janw@inmet.UUCP (11/05/85)
Nutrition in China has recently been a matter of discussion. Finally, Richard Carnes suggested someone go and get some facts. He was obviously right (he'll make an educated person out of me yet). The picture as I see it, after doing some reading, is: ============== Take the THIRTIES as a base. Nutrition is at bare subsistence level. (Meaning, a little lower and people start dying). There are pockets of desperate poverty and hunger. E.g., one can see a rickshaw in a big city suddenly drop down and die. ============== The war-ravaged FORTIES are much WORSE. Famine and disease follow war. ============== Communist victory in 1949 brings pacification. Land reform is executed (with appalling cruelty, but a majority gains). In terms of nutrition, the FIFTIES are BETTER, about back to the THIRTIES, with the difference that *the cities are not hungry* : the communists have built an effective village-to-city food pump. Though urbanites are a small minority, this makes the picture, to a foreigner, look much better than it is. Encouraged by success, Mao launches in 1958 the Great Leap For- ward and herds the peasants into COMMUNES. Official STATISTICS record staggering increases in both food and industrial produc- tion. They LIE. End of the FIFTIES. ============== The beginning of the SIXTIES is marked by the GREATEST FAMINE in recorded history. Later demographic data prove that at least 16.5 million people died of hunger in three years. Actually, this only shows excess of mortality over "normal" times; and normal, in China, does not mean famine-free. DISTRIBUTION: Compared to pre-revolutionary times, the famine is different in distribution, as well as scale. The cities (and they keep grow- ing) are adequately fed (which helps conceal the famine from foreigners). So is the army. And, of course, the cadres - the officials - are well fed, both in city and village. But there is yet another cause of uneven distribution: Famine is exacerbated due to Mao's doctrine of "self- reliance" meaning self-subsistence of each province. Trade between provinces is cut down. Population movement is restricted. And no outside aid goes to any province. This means that a famine-stricken province cannot be relieved through aid; or trade; or population outflow. When the extent of failure (industrial as well as agricultural) is realized, Mao is discredited and nudged away from the helm. To come back, he launches the Cultural Revolution. Its victims are mostly urban ; it is unclear to me how it affects the agricul- ture. In any case, the whole of the SIXTIES is terribly HUNGRY. ============== In the SEVENTIES, revolutionary flames gradually die out. The ARMY is largely in control. Communes have become a formality. Ideologists are busy settling accounts with each other. Food pro- duction crawls up, but so does population. Distribution is, of course, uneven, as it was throughout; growing corruption contri- butes to this. But changes in production matter more. By late SEVENTIES nutrition is back UP TO where it was in the THIRTIES and the FIFTIES. This means the level of the poorest Asian coun- tries, such as BANGLADESH. ============== Mao's decline and death make way for important policy changes. One of them is population control ( Mao did not even tolerate its discussion). Still more important potentially, but hard to push through in the rigidly controlled country, are free-trade, CAPITALIST-road EXPERIMENTS. They are of two kinds: encouraging individuals (including farmers) to enrich themselves and allowing more autonomy to government-owned enterprises. In spite of bureaucratic resistance, they are made on a greater scale than in any Communist country and appear to be, on the whole, very SUC- CESSFUL, especially the first kind. Production grows faster, peo- ple seem to eat a little better ; and "seem" may mean something *now* because the country is somewhat more open. If a great fam- ine happened now it might even make the NY Times pages. The EIGHTIES look, so far, as the decade of HOPE, unless a new ideological typhoon strikes China. Jan Wasilewsky
myers@uwmacc.UUCP (Latitudinarian Lobster) (11/07/85)
> > The EIGHTIES look, so far, as the decade of HOPE, > unless a new ideological typhoon strikes China. > > Jan Wasilewsky Hi Jan, we meet again. You said that you did some READING before writing your article. WHAT exactly did you read, so that we may all become ENLIGHTENED? I really don't expect you to reply, because you've already proven in net.politics how I am a malicious LIAR. Por la defensa de la verdad, jeff