How not to rapidly rework an economy: radical policies in Mao’s China and Stalin’s USSR created mass famines — The South Dakota Standard

How not to rapidly rework an economy: radical policies in Mao’s China and Stalin’s USSR created mass famines — The South Dakota Standard

Recently, I read “Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine,” a study by Jasper Becker of China’s Great Leap Forward and the resulting famine of 1958-62. Long banned in China, the book retells a famine that for at least 20 years, “no one was sure whether it had even taken place.”It was widely assumed, even in the West, that while the Chinese Communist Party had its share of shortcomings, it had at least kept its population fed. But following the launch…