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Deep State of Mind
Jul 30, 2006

"It was a busy day. I do not remember it all. In the morning, I thought I had lost my wallet. Then we went swimming and either overthrew a government or started a pro-American radio station. I can't really remember."
Fun Shoe
More hilarity from the South China Morning Post!

"Number of dead pigs found in Shanghai river rises to 1,200 posted:

Chinese officials raised the number of dead pigs found in a Shanghai river from about 900 to 1,200, and maintained that the region's drinking was safe.

The dead pigs were found at the Songjiang district section of the Huangpu River that flows through Shanghai, according to a report by state media Xinhua on Sunday night. Officials said the animals came from the river’s upper reaches and were still investigating the exact origins, the report said.

CCTV news said on Sunday that the rotten, dead pigs were estimated to weigh up to hundreds of kilograms and were emitting strong odors.

Meanwhile, Shanghai Water Resources Department said the quality of tap water remained “normal” and was in line with safety standards, Xinhua said. Local tap water producer also said it would constantly monitor the district’s drinking water quality. The Huangpu River is a drinking water source for Shanghai residents.

State-owned Global Times said the city’s Agricultural Commission was investigating samples of the dead pigs and expected results in three days. It also quoted Songjiang district environmental official as saying: “The number is expected to rise as there are still six barges that have not returned from collecting carcasses.”

Locals told CCTV that dumping dead, sickened pigs into the river was a common practice. “After pigs died of illness, [they] just dumped them in the river…Constantly. Every day,” one villager said.

“They are everywhere, and are very stinky,” another said.

Meanwhile, local media reports earlier said more than 18,000 pigs from one village in Jiaxing city, upstream of Shanghai, had died from illness in the last two months. The reports have sparked fears that residents had resorted to dumping all of them into the river.

Blogger Xue Manzi on Monday morning criticised the government on China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo for deliberately blocking the news about the dead pigs in Jiaxing, suggesting a connection between the two. His weibo post was retweeted for more than 14,000 times wtihin three hours.

A government statement earlier said there was no evidence of an animal epidemic.

This is both hilarious and sad. And I assume that first bolded sentence is missing the word 'water.' Otherwise, I guess, yeah, it's probably safe to keep slamming baijiu by the Huangpu river.

It sounds almost biblical. Cascade of pig corpses descends upon Shanghai.

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G. Hosafat
Apr 16, 2003

:m10:

Bloodnose posted:

More hilarity from the South China Morning Post!


This is both hilarious and sad. And I assume that first bolded sentence is missing the word 'water.' Otherwise, I guess, yeah, it's probably safe to keep slamming baijiu by the Huangpu river.

It sounds almost biblical. Cascade of pig corpses descends upon Shanghai.

China is going to have to work a lot harder at this horrific mass pig death thing if they're going to take away South Korea's #1 regional champion status.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNO7nd7aFus

ReindeerF
Apr 20, 2002

Rubber Dinghy Rapids Bro

Bloodnose posted:

It sounds almost biblical. Cascade of pig corpses descends upon Shanghai.
I'm familiar with the ethic of "Just throw everything in the river," but I'm kind of surprised that at that level they don't at least think, "We should burn these things to get rid of the evidence." It's not like pigs are largely invisible the way toxic waste often is. Someone's going to notice and wonder where the 1,200 floating, bloated pigs came from, heh.

vanity slug
Jul 20, 2010

ReindeerF posted:

Someone's going to notice and wonder where the 1,200 floating, bloated pigs came from, heh.

Blame Japan.

WarpedNaba
Feb 8, 2012

Being social makes me swell!

ReindeerF posted:

I'm familiar with the ethic of "Just throw everything in the river," but I'm kind of surprised that at that level they don't at least think, "We should burn these things to get rid of the evidence." It's not like pigs are largely invisible the way toxic waste often is. Someone's going to notice and wonder where the 1,200 floating, bloated pigs came from, heh.

