Why Doesn't China Have Famines Anymore? Two explanations for end of 2,000 years of starvation

Essayist Gerald Early said that the history of the United States will one day be reduced to the Constitution, jazz, and baseball. If someone had made the same summary of Chinese history 30 years ago, the trio would likely have been the Great Wall, Maoism, and famine. Over the past 2,000 years, China has suffered almost one famine per year. Severe drought killed as many as 13 million Chinese in the two-year famine beginning in 1876. The 1927 famine killed as many as 6 million. There were significant famines in 1929, 1939, and 1942. The Great Famine, which began in 1958 and lasted three years, was probably the deadliest famine in human history, killing between 30 and 45 million people. The causes of Chinese famines have varied, ranging from drought to hoarding to Mao Zedong’s horrifically misguided food procurement policy, which took food from the mouths of the people who grew it, concentrating deaths in traditional farming areas.

For most of China’s history, famine was just an extreme version of the normal state of affairs. As recently as the late 1970s, 30 percent of China’s population was undernourished. Grains supplied the overwhelming majority of their calories. One in 3 children under the age of 5 had stunted growth.

Capitalism, no, entrepreneurialism, yes, and state planning that developed from concensus rather than dictated by Mao and perhaps one or two others. When farmers were actually given control over part of the land, productivity mushroomed. State directed irrigation, nitrogen fertalizer and newly developed seeds helped. The situation was worse than just eating grass. The bodies of the dead were actually dug up and eaten by the starving. Look for the book Tombstone, by a Chinese researcher who had inside access to information, records, interviews, etc.

Years ago, my late husband was visiting friends at the Amana Colonies, a primative socialist/communist religious colony in Iowa and other places (also producers of Amana appliances). He watched the man assigned to plowing that day take out the tractor, and later run out of fuel when he was far across the field. He walked back, got a gallon, went back to the tractor, drove back to the barn, filled the tank and continued plowing. At least an hour of work lost. He said no self respecting independent farmer would do anything so stupid as starting plowing without filling his gas tank. Entrepreneurship is more efficient than either socialism/communism or many large scale capitalist enterprises.

Yeah, or they have enough money to buy up our farmland, or our food production capabilities. Somebody said that the Chinese bought up Smithfield, our largest pork producer (besides congress). Look where the price of pork has been going lately (sky high). We build housing developments over prime farmland in this country.

Re: “The Capitalist Fairy Tale”

It's a fairy tale until you check the historical record.

When was the last time a capitalist country experienced a famine?

Probably never.

Maybe Ireland in 1845, but I'm not sure Ireland actually had a capitalist economy in 1845.

It’s quite simple — Mao died. Mao was a mass-murderer, just like all Marxist dictators. He was succeeded by managerial state types. Historically, China has always been ruled by one or more big fist regimes.

The Three Gorges Dam, which has been excoriated by enviros, has as one of its purposes rerouting Yangtze river water to the vanishing rivers of the north. That drying is the tail end of the long-gone last ice age.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South%E2%80%93North_Water_Transfer_Project

Thanks Jet Jaguar.

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