Depressingly, although not surprisingly, this China historian continues to rake in book sales, despite the consistently poor academic response to his work
The original cover of MGF showed a starving child in rags, begging for food. Against, naturally, a red background.
When a scholar asked him why the image was from Life Magazine's August 1942 issue, Dr.D. explained that he could find no images of famine from MGF. Oh.
Opportunity is always knocking on his door and, when he opens it, UK and US governments literally throw millions in. He used to advertise the fact on his website but people asked questions.
Here's a first hand account of MGF from someone who lived through it:
I am not a historian. I happen to be married to one, am friends and associate with dozens of others from several major history and archaeology departments at universities here in China, and I've noticed....
Chinese scholars from China universities get zero recognition or respect from Western academicians. Graduates of Chinese universities in China studies cannot get a job at a Western university teaching Chinese studies. This should reveal the Western university game to anyone.
It all sounds like Orientalism is alive and well in the West.
I was assigned his book on the GLF in a graduate seminar. I read about half of it, read the O Grada review, and never returned to Dikotter again. He’s a joke.
My review: Discrediting Mao has become an industry for a reason. As late stage capitalism metastasizes, imperialist armies rush out across the globe, and we accelerate past the global warming tipping point, the 21st century ruling class must inoculate us against remembering and calling upon the successes of socialism in the 20th century. The latest book produced by this well funded project is Mao’s Great Famine, by Frank Dikötter. It accomplishes its purpose by being more a collection of selected anecdotes than a legitimate analysis, loose with data and weak on context, failing to discuss the famines recurrent in China in recent centuries. An example of the methods used is the photo of the starving child on the original book cover. This picture is from the 1946 famine in capitalist Nationalist China, not from the Great Leap Forward.
During the Great Leap Forward planning and political errors, drought, and the Soviet assistance pull-out resulted in starvation and many deaths. Much of the newly retrieved data on this tragedy actually originated from teams Mao sent out to determine what was happening and how to fix it. But Mr. Dikötter's methods in compiling this and other data is dishonest and immoral. For example, Cormac Ó Gráda, a leading scholar of famine and professor of economics at University College Dublin, lays out (in his 15 March 2011 China Study Group review) how Dikötter uses an unrealistic low 'normal' mortality rate of 1 percent in order to maximize his death count. Ó Gráda says the 10 per thousand adopted by Dikötter is "implausibly low", and goes on to say that "The crude death rate in China in the wake of the revolution was probably about 25 per thousand. It is highly unlikely that the Communists could have reduced it within less than a decade to the implausibly low 10 per thousand adopted here (p. 331). Had they done so, they would have “saved” over 30 million lives in the interim! One can hardly have it both ways." In other words, in addition to deaths from starvation, Dikötter effectively includes a huge number of deaths from diseases, accidents, violence, and age. This all in an effort to pump up the old original falsely developed figures of 30 million etc. into a new lie of 43 million!
Using the same methodology of manipulating population numbers and stirring in anecdotes about failed projects, people mis-behaving, and so forth could be applied to the New Deal Dust Bowl era in the US to say "FDR killed millions!". As Indian economist Amartya Sen has said: “compared with China’s rapid increase in life expectancy in the Mao era, the capitalist experiment in India could be said to have caused 4 million excess deaths a year since India’s independence…India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame, 1958-61”. As India's four million excess deaths per year has continued right up to the present day, it could be said capitalism has now killed 240 million there. But no one will fund the writing of that book. By contrast, Dikötter's book research was funded by five different foundations.
Even one, or a thousand or a million people dying of starvation is terrible. What kind of mind and what kind of agenda thinks it is not, and so has to keep on inflating it? Buried in the book are some assumptions and qualifiers to make the methods appear less dishonest. But one main purpose has been accomplished, which is to give the sound bite that talk show hosts can yell at people stuck in traffic: "Mao killed 43 million!".
In Mao's time, there were problems and errors from which lessons can be learned. But also during those decades, life expectancy in China more than doubled, and China achieved what capitalist U.S. never will: a universal, just, and fair health care system. Industry grew by more than 10 percent a year during the Cultural Revolution, and by the 1970's China had solved its historic food problem. This revolution saved untold lives. Moreover, it was the greatest step forward towards the emancipation of humanity yet made. This revolution was defeated, and China has taken the capitalist road. But it will only be a revolution that ultimately saves humanity.
For today? I recommend Bob Avakian's book The New Communism. It is a viable strategy for revolution today, learning from the great successes as well as errors of communist revolution in the 20th century, and providing a map forward to do even better.
Many thanks for that compilation.
The original cover of MGF showed a starving child in rags, begging for food. Against, naturally, a red background.