There's a 'The delegates from Beijing are making their rounds early this year' joke in there somewhere.

TheBuilder
Jul 11, 2001

ReindeerF posted:

I'm familiar with the ethic of "Just throw everything in the river," but I'm kind of surprised that at that level they don't at least think, "We should burn these things to get rid of the evidence." It's not like pigs are largely invisible the way toxic waste often is. Someone's going to notice and wonder where the 1,200 floating, bloated pigs came from, heh.

It is likely that they didn't want to spend any money on gasoline or matches.

NaanViolence
Mar 1, 2010

by Nyc_Tattoo

Jeoh posted:

Most people agree that the Great Leap Forward death toll was between 18 and 35 million, no idea where you're getting the 60 from.

According to the Wikipedia article at the very least, estimates do range from 30 to 60 million. It's a little bit problematic because each estimate has its own idea of how to calculate "extra" deaths: some give China a handicap for being a poor, third-world country during that period.

Ardennes
May 12, 2002
To put it in perspective, 5.5 to 29 million are estimated to have died in the Great Indian famine of 1876-78.

Pro-PRC Laowai
Sep 30, 2004

by toby

Longanimitas posted:

According to the Wikipedia article at the very least, estimates do range from 30 to 60 million. It's a little bit problematic because each estimate has its own idea of how to calculate "extra" deaths: some give China a handicap for being a poor, third-world country during that period.

Unfortunately they rely on stats that were sketchy to begin with, revised by Deng's crew when demonizing Mao was the "in thing", and use hilarious grasps to try and get the biggest number possible. Seriously, using the same standards you can easily make the claim that millions died in the US because of the depression.

Modest Mao
Feb 11, 2011

by Cyrano4747
IIRC, using similar methodology as the 30 mil you could argue Hoover and FDR killed 7.5 million Americans during the great depression and dustbowl.

pentyne
Nov 7, 2012

Modest Mao posted:

IIRC, using similar methodology as the 30 mil you could argue Hoover and FDR killed 7.5 million Americans during the great depression and dustbowl.

Except Hoover and FDR didn't make the plains dry up and destroy the midwest. Mao's proclamations and orders on how to collectivize and the "Great Leap Forward" were the direct cause of the famine deaths.

Ardennes
May 12, 2002

pentyne posted:

Except Hoover and FDR didn't make the plains dry up and destroy the midwest.

I think Hoover more just sat and watched while it happened.

Modest Mao
Feb 11, 2011

by Cyrano4747
They actually actively did support policies that lead to market crash and the destruction of existing food. The point is the ridiculousness of measuring the amount of people who died during a disaster and attributing it to the leader of that region as people he 'killed'. If you even consider the idea of 'murder' needs intent then "Clinton killed two million Iraqis" has more legitimacy than "Mao killed 18-42 million Chinese".

tractor fanatic
Sep 9, 2005

Pillbug
IIRC the higher end estimates for the Great Leap involve taking census data and population growth estimates, and calculating the population deficit. It was only until after the GLF that the census was at all accurate, and it also doesn't account for people having fewer children during a famine.

pentyne posted:

Except Hoover and FDR didn't make the plains dry up and destroy the midwest. Mao's proclamations and orders on how to collectivize and the "Great Leap Forward" were the direct cause of the famine deaths.

And the Great Leap famine was exacerbated by severe floods and drought. You can't discount environmental factors for the GLF while blaming them for the Dust Bowl.

tractor fanatic fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Mar 13, 2013

Pro-PRC Laowai
Sep 30, 2004

by toby

pentyne posted:

Except Hoover and FDR didn't make the plains dry up and destroy the midwest. Mao's proclamations and orders on how to collectivize and the "Great Leap Forward" were the direct cause of the famine deaths.

