A maior mortandade da Historia: o Grande Salto (para Tras) de Mao Tse-tung

A edição deste domingo, 10/07.2011, do jornal The Times (de Londres), que pertence à rede de mídia do milionário Rupert Murdoch (o mesmo que era dono do jornal News of the World, fechado no mesmo dia, depois de 168 anos de existência, por fraudes jornalísticas e crimes comuns, aliás objeto de extensa matéria na mesma edição do Times), traz uma boa resenha deste livro do historiador Frank Dikotter, sobre o "grande salto para a frente" de Mao Tse-tung, vasto programa delirante de transformação rápida, econômica e social, da República Popular da China, e que teria causado, segundo ele, 45 milhões de mortos.
Infelizmente não é possível transcrever a resenha ou o excerto do livro do Times.
Comentaristas e resenhistas no site da Amazon criticaram a cifra -- como transcrevo abaixo--, segundo eles exagerada. Mas mesmo reduzindo em um terço os números de Dikotter, ainda assim se trata da maior mortandade induzida pela mão do homem (de um único homem, conhecida em toda a história. Nem Stalin - que no entanto pode ter sido responsável por quase 20 milhões de mortos, excluida a IIGM -- ou Hitler -- que pode ter mandado matar entre 5 e 7 milhões de pessoas -- excluindo, sempre, as vítimas de combates na IIGM -- conseguiram chegar perto desses números extraordinários.
A mortandade foi tão descomunal que, temeroso de uma revolta no Partido Comunista se os números começassem a ser revelados mais amplamente, Mao deu início logo em seguida à revolução cultural, para desviar a atenção e afastar seus inimigos no Partido, entre eles Deng Xiao-ping. Foram, talvez, mais 2 ou 3 milhões de mortos durante esses quatro anos adicionais de loucuras, que simplesmente destruíram as universidades chinesas e toda e qualquer vida organizada no país, ou o que tinha restado, depois de mais de dez anos de experimentos demenciais.
O relato é simplesmente alucinante e dispensa adjetivos.
Os marxistas, e outros inimigos do capitalismo, ainda não estão prontos para reconhecer esses crimes como crimes contra a humanidade, dizendo que se trata apenas de "erros" cometidos ao longo do processo de construção do socialismo.
Quando vejo um partido unir as palavras "socialismo" e "liberdade", como se isso fosse possível, penso logo: ou é muita ingenuidade, ou se trata de uma ignorância abissal, ou então é simplesmente desonestidade intelectual.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Frank Dikotter:
Mao's Great Famine: The History Of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62
(Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011)
ISBN/Cat.No: 9781408810033
ISBN-10: 1408810034
Description: An unprecedented, groundbreaking history of China's Great Famine. Shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize 2011

Amaozon Books:
Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62 (Paperback)

An impressive story about incredible suffering. Mao's Great Leap Forward was a nightmare. The (slave)labour, repression, cadre brutality and especially the famine resulted in - according to the detailed research in Chinese archives and extrapolated educated guesses of this author - a minimum of 45 million deaths above average. And all this in only four years! Although other reviewers have attacked the way that Mr. Dikötter reaches the number of 45 Million, this is no reason not to buy this book. In the end, this is more about the compelling stories of the suffering behind the 'numbers game'.

Editorial Reviews:
'The most authoritative and comprehensive study of the biggest and most lethal famine in history. A must-read' Jung Chang 'Mao's Great Famine' is a gripping and masterful portrait of the brutal court of Mao, based on new research but also written with great narrative verve, that tells the gripping story of the manmade famine that killed 45 million people from the dictator and his henchmen down to the villages of rural China' Simon Sebag Montefiore --Review

Product Description
Between 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell. Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up and overtake Britain in less than 15 years. The experiment ended in the greatest catastrophe the country had ever known, destroying tens of millions of lives. Access to Communist Party archives has long been denied to all but the most loyal historians, but now a new law has opened up thousands of central and provincial documents that fundamentally change the way one can study the Maoist era. Frank Dikotter's astonishing, riveting and magnificently detailed book chronicles an era in Chinese history much speculated about but never before fully documented. Dikotter shows that instead of lifting the country among the world's superpowers and proving the power of communism, as Mao imagined, in reality the Great Leap Forward was a giant - and disastrous - step in the opposite direction. He demonstrates, as nobody has before, that under this initiative the country became the site not only of one of the most deadly mass killings of human history (at least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death) but also the greatest demolition of real estate - and catastrophe for the natural environment - in human history, as up to a third of all housing was turned to rubble and the land savaged in the maniacal pursuit of steel and other industrial accomplishments. Piecing together both the vicious machinations in the corridors of power and the everyday experiences of ordinary people, Dikotter at last gives voice to the dead and disenfranchised. Exhaustively researched and brilliantly written, this magisterial, groundbreaking account definitively recasts the history of the People's Republic of China.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Great Leap into a Nightmare, May 28, 2011
By M. T. J. Vrenken (The Netherlands)
This review is from: Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62 (Paperback)
An impressive story about incredible suffering. Mao's Great Leap Forward was a nightmare. The (slave)labour, repression, cadre brutality and especially the famine resulted in - according to the detailed research in Chinese archives and extrapolated educated guesses of this author - a minimum of 45 million deaths above average. And all this in only four years! Although other reviewers have attacked the way that Mr. Dikötter reaches the number of 45 Million, this is no reason not to buy this book. In the end, this is more about the compelling stories of the suffering behind the 'numbers game'.

