Author Topic: "Tombstone"  (Read 618 times)

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Plane

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"Tombstone"
« on: September 22, 2008, 04:32:42 AM »
"I call this book Tombstone," the author, Yang Jisheng, writes in the opening paragraph. "It is a tombstone for my father who died of hunger in 1959, for the 36 million Chinese who also died of hunger, for the system that caused their death, and perhaps for myself for writing this book."

"Tombstone" has not been translated. Nevertheless, rumors of its contents and short excerpts are already ricocheting around the world (I first learned of it recently in California, from an excited Australian historian). Based on a decade's worth of interviews and unprecedented access to documents and statistics, "Tombstone" -- in two volumes and 1,100 pages -- establishes beyond any doubt that China's misguided charge toward industrialization -- Mao's "Great Leap Forward" -- was an utter disaster.

A combination of criminally bad policies (farmers were forced to make steel instead of growing crops; peasants were forced into unproductive communes) and official cruelty (China was grimly exporting grain at the time) created, between 1959 and 1961, one of the worst famines in recorded history. "I went to one village and saw 100 corpses," one witness told Yang. "Then another village and another 100 corpses. No one paid attention to them. People said that dogs were eating the bodies. Not true, I said. The dogs had long ago been eaten by the people."

So thorough is his documentation, apparently, that some are already calling Yang "China's Solzhenitsyn," in honor of the Russian dissident -- who died last week -- who probably did the most to expose the crimes of Stalin. But the comparison is not quite right. Yang is not a dissident but a longtime Communist Party member. For more than three decades, he was a reporter for Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency. As a result, he had access to party documents that no one else has ever had.

More to the point, he is not an outsider: On the contrary, he, his book and the story of the famine itself have a status in China that is hard to define. Though the book is banned on the mainland, it was published in Hong Kong, where it sold out immediately. At the same time, while the famine officially didn't occur -- Chinese history textbooks speak of "three years of natural disasters," not of a mass artificial famine, caused by Chairman Mao -- many people clearly remember it well, understand Mao's role in what happened and are willing to discuss it in private.

Michael Tee

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Re: "Tombstone"
« Reply #1 on: September 22, 2008, 10:59:29 AM »
Famine in China.  How unique.  I wonder if he's also going to discuss the 1944 famine in which 4 million Chinese perished?  Or the countless famines before then, stretching back milennia?

How many more famines does the guy anticipate under the on-going Communist "mis-rule?"  Even if mistakes were made (and I don't admit that they were) it looks to me like those have long since been corrected and China has already edged into the front ranks of modern industrialized nations under the leadership of the Communist Party.

This sounds a lot to me like the bullshit one hears all the time from Nazis and their former collaborators about the "Great Ukrainian Famine" of the 1930s.  Usually under communism, land reform tries to equalize land ownership by collectivizing the land at the expense of its former owners, who thereby acquire a huge vested interest in making the collectives fail.  When the Party tries to collect the food to see to its equitable distribution among all citizens, including the non-farming portion of the population, hoarding and resistance develops, then sabotage, resulting in temporary shortages and in extreme cases, famine.  The famine that results is due to the anti-social actions of the small land-holders, fascists, anti-Soviet activists and similar scum, provoking necessarily harsh reactions.  I would think, without reading the book, that something very similar might have happened in China.

Real change is very hard on lots of people, especially those who have acquired vested interests under the unfair and unjust capitalist or pre-communist system.  Resistance has to be expected in one form or another.  I don't like the expression "You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs," but it's a fairly apt, if glib and unfeeling, metaphorical explanation of the phenomena we are talking about here.  Sums it all up in a nutshell.

Whatever mistakes might have been made by the Party in the past, I think it's reasonably clear at this point in time that famine is one problem that China will no longer be plagued by in the future.
« Last Edit: September 22, 2008, 11:01:30 AM by Michael Tee »

Xavier_Onassis

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Re: "Tombstone"
« Reply #2 on: September 22, 2008, 11:13:41 AM »
Whatever mistakes might have been made by the Party in the past, I think it's reasonably clear at this point in time that famine is one problem that China will no longer be plagued by in the future.

============================================
I agree that China has greatly reduced the potential of famine. But "the future" covers a very long period.

China's population continues to grow, although slowly. The potential for human reproduction is not infinite, but it is limited by factors such as available food and energy.  The amount of crops that can grow is definitely finite. There is probably a far greater possibility of famine in places like Haiti or Sahel Africa or India, where the growth of population is not limited by a government policy.

I think it is safe to say that very few human problems are ever solved forever. Some have a greater potential, such as the eradication of smallpox, but as long as people eat and reproduce, famine is always a possibility.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

Michael Tee

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Re: "Tombstone"
« Reply #3 on: September 22, 2008, 11:23:47 AM »
Closer to what I meant is that the chances of China experiencing future famine is more or less what any large industrialized nation will face in a future which stretches forward a very long way and as you correctly pointed out is not very predictable in the long run.

Xavier_Onassis

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Re: "Tombstone"
« Reply #4 on: September 22, 2008, 11:39:03 AM »
I can agree with this. The main factor in the case of China is the immense population on a rather limited land area. The productive area could be dwindling as a result of pollution. The Three Rivers project will make water for irrigation more available to a larger area, but some productive land will be lost to the the lakes that have been formed.

When China reaches zero population growth, there will be more security. Until the planet reaches zero increase in energy and food needs, there will be a threat of famine.


"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."