Not really. As much as you really want to paint things black or white to justify easy reasoning, it just ain't that simple. Pretty much every single "quote" to try and pin it on Mao is entirely out of context. It's pretty naive to think that Mao had the ability to dictate all policy, all parties have factions and alternate agendas. The personality cult gave him some extra power, but he wasn't the one who pushed for soviet quack science, or local cadres lying their asses off about harvests, or caused a drought... hell, he personally didn't even think that the whole backyard furnaces for steel was a good idea either. He might have signed off on it in political horsetrading, but that doesn't pin it on him.


Ardennes posted:

I think Hoover more just sat and watched while it happened.

No, capitalism did it in combination with really really stupid people. Oh poo poo, if it rains, everyone growing wheat will be rich as all gently caress. *everyone grows wheat and tears up stable prairie* Welp, wheat's not all that great this year, better plant more to make up for it. Welp, wheat's not worth as much now, better plant more just to be safe. Oh hay, investors can just snap up farmland and try to get rich doing nothing. Then prices crash, drought hits and everything gets hosed. Obviously this is the president's fault for allowing it to happen in the first place.

GuestBob
Nov 27, 2005

Modest Mao posted:

The point is the ridiculousness of measuring the amount of people who died during a disaster and attributing it to the leader of that region as people he 'killed'.

I am okay with the idea of someone being criminally stupid.

I think it's criminally stupid to create a system which promotes the false reporting of economic data and which punishes those who point to reality and say "people are eating grass" by hanging them by their toenails and depriving them of hot water. I think it's criminally stupid to activley remove qualified people from positions of power because they have committed the crime of having previously, at some time, attended high school. I think it's criminally stupid to encourage people to melt down all kind of useful items, including ploughs, using holes in the ground and brick kilns to create a loving mess of metal and rubbish which then gets added to the aformentioned fictional reports. I think it's criminally stupid ... you get the point.

Are you seriously arguing that attributing the failures of a command economy to the government which controls it is "ridiculous"? There's a fairly straight line here.

GuestBob fucked around with this message at 06:19 on Mar 13, 2013

NaanViolence
Mar 1, 2010

by Nyc_Tattoo

Pro-PRC Laowai posted:

Unfortunately they rely on stats that were sketchy to begin with, revised by Deng's crew when demonizing Mao was the "in thing", and use hilarious grasps to try and get the biggest number possible. Seriously, using the same standards you can easily make the claim that millions died in the US because of the depression.

You are 20% right and 80% wrong. Take, for example, this book written by experts in the field:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao:_The_Unknown_Story

"Sinologist Stuart Schram, in a review of the book, noted that "the exact figure... has been estimated by well-informed writers at between 40 and 70 million""

"In his 2010 book Mao's Great Famine, Hong Kong based historian Frank Dikötter, who has had access to newly opened local archives, places the death toll for the Great Leap Forward at 45 million, and describes it as "one of the most deadly mass killings of human history.""


You don't get to just disagree with published works by respected authors because "sketchy stats."



EDIT: Mao also told everyone to start killing sparrows. Not surprisingly, this resulted in a plague of insects. The Party still calls it a natural disaster.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_sparrow_campaign

NaanViolence fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Mar 13, 2013

Pro-PRC Laowai
Sep 30, 2004

by toby

Longanimitas posted:

You don't get to just disagree with published works by respected authors because "sketchy stats."

"Respected" is kinda reaching there. More like authors coming in with an obvious agenda and cherry picking anything they can possibly can to back up their claims.

As far as that quote by Schram, full quote please, quotes with ellipses tend to be quote-mining bullshit. Frankie goes to great efforts to pin it on Mao, taking just about everything out of context, ignoring the actual point that was being made in the full quote.

