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I think people are being a bit unfair to you, but you're also saying a lot of dumb stuff yourself.
China definitely was a great economic power, despite that by the ~1500s Europe started to surpass them technologically and by the 1800s significantly surpassed them militarily. I agree with you there.
But Mao definitely had a lot of very stupid policies that led to a lot of deaths, e.g. the killing of the sparrows, or trying to have farmers make steel instead of grow crops. I think his most deadly mistakes were made of ignorance not malice, but they still weren't the West's fault.
Please exemplify you have shown none.
Did I approve Mao policy choices?
No.
The state of this discussion on the motte is very worrying epistemologically.
You are thinking of me as an imaginary strawman with imaginary claims.
This is beyond absurd, this thread is fictional.
I bet the "lot of dumb stuff" is the imaginary strawman of approving Mao decisions.
I could analyze (not defend) the reasoning behind the killing of the four pests, which wanted to reduce the significant amount of wasted food. It backfired for sparrows unfortunately, it was a task done too fast and with too little risk aversion/metrology and was a factor in the great famine, among drought/natural causes and the reallocation of some farmers to working in the steel industry to increase the country GDP and attempt to put it out of extreme misery.
The human errors and the natural disaster cofactors of the great Chinese famine needs not to be analyzed.
You are completely missing the outstanding efficiency of my argumentation.
The Great Chinese famine was a temporary reduction of crop yields by 15%, up to a very short lived 30% reduction at its peak.
Do you understand this is a small effect?
My initial claim is: who bears the main (and sufficent) responsability for the great Chinese famine.
Non-malicious human errors + drought that led to a short-lived 15-30% reduction in crop yields or the West voluntary ban of technology and of fertilizers on China since decades and for decades?
Is it hard to understand that fertilizers have effects on crop yields much superior to 30% and probably above 100%?
Is it hard to understand modal logic and that the criminal, coercive fertilizer ban is a logically sufficient cause that would have totally prevented the Great Chinese Famine?
The exact same thing apply for the ban on machines to increase yields, and the ban on food exports.
No, basic modal logic is not hard to understand.
The motte community is here being very dysfunctional and that is very worrying regarding its epistemic quality.
Another thing to observe:
The great Chinese famine should not hide the potent fact that millions were dying of food hunger consistently in the years/decade preceding it. No need for the great leap forward for that.
The trade embargo was sufficient
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44288827
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