Shonky scholarship, March 29, 2011
By W Y Lu (Hong Kong)
This review is from: Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62 (Paperback)
Dikotter's book is little more than a collection of anectdotes of atrocities - which one would no doubt find if one went to the archives of any public security bureau of any country in the world. There is absolutely no evidence the atrocities Dikotter mentions (if true), were ordered from the top. In fact quite the opposite - they were often uncovered, even by Dikotter's own admission, by investigatory teams sent out by the central authorities. The tone of the book is perhaps set by the picture on this edition of the book - the starving boy is from a famine in 1946 - 12 years before the GLF, and 3 years before Mao came to power.

But lets look at Dikotter's most ludicrous claim: 45 million 'murdered' by Mao - a 'fact' trumpeted on Dikotter's website as a 'key finding'.

But how does Dikotter reach this figure? The calculation is very simple.
'Excess' deaths are calculated by counting all the deaths that happen in one year, and subtracting them from a mortality the researcher assumes would have been the case had the GLF not happened.
Dikotter adopts a 'normal' crude mortality of 10/1000 per year or 1%. Deaths above this are counted as excess deaths.
From the archives Dikotter obtains reported mortality, increases these by 50% to allow for under-reporting in order to get an averaged annual mortality of around 27.3/1000 during the GLF.
Thus to arrive at his final grand total of people 'murdered' by Mao: ((27.3 - 10) / 1000) x 650 million x 4 years = 45 million 'excess' deaths.

Two huge problems with this.
Firstly a crude mortality of 27.3/1000 in the late 50s & early 60s was in fact quite typical for developing countries. India's and Indonesia's was 23 and 24/1000 respectively. And China's mortality in in 1949, just 8 years the GLF, was 38/1000 (refer Judith Banister), in Hong Kong in the 1930s 32/1000, Russia before the revolution 31/1000, and India just before independence around 28/1000.
Thus the crude mortality rate during the GLF, according to Dikotter, was significantly better than the 38/1000 in 1949, and practically the same as that of India in the final year of British rule.
Thus to say, based on Dikotter's very own figures, that the GLF was China's, or even the world's, 'greatest ever catastrophe' is completely ludicrous.

Here is the other problem.

Dikotter's adoption of a very low 'normal' mortality of 10/1000 is simply implausible. Of course Dikotter assumes this figure in order to maximise his 'excess' deaths calculation.

But note that 10/1000 was the mortality rate of the US, Great Britain, and France at the time.

Even discounting for the difference in age structure between China's population and that of the West, 10/1000 is simply unbelievable. After all the crude mortality of India and Indonesia at the time was around 23 or 24/1000 - well over twice what Dikotter claims for China!

So if Dikotter accepts a 10/1000 mortality rate for 1957, then he will have to accept that the communists reduced mortality from 38/1000 to 10/1000 during first eight years of rule, thereby saving tens of millions of lives. If this was truly the case, it would have been the most dramatic, incredible reduction in mortality in human history.

So the catch-22 is this. If one assumes a very low death rate to max out GLF excess deaths, then Mao must also get credit for having achieved, for most of the time he was in charge, very low levels of mortality. Go the other way and GLF excess deaths are minimised and perhaps almost eliminated.

To wrap up: Dikotter gets his 45 million by (a) inflating actual death rates, over reported figures in the archives, by 50%, and (b) assuming a ridiculously low 'normal' death rate (the same as the West) - even though China throughout the 1950s was one of the most wretchedly poor countries on earth.

Leap mortality lower than British Raj & pre-1949 China. Same as India, Indonesia, Pakistan in 1960, April 3, 2011
By M Chen
This review is from: Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62 (Paperback)
China's mortality during the GLF was the same as India's, Pakistan's, and Indonesia's at the time. Dikotter's figures imply this. Consider the following:

* Dikotter adopts 10/1000 as a 'normal' yearly death rate for China, and claims this as the figure for China just before the leap in 1957. Deaths above this are regarded as 'excess' deaths.
* 10/1000 was the mortality in advanced industrialised West in 1960.
* But mortality for the other big Asian countries in 1960: India 24/1000, Indonesia 23/1000, Pakistan 23/1000
* Dikotter says GLF started early 1958, ended late 1962. ie nearly 5 years, and killed 45 million. This means 9 million excess deaths per year. Adopting 660 million as China's population - the approx average excess mortality over these 5 years is 1000 x 9 mil/660 mil = 13.6 or say 14/1000.
* Total annual mortality during GLF is thus 10/1000 + 14/1000 = 24/1000
* Thus based on Dikotter's figures mortality during the GLF was practically the same as that of India, Indonesia, and Pakistan (after China the most populous Asian nations).
* Dikotter's mortality rate during the GLF was much less than the 1949 figure (24 < 38/1000)
* Dikotter's mortality rate during the GLF was less than that of India's at end of British rule (24 < 28/1000)

Dikotter's claims imply China reduced mortality from 38 /1000 in 1949 to 10/1000 in 1957. If true, this would have been a stunning achievement, considering India only reduced mortality from 28 to 23/1000, and Indonesia 26 to 23/1000 over more or less the same period. In fact India and Indonesia had not reduced down to 10/1000, even by 1980.

This of course would make Mao a great saver of lives - even with the elevated mortality seen during the GLF (which was not particularly high for the time). Is this what Dikotter intends to say? If not, his own claims inescapably imply it.

MORTALITY DATA:
1949:
China: 38/1000 (Bannister)
India: 28/1000
Indonesia: 26/1000

1957:
China: 10/1000 (claimed by Dikotter: lower than the UK and France in 1960!)

1958 to 1962 (averaged over 5 years - Dikotter claims GLF from early 1958 to late 1962):
China: 23.8/1000

1960:
India: 24/1000
Indonesia: 23/1000
South Korea: 13.5/1000
UK: 11.5/1000
France:11.4/1000
US: 9.5/1000

1970:
India: 17.6/1000
Indonesia: 17/1000

1980:
India: 12.9/1000
Indonesia: 12.15/1000