The entire genre here tends to be hysterical one-sided bullshit, mainly because that's what sells.

quote:

How much did Beijing know when the famine was at its height? Despite MGF’s relentless anti-Mao stance, it accepts that nobody at the top realized beforehand how murderous the economic war against the peasantry would be. Mao’s private physician, repeatedly invoked by Dikötter as a reliable witness (p. 346), “doubted that [Mao] really knew” what was happening (Li 1994), and we are told that Mao was “visibly shaken” when presented with graphic reports of famine from Xinyang in Henan province in late October 1960 (p. 116). Reliable information was at a premium; even the “fabled sinologists” in the British Embassy had no clue about what was going on (p. 345). Blaming the tragedy on the usual counterrevolutionary suspects, Mao nonetheless had “abusive cadres” removed. The news from Xinyang set in train moves that would mark ”the beginning of the end of mass starvation” (p. 118). In that same month Mao, under pressure from critics of the Leap, ordered the redeployment of a million workers from industry to agriculture in Gansu province, citing the truism that “no one can do without grain” (MacFarquhar 1983: 323). Various concessions to the peasantry followed, and in January 1961 Mao told the 9th Central Committee Plenum that “socialist construction…should take half a century” (Barnouin and Changgen 2007: 188). {…}

China lacked an all-seeing, all-knowing Soviet-style secret police during the Leap. Too much reliance was placed on poorly monitored regional agents and thuggish local cadres. Why else would it take a visit to his home village in Hunan for Liu Shaoqi to discover the dimensions of the disaster? What he saw converted him overnight from supporter to “blistering” critic of the GLF (pp. 119–121). Central-planner-in-chief Li Fuchun’s reaction to the reports from Xinyang was that misguided policies (which he had championed) had cost lives (pp. 116–117, 122). In a speech in Hunan to party planners in mid-1961, he summarized what have become textbook criticisms of central planning: ”too high, too big, too equal, too dispersed, too chaotic, too fast, too inclined to transfer resources” (p. 122). But thanks to a form of “closed” governance of their own creation, Mao and the party leadership seem to have discovered “destruction on a scale few could have imagined” rather late in the day (p. 123).

I hate to break it to ya, but Mao never claimed to be all-knowing. If you're only reporting and passing on what you've been told, it's just a game of telephone in the end. Go bitch at Zhou Enlai who wanted more grain exports for diplomatic reasons, or Li Fuchun who kept on jacking up the quotas, or Deng Xiaoping who didn't give a gently caress. Even then, yes, people died, not even discounting that for a moment, but it's kinda pathetic to claim everywhere from 15-70 million people based on statistics that simply put, don't add up and are based on 1) scattered anecdotes, 2) a really shaky baseline census and 3) a census which was revised in 1980 specifically to bitch about Mao in an effort for rightist support.

Arglebargle III
Feb 21, 2006

Pro-PRC Laowai posted:

I hate to break it to ya, but Mao never claimed to be all-knowing.

Haha yeah but if you suggested as much your days were numbered.

Modest Mao
Feb 11, 2011

by Cyrano4747
The numbers are revised up every year with Dikotter being the current highest bidder. The actual data records 15 million 'excess deaths' while the official number, given during Deng Xiaoping's reign (which was decidely anti-Mao) is 18.5 million. From those 15 million excess deaths you need to assume that population estimates were accurate while the number dead was under reported which is, to be fair, likely the case in a famine. The methodology I read for an estimate around 23 million a while back showed that 0 excess deaths were adults in 1959 and some 2 million children, while 0 were children in 1961 and 4 million were adults. Obviously this study's conclusion should not be taken as the final reckoning and better data is required, though likely is not extant.

It should be pointed out that 'excess death' is a death per year per 1000 people that exceeds some historical baseline, and never did the real death rate fall below what it was before the communists took power, aka even at its worst the great leap forward saw a lower death rate than, say, 1948. Actually life expectancy increased more than a year per year while Mao had power statistically making the Chinese people immortal.

