paul fox
- 2016-04-18
A few decades ago, the big Chinese secret was that
the mainland had no food and many hungry mouths to feed which went followed by the local
farmers' pesticides killing their people for either they did not know how to use them or
they were just too greedy.
I guess you are talking about the 'Great Chinese Famine' (1958-1962) during Mao ZeDong's 'Great Leap Forward' - right?
I was reading about that a while ago and it seems that a lot more information came out in 2012, exactly 50 years after 1962.
Rather than 'official information', this involved personal accounts penned by some of the (then) members of the PSB. It talks about how hundreds of starving farmers were ordered to re-plant crops in 'model fields' to show Mao that his plan was 'working'.
Some accounts say that Mao was conned into believing that the country wasn't starving at all, but had plenty of food, so Mao exported crops thinking they were 'excess'.
Other accounts say that while people literally dropped dead from starvation, local politicians were enjoying banquets, feasts, and wine-a-plenty.
One account included a conversation whereby a local villager said that dogs were eating the corpses, to which the reply was - 'Dogs? what dogs?, they were all eaten ages ago'
As to the validity of this information, I guess we'll never know, but Mao died back in 1976 so attempting to 'absolve him from wrong-doing' 40 years later seems to serve little purpose, even if it really IS the truth. However, this is China, the land where 'truth' can often take many forms.
I must admit to enjoying reading about it though, especially because it's still within living memory for many Chinese people.
I won't provide any links because there's several, but for those who may be interested, you can find it all by starting on Wikipedia and clicking on the internal links on the 'Great Leap Forward' page.
I also used some of the information to make a few English lessons for grade 10 students, and although I felt like I had to 'walk on eggshells' to begin with, the response from the kids was better than I imagined it would be, some were even talking to their grandparents about it to find out more.
Caring
- 2016-04-17
A large number of Chinese secrets have been stolen from the developed nations out of which some via "dangerous love". A few decades ago, the big Chinese secret was that the mainland had no food and many hungry mouths to feed which went followed by the local farmers' pesticides killing their people for either they did not know how to use them or they were just too greedy. What Beijing has accomplished ever since is that it hacked our databases and copied our technology.
Most Chinese are nice, friendly and sensible people, but they are driven by their system to be thick, hostile and unreasonable with foreigners. Should we believe the history powers the social, economic and governmental organizations to blatantly discriminate against foreigners, or should we assume the modern China is purposely built on the mistrust?
http://chinalawtranslate.com/nsed/?lang=en
The dangers of dating a foreigner.