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COVID 19 Today and China’s Great Famine
Are there any lessons to be learned from China 60 years ago for today’s world, which is facing the worst pandemic of the past 100 years?
César Chelala is a global health consultant and contributing editor for The Globalist.
What happened in China during the Great Famine can be a sobering lesson of what not to do during a time of crisis
Between 1959 and 1961, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) underwent the Great Chinese Famine, one of the country’s darkest times.
Yang Jisheng, senior journalist from the Xinhua News Agency, estimated that China registered 36 million deaths back then due to starvation. It was one of the greatest tragedies in human history.
Tragedies then, tragedies now
Although current global circumstances are vastly different now, the following question offers itself up quite naturally: Can any lesson be derived from that experience in China 60 years ago for today’s world that is facing the worst pandemic of the last century?
Any such comparison may strike today’s observers as strange. Not only did this calamity happen long ago, but China was not really on the horizon of many nations anyway during its self-isolation period that lasted for most of the Mao era.
Look at the numbers!
However, one statistical fact stands out. If science-based projections become true, then over the full-blown course of the pandemic — i.e., way beyond this initial stage — millions of people all over the world could die.
Although this wouldn’t put the COVID 19 pandemic in the same range as China’s Great famine in the sheer cost of lives, it could be devastating in the number of lives lost and on the effects on the countries’ economies and development.
Learn from China? You must be kidding
At the same time, the mere suggestion that something is to be learned from China’s past will strike some as fanciful.
After all, its much more enlightened government today has been rightfully criticized severely for its very tactical response to the pandemic – mainly via the accompanying lack of openness.
Blame China, the US, the WHO and the UK
However, anyone who wants to make that argument also needs to acknowledge it isn’t just China that is to be blamed.
So is the U.S. federal government, as well as a host of other big country governments (such as the UK’s) and the World Health Organization (WHO). With good reason, they have all been criticized severely for their inadequate response to the pandemic.
Indeed, leading scientific experts in the U.S. claim that the toll the pandemic has taken on peoples’ lives could have been significantly reduced under two conditions.
That would have been the case if, first, all governments would have been more forthright in the seriousness of the situation and, second, if they had promptly implemented appropriate measures of control.
The global message from China’s Great Famine
What happened in China during the Great Famine can be a sobering lesson of what not to do during a time of crisis.
During that time, the Chinese government enacted harmful policies in spite of the damage they were causing to the general population. At the same time, the government was deaf to any criticism of its actions.
Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Communist Party of China, was keen on promoting drastic changes in farming policy, including the prohibition of farm ownership.
Failure to abide by these policies led to brutal punishment. Some, in the throes of starvation, even resorted to cannibalism, which was described as being “on a scale unprecedented in the history of the 20th century.”
Just as Mao wasn’t prepared to listen…
Mao Zedong was ruthless with those who questioned his policies and persisted in his policies that cost the Chinese people dearly.
This was also true at the top of the political pyramid. Liu Shaoqi, who had been the third most powerful man in China and had been groomed as Mao’s successor, died under harsh treatment and torture during the Cultural Revolution.
One result of the new farming policies was that a huge regional flood of the Yellow River had affected part of Henan Province and Shandong Province in 1958. The flood affected 741,000 people and 18 villages were inundated.
In 1961, Liu Shaoqi, then the second Chairman of the PRC, was honest enough in attributing the famine 70% to man-made policies — and only 30% to natural disasters. His honesty proved to be a deadly mistake.
… Trump isn’t prepared to listen
Similar to Mao Zedong’s relationship with his dissenters during the Great Famine, President Donald Trump is constantly disagreeing with his own top scientific advisers on the course to take to control the pandemic.
Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, was ousted after the Trump administration ignored his warnings about the seriousness of the pandemic.
Bright has also courageously opposed the use of hydroxychloroquine, a drug to combat malaria, to be used on COVID 19 patients, because of the drug’s proven toxicity.
Mao and Trump: Testy “doctors” wrecking their nations
As was the case with Mao Zedong’s harmful agricultural policies back then, so it is now with President Trump being adamant about promoting false cures to combat the coronavirus.
When Trump suggested in all seriousness that injecting disinfectants under the skin or applying UV light could kill the virus, there was a sharp increase in the number of deaths resulting from poisoning with disinfectants.
In addition, claiming that it would be “counterproductive,” Trump prohibited Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, from testifying at a House of Representatives hearing on the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. (He did agree, however, to let Dr. Fauci testify before the Senate).
This riled former President Barak Obama, who had been reluctant to criticize the Trump administration until now, enough to call his successor’s handling of the pandemic “a chaotic disaster.”
Trump is more tone-deaf than Mao
For all our Western assumptions about the natural superiority of our system, let’s look at the flipside of this assumption in the Mao-Trump context.
During the time of Mao Zedong, it was much more difficult for a dictatorial leader to hear dissenting voices due to total suppression.
This is not the case today in the United States. President Trump needs only to watch almost any TV channel (except FOX News) or read any of the country’s leading newspapers to see or read what reality is really like.
His ability to be immune to that – or to twist the facts in a grotesque fashion – is truly bewildering. It seriously questions his fitness for the office he holds.
Conclusion
These are trying times not only for the United States but for the world. On the one hand, it is anxiously waiting for the reemergence of a U.S. government determined to provide constructive global leadership.
On the other hand, it is mentally readying itself for the prospect of another term for Mr. Trump. That such an election outcome would be considered impossible in any other developed nation (other than probably the UK) is no help in the U.S. context.
In the meantime, deaths continue to rise, and the world faces an ominous future.
Although there are many examples of wrong actions by powerful leaders in history, never before have the actions of so few affected the quality of life and survival of so many people.
About César Chelala
[New York, United States]