I think we can agree that the great famine was pretty horrible for the Chinese people and worsened by the policies enacted by the government at the time, that's not in dispute by anyone as far as I am aware. The argument should be: what purpose does framing those who died in the famine as being 'killed by Mao' serve? No other nation or leader (aside from the USSR) has had this treatment and it would be preposterous to do to say, Hoover, even though the results are non-negligible. Secondly, why is the nearly impossible task of estimating the precise number of those 'killed' by the great leap forward of such a monumental importance to the history of China and the legacy of Mao? Mao saw the population of China increase by 500,000,000 people, a number that's a bit more likely to be accurate than the 15-70 mil. Does this count as people Mao kept alive? If not, why not?

Throatwarbler
Nov 17, 2008

by vyelkin
Mao pretty much did literally order the execution of millions of people though, the land reform campaigns and "supression of counter revolutionaries" of the early 1950s alone would have been on par with anything Lenin/Stalin dreamed up.

EDIT: It's always amusing to me how much sympathy there is in the west for villagers today protesting "illegal land seizures". No one mentions that little detail about how the peasants got "their" land in the first place - i.e. brutally murdering the owners and probably their families too. What is there to "seize" anyway? I thought we all agreed back then that "owning land" wasn't a thing anymore. :smug:

Throatwarbler fucked around with this message at 12:46 on Mar 13, 2013

GuestBob
Nov 27, 2005

Modest Mao posted:

The argument should be: what purpose does framing those who died in the famine as being 'killed by Mao' serve?

Are you arguing that by seeking to frame causal relationships between the political leadership of a command economy and oppressive political system and the events which took place under their care we are actually excusing the current incarnation of the Chinese Communist Party of their responsibility in some way?

Because it isn't an either/or thing you know. We came ascribe blame to the directors of a destructive and ill conceived mess of a half-baked blindly revolutionary political system without drawing a line under that.

Blaming Mao =/= creating a scapegoat. Nobody here is "drawing a line" under this.

GuestBob fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Mar 13, 2013

hitension
Feb 14, 2005


Hey guys, I learned Chinese so that I can write shame in another language
The thing is, with any of these tragedies where millions of people have died, it's inherently difficult to measure the number of deaths:
-The government in question almost certainly wants to cover up as many deaths as possible (whether it's Mao or some small local leader doesn't really matter, their incentive is the same)
-Conversely, authors looking for a big scandal to write on and those who politically oppose the regime have an incentive to revise their figures up as high as possible

Ultimately although precise figures would be nice, it's hard to fathom the difference between 30 million and 40 million deaths anyway. With numbers that large, you don't really get a feel for what that means besides "lots of people died and that was bad". I find it helpful to talk to people who went through it (if they're even willing to do so) or perhaps read a book. I liked "Colors of the Mountain" by Da Chen... although that book is a little too perfect, so I don't think it's 100% factual either.

Modest Mao
Feb 11, 2011

by Cyrano4747

GuestBob posted:

Are you arguing that by seeking to frame causal relationships between the political leadership of a command economy and oppressive political system and the events which took place under their care we are actually excusing the current incarnation of the Chinese Communist Party of their responsibility in some way?

Not sure where it sounded like I was doing that, anyway that's not my point to be sure.

Forgive me for getting rhetorical here, but many of you make it sound like being in control of a command economy makes you God and therefore any deaths due to economic conditions must be the divine will. You forget that the party itself had many actors and that there was, you know, an actual climate induced famine going on. You also take for granted that most governments in the world exert huge influence on the economic activity of their territory, did Obama force Americans out of work when the government has the tools to switch to a command economy and employ everyone? Did Hoover cause the dustbowl? Why is Mao a murderer for the exaggerating effects on the famine due to the incompetence of some of his government's policies? It makes as much sense to say that Reagan killed the astronauts on the Challenger, or that the head of NASA did. And my earlier points, why is Clinton not remembered for killing over a million Iraqis? Why isn't Mao remembered for saving the lives of 500,000,000 people? If Mao's a murderer, where's his mens rea? Where's his motive? The point is that there is an unequal measure of political leaders and its boring, misleading, and intellectually bankrupt. It sells books though.

french lies
Apr 16, 2008
I freely agree that the GLF death toll may have been exaggerated by people like Dikötter and Jung Chang, but the 30+ million figures have been pretty exhaustively corroborated, most recently in Tombstone, which you'll find in the literature list of the OP. It's 1200 pages of extensively sourced material where the author concludes that 36 million died more or less directly as a result of government policies.

