Janet, many thanks for this! My thoughts on yesterday's musings were all over because i had so many. Xi Jinping is a student of history so he knows well, even if he will not acknowledge, Mao was responsible for the Great Famine. Probably 5 weeks ago, I mentioned Frank Dikotter's works on Maoist China. The first I read was Mao's Great Famine. Mao in the 50s announced that the Party-led China would outproduce Britain by about 1959. Britain was certainly still recovering from WWii so it was a stretch but not as big a stretch as it might have sounded. The point is that Party officials set into motion the catastrophe by announcing they were meeting and overshooting the food (they were not meeting them) and industrial output figures Mao demanded. Local Party officials diverted resources from food production and simply lied about what they were producing. Those living in some areas (the effects of the Famine were quite variable) were forced to eat bark off trees, for example. This campaign, known as the Great Leap Forward to leap across democratic, market-driven societies, was a reason, without accountability and transparency, PRC statistics are suspect. Local party officials were unwilling to tell the central Party officials they had bad news, that the targets were impossible in conjunction with the other actions underway. This is a Communist Party problem, a Confucian tendency not to give those above you bad news, occurring as China was an exhausted society following decades of conflict.
Food. Yes, food is something missing in Party thinking for far too many years. My point is that Xi fears we would not sell them food--as China would not sell food to someone it disagrees with. China's willingness to use all options--i tend to call them instruments or tools--at their disposal to coerce, encourage, or something in between is clear all the time, esp these days in Southeast Asia. As for the United States, I agree with you that we would, with few exceptions who i can think of, believe in helping China with food if famine were a problem. Or helping sell our abundant food as a trade product. But, it goes to how much distrust the relationship has now.
Thank you again. Come back to the Eastern Shore so we can do a road trip together!
I went to the DelMarVa peninsula maybe 25 years ago as part of a visit to DC, Baltimore (Ft. McHenry), Lewes, and the seashore to the south. It was beautiful, and that BAY was amazing. Reading your post makes me wonder if I would still think it was beautiful--sounds as if I might!
By coincidence today I have been reading a book written by a cousin of mine in 2011, published in 2012 --Extreme Times: Diary of an Eco-Buddhist, by Bird Thompson. The entry for May 7, 2011, refers to an opinion column/essay by Lester Brown, "Can the U.S. Feed China?" which appears to have run in multiple publications that month, and which Bird has just read. He paraphrases:
"Great Famine of 1959-61 killed 30 million Chinese. China now imports four-fifths of its soybeans. Brown paints a portrait of an over-populated country out of touch with its water & food. It's an anthropocentric nation (aren't we all?) cut off from nature. My mala (prayer beads) is from Wu Tai Shan in China. APR [his teacher]was there. All beings are connected: Om mani padme hung. He concludes: 'Like it or not, we are going to be sharing our grain harvest with the Chinese, no matter how much it raises our food prices.'"
Janet, many thanks for this! My thoughts on yesterday's musings were all over because i had so many. Xi Jinping is a student of history so he knows well, even if he will not acknowledge, Mao was responsible for the Great Famine. Probably 5 weeks ago, I mentioned Frank Dikotter's works on Maoist China. The first I read was Mao's Great Famine. Mao in the 50s announced that the Party-led China would outproduce Britain by about 1959. Britain was certainly still recovering from WWii so it was a stretch but not as big a stretch as it might have sounded. The point is that Party officials set into motion the catastrophe by announcing they were meeting and overshooting the food (they were not meeting them) and industrial output figures Mao demanded. Local Party officials diverted resources from food production and simply lied about what they were producing. Those living in some areas (the effects of the Famine were quite variable) were forced to eat bark off trees, for example. This campaign, known as the Great Leap Forward to leap across democratic, market-driven societies, was a reason, without accountability and transparency, PRC statistics are suspect. Local party officials were unwilling to tell the central Party officials they had bad news, that the targets were impossible in conjunction with the other actions underway. This is a Communist Party problem, a Confucian tendency not to give those above you bad news, occurring as China was an exhausted society following decades of conflict.
Food. Yes, food is something missing in Party thinking for far too many years. My point is that Xi fears we would not sell them food--as China would not sell food to someone it disagrees with. China's willingness to use all options--i tend to call them instruments or tools--at their disposal to coerce, encourage, or something in between is clear all the time, esp these days in Southeast Asia. As for the United States, I agree with you that we would, with few exceptions who i can think of, believe in helping China with food if famine were a problem. Or helping sell our abundant food as a trade product. But, it goes to how much distrust the relationship has now.
Thank you again. Come back to the Eastern Shore so we can do a road trip together!
I went to the DelMarVa peninsula maybe 25 years ago as part of a visit to DC, Baltimore (Ft. McHenry), Lewes, and the seashore to the south. It was beautiful, and that BAY was amazing. Reading your post makes me wonder if I would still think it was beautiful--sounds as if I might!
By coincidence today I have been reading a book written by a cousin of mine in 2011, published in 2012 --Extreme Times: Diary of an Eco-Buddhist, by Bird Thompson. The entry for May 7, 2011, refers to an opinion column/essay by Lester Brown, "Can the U.S. Feed China?" which appears to have run in multiple publications that month, and which Bird has just read. He paraphrases:
"Great Famine of 1959-61 killed 30 million Chinese. China now imports four-fifths of its soybeans. Brown paints a portrait of an over-populated country out of touch with its water & food. It's an anthropocentric nation (aren't we all?) cut off from nature. My mala (prayer beads) is from Wu Tai Shan in China. APR [his teacher]was there. All beings are connected: Om mani padme hung. He concludes: 'Like it or not, we are going to be sharing our grain harvest with the Chinese, no matter how much it raises our food prices.'"