h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Recently published, Frank Dikotter's book, "Mao's Great Famine" provides hitherto unseen and very detailed accounts of the cataclysm that resulted directly from Mao's policies between 1958 and 1962. While it does not include any significant material from Tibet, it reveals specifics about the realities of life under Mao that have been hidden until now. It was during the Great Leap Forward that the Party officials, from village level upwards, learned to inflate statistics to gain favour with their superiors, to meet, in imagination at least, unreal targets for agriculture and industry. The recent Wikileaks revelations show that this habit remains unchanged.

If the current rulers of China, unelected, anti-democratic, authoritarian, have any claim to credibility, it is as custodians of Chairman Mao's socialist dream. Why else does his bland smiling moon-face gaze down from the gates of the Forbidden City? This is the face of the man who famously remarked, when the horrors of the Great Leap famine began to be known, "When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death. It is better to let half of them die so that the other half can eat their fill." The end result of Mao's Great leap Forward was that between its inauguration in 1958, and its termination in 1962, at least 45 million "extra" deaths occurred. The true statistics may never be known.

Frank Dikotter's book, "Mao's Great Famine" is not the first to examine the causes and course of the Great Leap Forward, nor is it the most informative as to the attitudes and policies that led to the horrors it entailed. However, because of his unprecedented access to provincial, county and even village records, Dikotter's book provides detailed records and accounts of the day-to-day suffering of ordinary Chinese people at the hands of the Party and the apparatus by which Mao's demented dream took shape.

The relevance of this to the present regime is that it was because no one dared to oppose Mao, no one dared to tell him the truth about the disastrous consequences of his policies, and because statistics of harvesting, grain and steel production were routinely and competitively inflated to meet with his approval, that totally unreal demands were placed on the peasantry who grew the food to feed the cities, and to fill the procurement quotas which allowed Mao to repay his debts to the USSR. One would have thought that since Deng Xiaoping proclaimed "To get rich is glorious," and set China firmly on the capitalist road, that there would be no need for hiding the truth or for massaging statistics. But, as the recent Wikileaks have revealed, Li Keqiang, premier "elect", has described Chinese government statistics as "man-made" and therefore unreliable. In a word, China may have lifted itself out of extreme poverty and famine, but the basic premise remains, that statistics must first be made to serve the Party's interests, and, according to Wikileaks, the self-interest of its leaders, rather than revealing the realities of China's economy.

The official Party view of Mao is that he was 70% right, only 30% wrong, despite having been responsible for a greater death toll outside of war than Hitler and Stalin combined. The cataclysm that was the Great Leap Forward led directly to the Cultural Revolution, through which Mao sought to neutralise his critics. Even at the end of his life, when Lin Biao and Liu Shaoqi were both dead, and Deng Xiaoping exiled to the countryside, not even Madame Mao and the Gang of Four dared oppose Mao. The "truth" was whatever he wanted to hear. The same now applies to the Party, which has neither idealogical basis nor elected validity. It, and its apparatchiks exist to serve themselves. Mao's legacy is alive and well.

chaiwallah

It may not surprise you that when I sent a copy of "The Future is Chinese" to the Chinese embassy a few years ago, I did not even receive a polite [and dismissive] acknowledgement of the kind one normally gets from 10 Downing Street.

I suspect, however, that- as with the business of the Nobel Peace Prize- however "modern" China wants to appear, old ideas and traditions of "loss of face" die very hard. Full and frank discussion seems to be not a normal way of operating in China, where traditionally "less is more". The most powerful Emperor could balance the universe with the weight of a feather, so one must not take reaction as necessarily indicative of impact.


The current "mega" building boom in China seems to be in a direct descent from the initial creation of China when God-Emperors came from the Heavens and tamed the wild waters making possible this great civilization astride several river valleys. And may well just eventually prove as ill-judged as the recent Irish boom.

That is why I thought that Professor Douglas's perspective from 1905 was so interesting in that he could see China developing in line with Western Liberalism, with a great deal of local autonomy and freedom of local action and initiative in line with ancient tradition.

But since 1905 the West has largely abandonned Liberalism for a "statism" that plays right into the hands of autocratic regimes. And recent Obama speaches have continued to focus on the need for "good governance" and effective state-building- in line with the beliefs of the IMF.

As I am just reading in an Economic history written in 1928 the twenties saw the emergence of a movement called "rationalisation" that was initially demonstrated by Weimer Germany's adaptation to its loss of assets at the Treaty of Versailles, and the burden of reparations. Post-war Britain adapting to the economic damage of the war, and the subsequent peace, decided to rationalise and re-structure using State intervention too..But by definition this approach might be summed up in George Bernard Shaw's comment that "all that is not illegal should be made compulsory".

As ever, the best thing to do to influence other people is to make a success of what you are doing, and I am not sure that the Chinese would look at modern Britain and think that it has much to teach that they would wish to learn.

Cass