Voice of America has a decent interview up with the author, Yang Jisheng. He's a retired Xinhua journalist, which gave him the credentials he needed to access provincial archives for research purposes. I think one of the more important points he brings up is that it wasn't just Mao's fault, but rather the failure of officials over a multitude of levels. I agree with the previous poster that saying that Mao "killed" so and so many millions of people is a fundamentally ignorant way of looking at it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQGXZc_6ei4

Arglebargle III
Feb 21, 2006

Yes. A much better way of putting it would be "the Chinese government killed" which is how it originally came up. Not sure how we got on Mao.

NaanViolence
Mar 1, 2010

by Nyc_Tattoo

Modest Mao posted:

You forget that the party itself had many actors and that there was, you know, an actual climate induced famine going on.

This is unsupportable because a large chunk of this famine (who knows exactly how large?) was caused by Mao's campaign to kill all the sparrows.

It's also really hard to give Mao the benefit of the doubt when he followed the Great Leap Forward with the Cultural Revolution because he was unhappy that his power was taken away after his first screw-up.

tractor fanatic
Sep 9, 2005

Pillbug

Arglebargle III posted:

Yes. A much better way of putting it would be "the Chinese government killed" which is how it originally came up. Not sure how we got on Mao.

I guess it merged from a discussion of the GLF and Mao personally destroying "4000 years of culture"

Pro-PRC Laowai
Sep 30, 2004

by toby

Longanimitas posted:

This is unsupportable because a large chunk of this famine (who knows exactly how large?) was caused by Mao's campaign to kill all the sparrows.

It's also really hard to give Mao the benefit of the doubt when he followed the Great Leap Forward with the Cultural Revolution because he was unhappy that his power was taken away after his first screw-up.

The method of calculation to even get to the 30m assumes that growth rate kept climbing at the same pace regardless with a base mortality rate which would be putting it at a better stat than basically everywhere else in the world. And then a whole lotta people vanishing without a trace.

quote:

As output declined from 1959, there was a rise in the officially measured death rate from 12 in 1958 to 14.6 in 1959, followed by a sharp rise in 1960 to 25.4 per thousand, falling the next year to 14.2 and further to 10 in 1962. While, clearly, 1960 was an abnormal year with about 8 million deaths in excess of the 1958 level, note that this peak official 'famine' death rate of 25.4 per thousand in China was little different from India's 24.8 death rate in the same year which was considered quite normal and attracted no criticism. If we take the remarkably low death rate of 12 per thousand that China had achieved by 1958 as the benchmark, and calculate the deaths in excess of this over the period 1959 to 1961, it totals 11.5 million. This is the maximal estimate of possible 'famine deaths.'

To get to the much higher numbers, you have to include people who were never born as "victims". Part of the effort was massive irrigation works which pretty much ended the notion of family life and cohabitation for a while. Do these unborn children count as victims? The irrigation works also did a damned awesome job at preventing any future famine from happening again.

Now onto reality:
Scene:
Sino-Soviet split is becoming obvious and China is increasingly out in the cold. USSR just reneged on helping with nukes.
The CIA has been infiltrating out west and training rebels as well as drug running down south to supply the KMT in their efforts.
Korean war's "finished up" with a great note that the US was threatening to nuke China.

So, here's this great idea that, hell, if we can somehow boost the gently caress out of producing what we do have, using our own internal capabilities, we can export it for better technology and with a hell of a lot of luck and fortitude we can actually make it to that socialist goal in "one giant leap". Add in some nukes and we've got at least some credibility without having to piss away half a century like the USSR did. Why kill sparrows? Cus gently caress them, they eat our grain... er, ok Zhou Jianren, how about bed bugs instead? Backyard furnaces? Blame Zeng Xisheng for being a loving tool on basically every god damned level. It was a stupidly ambitious plan to begin with, the ability for it to actually work kinda sorta relied on everyone not lying their asses off.

