Talk:Great Leap Forward

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Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 22:40, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Privatalisation of farm lands?? Good for chinese or bad?

The current article states that a ban on the private farm lands had caused massive harm to chinese society and culture..based on what truth?

According to a Guardian paper quoted study,

"Privatisation in eastern Europe often led to massive thefts of public property by oligarchs and became deeply unpopular, with strong majorities of people in all post-Communist countries wanting its revision. Privatisation is also disliked in India, Latin America and China itself, while studies of privatisation in many parts of the world show it can have a deleterious effect on development. Land privatisation in China would rapidly create land concentration and landless peasants."

Source https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/15/nobel-winner-liu-xiaobo-chinese-dissident

It is a country with a vast population and filthy rich people could have easily bought out large private land banks and left very few for the poor peasants. Hence is it right to make such a bold pro capitalist statement that a ban on private land is indeed harmful to chinese civillians? Or that it omits the disadvantages of privatisation of lands.202.52.36.52 (talk) 06:17, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

yeah, you wrote this in an article about the greatest famine in human history, caused by communism.

let me know when capitalism causes the greatest famine in human history.

by the way you are conflating capitalism with oligarchism, when you should be talking about descentralization against centralization which is really the culprit of this issue. 88.131.68.199 (talk) 11:06, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

He is a commie defender after all, can't expect too much intelligence. 2601:18D:8C7F:C100:DC0E:E0BA:6500:E58 (talk) 05:45, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_India

here you go, capitalism directly killing millions of people in a famine. 2604:3D09:217F:EA70:2050:D0CB:ABF7:40F7 (talk) 03:26, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Expansion of falsification of data

The most significant aspect of the failure of the Great Leap Forward was the mass falsification of data undertaken by party cadres desperate to retain their current positions within the PRC, yet it is barely allocated a paragraph in the article as a whole. I suggest an entire separate section be created to cover the breadth of the topic, as a few passing comments is incapable of fully representing the importance of the response of the administrators responsible for worsening the Great Leap Forward, an integral part of understanding the topic as a whole, I firmly believe. At the very least the current section detailing the cause of the famine should be expanded to explain the importance of the over reporting executed by party officials 2A00:23C6:E705:C301:D5A0:7AC0:5C9C:8512 (talk) 17:33, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree generally (I would characterize false reporting as a "major" aspect although not the "most significant"). I encourage you to begin making these additions. JArthur1984 (talk) 17:45, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

After some thought, I would like to adjust my previous statement asserting it as the most significant factor, and have decided when I have some time to add such a section 2A00:23C6:E705:C301:D582:F683:E0F1:5ECE (talk) 12:08, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Great, that's a worthwhile endeavor. I have been working on some other topics and likely will be for some time, but I will try to keep alert for some sources I can contribute to assist in the future. JArthur1984 (talk) 13:47, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Currently insufficient mention of the role of population growth

During the time of food shortage, China was experiencing a massive surge in population. 20th century improvements in life expectancy, health, and infant mortality combined to create a massive surge in demand for food.

Population growth was so rapid that the people who starved hardly had any effect on the total population. There is currently insufficient mention of the role of this population surge in the food shortage. GalantFan (talk) 18:37, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Too much emphasis on Frank Dikötter's perspective

Dikötter is cited and mentioned in the article 38 times despite the fact that he is a relatively controversial source and has been subject to many academics disputing a lot of his claims. Obviously, there are also those who agree and therefore he shouldn't be completely removed as a source but the reliance on his perspective is far to great in my opinion especially in trying to achieve a neutral stance on the issue. Dikötter has directly mistranslated Mao and made arguments that opium was generally benign in China. Miraivii (talk) 19:04, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree. Dikötter is a weak and controversial source in well-studied areas where we can cite more scholarly texts. Among the many more rigorous scholars who have pointed out his errors and the like are Short (Dikötter's books "set out to make the case for the prosecution, rather than providing balanced accounts of the periods they describe.") and DeMare ("Due to Dikötter's choice of phrasing, many readers believe that he is arguing that there were no landlords in China. His citation, however, refers to my UCLA dissertation, where I discuss how the term land lord (dizhu) was an alien word in the countryside [...] There were, to be sure, many landlords in China."). Meyskens is another excellent scholar who critiques Dikötter (regarding famine death tolls).

Why don't you trim some of the Dikötter material you refer to? It's a good idea. JArthur1984 (talk) 19:16, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

I also agree. I was trying to find any other source of his outlandish claim that "Approximately 30% to 40% of all houses were turned to rubble." Are we really expected to believe that China intentionally left 1/3 of the population homeless? Seems completely unreliable.GalantFan (talk) 19:24, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

"Approximately 30%" is something quite likely to be true, however they were more likely to be turned before and during, not just during, I doubt that maybe there is an editor misunderstands him. See this article from Modern China Studies in Chinese. ときさき くるみ ^{not because they are easy, but because they are hard} 11:14, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

See also Great Chinese Famine which has dozens of references to Dikötter and his wild claims such as "at least 2.5 million of the victims were beaten or tortured to death" which also has no credible second source.GalantFan (talk) 19:36, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

See also "Review of Frank Dikötter, Mao’s Great Famine"

by Aaron Leonard https://logosjournal.com/2011/fall_leonard/

Dikötter claims he has "meticulous reports compiled by the party itself" yet he has no citations of any of these reports, and proceeds to make inferences and rough approximations that 2.5 million were tortured.

"This declaration, if true, is damning and staggering. Yet a closer read reveals it as fallacious, as artful writing full of extrapolation and conjecture. .... What we have, in sum, are assertions based on tendentious guesswork." GalantFan (talk) 20:42, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Typo in Other Impacts/Education

The first sentence is lacking the "from" year. Can anyone please add sources and fix this? Thanks. 14.248.29.8 (talk) 06:49, 31 March 2024 (UTC)