When a scholar asked him why the image was from Life Magazine's August 1942 issue, Dr.D. explained that he could find no images of famine from MGF. Oh.
Opportunity is always knocking on his door and, when he opens it, UK and US governments literally throw millions in. He used to advertise the fact on his website but people asked questions.
Here's a first hand account of MGF from someone who lived through it:
https://herecomeschina.substack.com/p/maos-famine-i-was-there
I am not a historian. I happen to be married to one, am friends and associate with dozens of others from several major history and archaeology departments at universities here in China, and I've noticed....
Chinese scholars from China universities get zero recognition or respect from Western academicians. Graduates of Chinese universities in China studies cannot get a job at a Western university teaching Chinese studies. This should reveal the Western university game to anyone.
It all sounds like Orientalism is alive and well in the West.
*lu xun
Academia gonna academe: as far back as Lu Xin we had “我还记得大哥教我做论，无论怎样好人，翻他几句，他便打上几个圈；原谅坏人几句，他便说“翻天妙手，与众不同”。”
Yes....
Hell hath no scorn like an ignored academician.
I was assigned his book on the GLF in a graduate seminar. I read about half of it, read the O Grada review, and never returned to Dikotter again. He’s a joke.
My review: Discrediting Mao has become an industry for a reason. As late stage capitalism metastasizes, imperialist armies rush out across the globe, and we accelerate past the global warming tipping point, the 21st century ruling class must inoculate us against remembering and calling upon the successes of socialism in the 20th century. The latest book produced by this well funded project is Mao’s Great Famine, by Frank Dikötter. It accomplishes its purpose by being more a collection of selected anecdotes than a legitimate analysis, loose with data and weak on context, failing to discuss the famines recurrent in China in recent centuries. An example of the methods used is the photo of the starving child on the original book cover. This picture is from the 1946 famine in capitalist Nationalist China, not from the Great Leap Forward.
During the Great Leap Forward planning and political errors, drought, and the Soviet assistance pull-out resulted in starvation and many deaths. Much of the newly retrieved data on this tragedy actually originated from teams Mao sent out to determine what was happening and how to fix it. But Mr. Dikötter's methods in compiling this and other data is dishonest and immoral. For example, Cormac Ó Gráda, a leading scholar of famine and professor of economics at University College Dublin, lays out (in his 15 March 2011 China Study Group review) how Dikötter uses an unrealistic low 'normal' mortality rate of 1 percent in order to maximize his death count. Ó Gráda says the 10 per thousand adopted by Dikötter is "implausibly low", and goes on to say that "The crude death rate in China in the wake of the revolution was probably about 25 per thousand. It is highly unlikely that the Communists could have reduced it within less than a decade to the implausibly low 10 per thousand adopted here (p. 331). Had they done so, they would have “saved” over 30 million lives in the interim! One can hardly have it both ways." In other words, in addition to deaths from starvation, Dikötter effectively includes a huge number of deaths from diseases, accidents, violence, and age. This all in an effort to pump up the old original falsely developed figures of 30 million etc. into a new lie of 43 million!
Using the same methodology of manipulating population numbers and stirring in anecdotes about failed projects, people mis-behaving, and so forth could be applied to the New Deal Dust Bowl era in the US to say "FDR killed millions!". As Indian economist Amartya Sen has said: “compared with China’s rapid increase in life expectancy in the Mao era, the capitalist experiment in India could be said to have caused 4 million excess deaths a year since India’s independence…India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame, 1958-61”. As India's four million excess deaths per year has continued right up to the present day, it could be said capitalism has now killed 240 million there. But no one will fund the writing of that book. By contrast, Dikötter's book research was funded by five different foundations.
Even one, or a thousand or a million people dying of starvation is terrible. What kind of mind and what kind of agenda thinks it is not, and so has to keep on inflating it? Buried in the book are some assumptions and qualifiers to make the methods appear less dishonest. But one main purpose has been accomplished, which is to give the sound bite that talk show hosts can yell at people stuck in traffic: "Mao killed 43 million!".
In Mao's time, there were problems and errors from which lessons can be learned. But also during those decades, life expectancy in China more than doubled, and China achieved what capitalist U.S. never will: a universal, just, and fair health care system. Industry grew by more than 10 percent a year during the Cultural Revolution, and by the 1970's China had solved its historic food problem. This revolution saved untold lives. Moreover, it was the greatest step forward towards the emancipation of humanity yet made. This revolution was defeated, and China has taken the capitalist road. But it will only be a revolution that ultimately saves humanity.
For today? I recommend Bob Avakian's book The New Communism. It is a viable strategy for revolution today, learning from the great successes as well as errors of communist revolution in the 20th century, and providing a map forward to do even better.
Zeke Smith, Goodreads review