All that aside though, the numbers being thrown around are just retarded. Here's the standard method they use: take the worst possible anecdote and apply it nationwide, add up the numbers and then dream up a reason why the census numbers don't even come close to your "findings".

JumpinJackFlash
Nov 15, 2001
Can we talk about modern China, and not about how Mao was really just misunderstood.

Red Pyramid
Apr 29, 2008
No, Mao didn't claim to be all-knowing, but when Liu Shaoqi and his posse worked up the gall to oppose his idiot economic policies Mao didn't hesitate to purge them. Which just so happened to include banning art (for everyone but Mao and his wife, obviously), instituting mandatory country wide torture and persecution, and molding children into murderers. It's hard to argue a leader isn't culpable when he throws a gigantic temper-tantrum when his dictatorial policies are questioned.

The gymnastics that are still performed to try to defend Mao from his rap-sheet are loving weird and creepy, and he seems to be the only leader that's afforded such understanding. Post-revolutionary Chinese politics are complex, sure - in large part because Mao was an evil psychotic gently caress who shrugged off staggering death figures, purged anyone who disagreed with him with sadistic fervor, and consistently treated the Chinese like disposable cannon fodder.

Red Pyramid fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Mar 13, 2013

Fangz
Jul 5, 2007

Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!
I doubt we will ever get a very accurate value for the death toll. Every estimate we come up with will be built up by a large variety of assumptions, and it seems like everyone who looks into the data does so with their own neuroses. In general, we end up with different figures, by choosing to accept different parts of the CCP statistical records, and ignoring others. Too long has passed to justify this beyond much more than gut instincts.

http://blog.hiddenharmonies.org/2013/02/did-millions-die-in-the-great-leap-forward-a-quick-note-on-the-underlying-statistics/

And

http://blog.hiddenharmonies.org/2013/02/did-millions-die-in-the-great-leap-forward-a-quick-note-on-non-contemporaneous-data/

These seem very convincing to me from a statistical point of view. The author of Tombstone may claim additional information, but I don't buy gathering anecdotes as permitting a better estimate. If only he would show his working.

In any case, does it really matter? X million people died. I suppose my personal ire is reserved for those who use these values to draw comparisons to stuff like Nazi atrocities, or to draw up accounts of the Fundamental Sin of Communism/Socialism/The CCP/Atheism/Any form of government planning/Being chinese/whatever the particular author has a chip on his shoulder about, instead of drawing some deeper understanding about why it happened and how it can be prevented.

Ardennes
May 12, 2002

Fangz posted:

I doubt we will ever get a very accurate value for the death toll. Every estimate we come up with will be built up by a large variety of assumptions, and it seems like everyone who looks into the data does so with their own neuroses. In general, we end up with different figures, by choosing to accept different parts of the CCP statistical records, and ignoring others. Too long has passed to justify this beyond much more than gut instincts.

http://blog.hiddenharmonies.org/2013/02/did-millions-die-in-the-great-leap-forward-a-quick-note-on-the-underlying-statistics/

And

http://blog.hiddenharmonies.org/2013/02/did-millions-die-in-the-great-leap-forward-a-quick-note-on-non-contemporaneous-data/

These seem very convincing to me from a statistical point of view. The author of Tombstone may claim additional information, but I don't buy gathering anecdotes as permitting a better estimate. If only he would show his working.

In any case, does it really matter? X million people died. I suppose my personal ire is reserved for those who use these values to draw comparisons to stuff like Nazi atrocities, or to draw up accounts of the Fundamental Sin of Communism/Socialism/The CCP/Atheism/Any form of government planning/Being chinese/whatever the particular author has a chip on his shoulder about, instead of drawing some deeper understanding about why it happened and how it can be prevented.

