How did Mao go from military genius to peacetime disaster? How can someone shrewd enough to win a civil war outnumbered 5 to 1 decide "let's kill all the birds"?
The only way Mao went from military genius to peacetime disaster was by ignorant, malicious people re-writing history and re-defining 'disaster'.
Says Yale economic historian Maurice Meisner, “In the post-Mao era, it has become fashionable to bloviate about the blemishes of the historical record of the Mao era and to keep quiet about the achievements of the time. Far from being the era of economic stagnation that is now commonly perceived, Mao’s era was one of the greatest modernization in world history, comparable with the most intense industrialization in several major latecomers in modern times, such as Germany, Japan and Russia.”
Starting with an illiterate, typhus-infected population living in rubble, and working entirely under massive Western sanctions and embargoes, Mao provided basic universal health care and doubled life expectancy from 35 to 68.
No country matches the pace of life expectancy increase under Mao, nor its increase in prosperity:
Germany's fastest development growth was 33% per decade from 1880-1914.
Japan's was 43% from 1874-1929
USSR's was 54% between 1928-58.
Mao's decadal growth rate was 64% between 1952-72.
Harvard's John King Fairbank, “The simple facts of Mao’s career seem incredible: in a vast land of 400 million people, at age 28, with a dozen others, to found a party and in the next fifty years to win power, organize, and remold the people and reshape the land–history records no greater achievement. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, all the kings of Europe, Napoleon, Bismarck, Lenin–no predecessor can equal Mao’s scope of accomplishment, for no other country was ever so ancient and so big as China. Indeed Mao’s achievement is almost beyond our comprehension".
The only way Mao went from military genius to peacetime disaster was by ignorant, malicious people re-writing history and re-defining 'disaster'.
Says Yale economic historian Maurice Meisner, “In the post-Mao era, it has become fashionable to bloviate about the blemishes of the historical record of the Mao era and to keep quiet about the achievements of the time. Far from being the era of economic stagnation that is now commonly perceived, Mao’s era was one of the greatest modernization in world history, comparable with the most intense industrialization in several major latecomers in modern times, such as Germany, Japan and Russia.”
Starting with an illiterate, typhus-infected population living in rubble, and working entirely under massive Western sanctions and embargoes, Mao provided basic universal health care and doubled life expectancy from 35 to 68.
No country matches the pace of life expectancy increase under Mao, nor its increase in prosperity:
Germany's fastest development growth was 33% per decade from 1880-1914.
Japan's was 43% from 1874-1929
USSR's was 54% between 1928-58.
Mao's decadal growth rate was 64% between 1952-72.
Harvard's John King Fairbank, “The simple facts of Mao’s career seem incredible: in a vast land of 400 million people, at age 28, with a dozen others, to found a party and in the next fifty years to win power, organize, and remold the people and reshape the land–history records no greater achievement. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, all the kings of Europe, Napoleon, Bismarck, Lenin–no predecessor can equal Mao’s scope of accomplishment, for no other country was ever so ancient and so big as China. Indeed Mao’s achievement is almost beyond our comprehension".