
China's Great Famine (2013) - thrower123
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/01/china-great-famine-book-tombstone
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syntaxing
I think this is one of the biggest thing people forget about China. Their
wealth is extremely new found. A lot of people alive today still had some sort
of relative that has starved to death, particularly in the same age as our
baby boomer generation. That's why the Chinese government is extremely strict
and the citizens are willing to be "subjugated". Time were extremely tough for
them not even two-three decades ago.

Side note, I believe most historians will agree that any modern famine within
this past century is man-made. They are either created or mitigated poorly
because of ignorance.

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amvalo
This explanation sounds nice until you start thinking about other countries
which experienced famine in the last century and don’t look anything like
china...

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maxxxxx
What famines were there where not either the government caused or ignored the
problem, a colonial power ignored or caused the problem or a war was going on?

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Joakal
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine)

Here's a cut n paste

Chinese scholars had kept count of 1,828 instances of famine from 108 BC to
1911 in one province or another—an average of close to one famine per
year.[50] From 1333 to 1337 a terrible famine killed 6 million Chinese. The
four famines of 1810, 1811, 1846, and 1849 are said to have killed no fewer
than 45 million people.[51]

Japan experienced more than 130 famines between 1603 and 1868.[52]

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Retric
That's not even close to answering the question. People dying in a regional
famine is the fault of the government.

More widely crop failure and famine are very different things. Consider,
Ireland was exporting food during the Irish potato famine.

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digianarchist
"Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine" is a great book on the subject of the
Chinese famine.

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trhway
very similar to the great famine in USSR in 1932-33

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%93...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%9333)

One can only wonder why ... Or just look at Venezuela and North Korea today.

From that time we have an expression "like a hunger-stricken from the Volga
region" ("golodayuschiy s Povolzh'ya", the region among the most affected by
the famine) meaning like a completely debilitated by prolonged hunger and by
overall extremely bad conditions person.

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v_lisivka
The main idea of communism is to kill «bad» people («Bourgeoisie and
Intelligence», i.e. richer and smarter people), to grow «soviet people», which
then build communism. Initial estimate in 1918 was to kill 10% of population.
To do that, secret police created to spy on people minds, to find bad ones.
Secret police reported that majority of Ukrainians are anti-communists. So,
idea was simple - communists need to kill majority of «bad» Ukrainians, then
communism will happen.

You may want to read [0] or similar documents for more information.

[0]: The new Soviet archival sources Hypotheses for a critical assessment
Andrea Graziosi, 1999

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claudiawerner
>The main idea of communism is to kill «bad» people («Bourgeoisie and
Intelligence», i.e. richer and smarter people), to grow «soviet people»

No modern Communist academic nor Marx himself spoke in these terms. You're
projecting history onto ideology, which doesn't always work. The Marxist
students being persecuted by China this year would very much disagree with
your analysis, even having experienced this 'communism'.

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v_lisivka
First, you are mismatching communism ideology with transition from capitalism
to communism. If somebody want to rule a country, he must use violence to beat
previous government, no matter what is said in a book.

Second, you are mismatching theory with practice.

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claudiawerner
All revolutions are structured like that, from the German to the French to the
American to the Russian to every war of independence. Violence is an
unfortunate effect. Practice is informed by theory, and theory is informed by
practice. A glance at Marxist literature would show this.

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HillaryBriss
The famine itself was, of course, unimaginably terrible. I feel that another
terrible thing this article highlights is the sad reality of political
parties, systems and organizations in general:

 _" The root problem is the problem of the system. They don't dare to admit
the system's problems … It might influence the legitimacy of the Communist
party"_

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amai
The same happened in Europe in the 1930s:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor)

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tcper
China gov't still deny this history, many people still deny believe this
history, if you talk about this in China, they may think you're a spy.

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Leary
This history is well known in China and part of the history curriculum.

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carapace
> "The Chinese people were cheated. They need real history."

Can someone fwd this to Sundar Pichai in re: Project Dragonfly?

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amaccuish
Why is this being dug up from 2013, and not even marked as such?

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dang
Sometimes we miss the year of an article and need users to point it out to us.
I've added it now.

Historical material is always welcome on Hacker News. Dig away!

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jokoon
Do you think it's debatable to compare the deaths of concentration camps in
Germany, and the deaths of the great famine?

You often see this comparison being made (whatever the reason is), to me those
deaths are different because the intention was different.

The shoah was aimed at certain people, while the great famine killed
indiscriminately.

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anoncoward111
The Holodomor was aimed at Ukrainians by Russians.

The Great Famine was aimed at every commoner by the Politburo.

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trhway
Anybody who care to open wikipedia would see straight through that propaganda
about Ukranians and Russians.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%93...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%9333)

Note: my mother side of the family were generational peasants in the Kiev
region, the families of 5 siblings of my grandfather lived there through that
time (the granddad took his family to look for better life elsewhere several
years before that)

