is 1/4 that of China from 1960s onward. So to take things into context, the death rate of China is not that extraordinary even compare to a country like the US. But when quote out of context with ill intent it becomes quite a propaganda tool.
Rhan says
“Thanks to effective propaganda of western mass media, it is now common to quote that Mao Zedong caused the death of around 30-40 million Chinese people during the Great Leap. ”
I thought the number was revealed by Deng and CCP?
rolf says
The official estimate is as far as I understand 10 million – extra, unnormal deaths.
It was mentioned in an article about the book «Tombstone» in Global Times 6/9-2012:
«As for Yang (Yang Jisheng), he feared facing political retribution, although this remained unfounded. He published his book Tombstone in 2008 in Hong Kong, an account of the famine seen during the Great Leap Forward. During his research for the book, Yang spent 10 years collecting materials and visiting survivors of the starvation. The book was meant to commemorate the dead not only in Henan but in other provinces, including Sichuan, Anhui and Shandong, on which the book focuses. The death toll reached over 30 million nationwide, according to Yang’s investigation. This figure is far higher than government estimates of over 10 million.»
The number 10 million is even mentioned by Radio Free Asia (RFA): «Estimates of the total range from the official 10 million figure, to at least 45 million.»
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/cannibalism-11222013104349.html
This is probably the only time RFA is reporting something which is true?
Ray says
The Chinese government never give an official figure because they don’t have it. Just go through Allen’s analysis and you would know why, there is simply not enough data to come up with an accurate figure. If indeed 45 million people or so died of famine during the 3 years between 1959-1961 it would mean 1 out of 12 people died. This would be very noticeable as pretty much 1 out of every 2 families would have someone passed away, a near impossible figure. If you do a very casual observation, say ask older mainland Chinese how many of their friends or relation died of starvation, you would be quite surprise. I have asked literally hundreds of people who lived through that period, to my surprised most respond is that they heard of people died and food was scarce and rationed but few actually know someone personally who died. This is probably due to the fact that the famine was concentrated in a few poorer regions.
Compare that again to the death figures during the 8 years between 1937-1945 which was usually quoted at between 20-35 million. It is very obvious the GLF figures have been greatly exaggerated to serve a propaganda purpose. During those 8 years the Japanese army have been ruthlessly taxing the Chinese farmers causing widespread famine. This does not included the frequent massacres that was just an everyday occurrences. To top it off, the Nationalist government was quite ineffective. This is why life expectancy was calculated to be around 35-37 years for the average Chinese during the 1900s to 1940s. Things only started to improve after 1949 when land reform started (although technically land reform started in communist governed areas since 1927). The biggest gain was actually from mid 1960s onward. One key to Communist victory is land reform where Nationalist soldiers deserted en mass to the Communist.
My point is that the death figures have been pull out of proportion in China’s case. Simply compare the death figures for US which is also in the millions, not to mention India which is actually higher than China. And because China’s base population is so big suddenly China’s leaders are all mass murderers.
ltlee1 says
The 30 million figure was the result of a simulation study performed by a female Stanford researcher. The Chinese figure per a certain chairman of the CASS (Chinese Association of Social Studies) was indeed 10 million.
The then CASS chariman also pointed out the main problem with the Stanford study. In short, the data sets, both the provincial and the central statistics, were incomplete. More specific, he pointed out that the Sichuan data set alone would indicate millions of excessive death six months before any food shortage.