Granted, the issue is that traditionally "capitalism" has been offered as the cure for its prevention which leads us to the situation of today. Right now, millions of people aren't starving and dying (at least outright) but there are plenty of other problematic issues facing Chinese society.

Ultimately, the solution is probably something else than the most destructive policies of Mao or authoritarian state capitalism, but we haven't started asking those questions.

Deep State of Mind
Jul 30, 2006

"It was a busy day. I do not remember it all. In the morning, I thought I had lost my wallet. Then we went swimming and either overthrew a government or started a pro-American radio station. I can't really remember."
Fun Shoe
Sorry to interrupt MaoChat, but there's important (and hilarious) poo poo going on in the present.

I assume you poors have all been following the saga of Oi Wah Pawn. It's Hong Kong's biggest pawn shop and it's exploded in wealth and success since getting into the mortgage business.

A pawn shop getting into mortgage loans is kinda weird, right? Well, they've done so well because they've targeted customers who don't want to deal with the 'hassle' of going through real banks and dealing with all the credit checks and paperwork to get a mortgage loan from a big commercial lender. So they opt for an Oi Wah mortgage with a rate between 7.8 and 30 loving percent, with an average of 15 percent (compared to a top bank rate of 2.2 percent).

HEY DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR???

I assume the people who don't want the 'hassle' are actually more likely to be people who just don't qualify for a real bank loan, for whatever reason. So instead of going for a real bank's good, or 'prime', interest rate; they settle for Oi Wah's less good, or we could call it something like 'sub-prime', rate.

Why is everyone in the housing market so loving stupid? 'China is special.' 'Hong Kong is unique.' 'That can't happen here.'


Okay so it's not quite so out of hand as it was in the U.S. just yet. Oi Wah's still a pretty small part of the mortgage market. But the reason I bring them up now is because they're in the news a lot. They just had their IPO. It was oversubscribed more than 1000 times. Stock price went up 34% on the first day of trading. INVESTORS THINK WHAT THEY ARE DOING IS A GOOD IDEA.

And Oi Wah's stated reason for the IPO? They need to raise capital to expand their mortgage loan business.

Hong Kong is hosed.

fart simpson
Jul 2, 2005

DEATH TO AMERICA
:xickos:

How is it even possible to repay a mortgage with a 30% APR? I don't understand why anyone would enter an agreement like that.

Ardennes
May 12, 2002

MeramJert posted:

How is it even possible to repay a mortgage with a 30% APR? I don't understand why anyone would enter an agreement like that.

If the value goes up 35% a year forever then it isn't a problem, right?

I guess the honest question is, of the larger "too big to fail" banks, how exposed are they to bad loans?

ReindeerF
Apr 20, 2002

Rubber Dinghy Rapids Bro

TheBuilder posted:

It is likely that they didn't want to spend any money on gasoline or matches.
Right. For a moment, I forgot that we were talking about the Chinese here, heh.

fart simpson
Jul 2, 2005

DEATH TO AMERICA
:xickos:

Ardennes posted:

If the value goes up 35% a year forever then it isn't a problem, right?

I guess the honest question is, of the larger "too big to fail" banks, how exposed are they to bad loans?

Well yeah, but the value obviously isn't contractually obligated to go up 35% a year and anyone that thinks it will is insane.

Ardennes
May 12, 2002

MeramJert posted:

Well yeah, but the value obviously isn't contractually obligated to go up 35% a year and anyone that thinks it will is insane.

Free market capitalism is kind of insane all things considered.

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WarpedNaba
Feb 8, 2012

Being social makes me swell!
God damnit an Asian financial crisis is *exactly* what we need, because god knows the last one left us so happy.

This just makes me sad, really. My country is pretty much hedging all its bets on East and Southeast Asia and I'm happy we did (The other option would have been the US or the EU) but seeing stuff like this in the running means we're doubly hosed now.

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