Re: China's Great Leap Forward

[Alan G Isaac <aisaac@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ric has asked Henry and me to wrap up our discussion of the
Great Leap Forward, so I will offer a couple closing comments.

Henry has asked me to provide cites for a host of well-known
facts that can be found in standard sources, despite the
fact that he claims to be (and I actually believe he is)
expert on China and Chinese history.  What to make of such a
move?  I find it impossible to believe Henry does not know
the basic facts laid out in standard sources, so what is the
purpose of the pretence?

Studies of the GLF are legion.  There is some variation in
the estimates of the number of "excess deaths" attributable
to the famine, and I do not pretend to be able to judge the
accuracy of the standard figure (30 million).  But however
many millions we are talking about, there is some serious
blame to be shouldered and some serious policy implications
in the answers.  There is also some variation in the amount
of blame placed on the GLF for the great famine, but the
consensus is the the GLF deserves a great amount of the
blame.  I mentioned Liu Shaoqi's figure of 70%, and whatever
one might make of such an attempt at quantification I find
it to be an apt characterization of the current consensus.
The burden of proof therefore falls on the apologists, few
as they are.

Nevertheless I will offer an example.  Here is a quote from
one recent paper on the causes of the collapse of grain
output during the GLF:
http://faculty.darden.virginia.edu/liw/papers/drop-current.pdf
"Subject to qualifications, our findings suggest that the
most important factor is the excessive procurement of grain
that decimated the physical strength of the peasantry,
contributing to 51.7 percent of the output collapse.
Resource diversion is the next largest contributor,
accounting for 28.6 percent of the output collapse.
Radicalism associated with communal dining also had a
significant effect on grain output, contributing to 17.5
percent of the decline.  Weather did play a role, accounting
for 16.2 percent of the decline."

Of course Henry usually responds to evidence he does not
like by claiming the authors could not possibly be reaching
their conclusions in good faith.  But it really does not
matter what Henry thinks of this particular study or the
authors: the conclusions are unusual only in being more
quantitatively developed than in most.  Since these are the
*standard* conclusions, the burden falls on Henry to come up
with better support for his bizarre story about what was
actually happening.

Alan Isaac

PS Btw, the view I attribute to Liu Shaoqi is documented in The
Origins of the Cultural Revolution by Roderick MacFarquhar,
Leroy B.  Williams Professor of History and Political
Science at Harvard University.  Will Henry also engage in ad
hominem attacks on Professor MacFarquhar, which is Henry's
favored tactic in this conversation where facts are so
obviously against him?  We will see.

PPS As an academic it is my view that Henry should have
attributed the following paragraph to Jeff Sommers, the author
listed at
  http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/jun99/msg00039.html
On Fri, 30 Aug 2002 16:55:08 -0400 "Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> University of Wisconsin's Maurice Meisner, who many
> consider to be the dean of post WW II Chinese scholarship,
> presents three related ways of looking at the 20-30
> million deaths caused by the Great Famine begun in the
> late 1950s under Mao's tenure in his THE DENG XIAOPING ERA
> AND INQUIRY INTO THE FATE OF CHINESE SOCIALISM 1978-1994
> (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996).  One, it was a horrible
> miscalculation.  Two, it was the end of famines on this
> scale (literally, that had been occurring for the last few
> centuries off and on in China about every generation or
> so). In other words, it brought this horrible historical
> pattern to an end.  Or, three, it was both.  Both a
> horrible miscalculation, while also afterwards bringing
> this pattern of famine every generation of so to an end,
> thus, perhaps, saving millions.

I guess this raises the question of what standards of
attribution should be requested or enforced on this list.
Similarly, it is my view that Henry should have attributed
the post below to Sam Pawlet, the author listed at
http://www.marxmail.org/archives/June99/maoist_economic_strategy.htm
(It appears Henry lightly edited the first couple sentences;
the rest is verbatim from the post that lists Pawlet as its
author.  Of course I apologize in advance if I have somehow
misconstrued the apparent true authorship of this material.)

On Fri, 30 Aug 2002 13:57:14 -0400 "Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Stephen Andors'  ( CHINAS INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION : POLITICS, PLANNING,
> AND MANAGEMENT, 1949 TOTHE PRESENT / BY STEPHEN ANDORS.) or John
> Gurley's China's Economy and the Maoist Strategy, Monthly Review Press,
> New York (c1976.) defenses of Maoist economic strategy is worth reading
> for those who want a balanced view. And Michel Chossudovsky's appraisal.
> Mark Selden's and Victor Nee's. From an impossible to get edition of
> Root and Branch: A Libertarian Marxist Journal 8, Bill Russell argues
> that Maoism was actually the Stalinist crash industrialisation programme
> adapted to China in which the State confronted the problem not only of
> seizing agricultural surplus but also producing it.

> Other well-known Maoist economist's were Samir Amin and post 60's Joan
> Robinson (she wrote paeans to the Cultural Revolution and N.Korea after
> visiting in the late 60's and suffered castigation because of it.)
> Maoist economics had a fair amount of prestige in the 60's and 70's even
> in mainstream development circles. Some of the old undergrad development
> texts have a section on the Maoist model. Prima facie at an abstract
> level, Maoist economic strategy in some countries, seems to make good
> sense. Self-reliance and self-sufficiency (especially in energy) could
> only help poor, dependent and heavily indebted countries in the southern
> hemisphere. Mao was very strongly against the accumulation of foreign
> debt and withdrew China from GATT, the forerunner of WTO. To lessen the
> gap, or as Maoists would say "resolve the contradictions" between the
> city and the country would lessen conflict and help raise co-operation
> and thus productivity. This did happen in Maoist China, though equality
> had a trade-off with wealth creation. However, since the advent of the
> township village enterprises, co-operation between villages has declined
> even though the TVA's have been successful on a micro level. The
> Chinese government has, through market reform, inadvertently
> re-introduced class struggle back into the countryside. Kolko in his
> latest book on Vietnam argues this is occurring in Vietnam too where the
> tensions are even stronger because the gov't there has reintroduced
> private ownership of land through a predictably corrupt process. No
> doubt class struggle will be re-introduced into the countryside in
> N.Korea too, when it finally takes the capitalist road. The Maoists
> confronted economic bottlenecks with mass collective action.   The
> problem was that it was enforced and not voluntary which led to low
> productivity and efficiency. Mao was correct that mass collective action
> could accomplish enormous goals but only when done voluntarily. The
> theorists of Beijing could not motivate everyone to overcome the
> free-rider problem. Think of the few examples of collective action in
> Capitalist countries: the response to natural disasters. The Mexico D.F.
> earthquake of 1985 was what galvanized the popular movement there.
> Official stats show Maoist economic performance to be fair (given the
> size of pop.) with an average GSP (Gross Social Product) growth rate of
> 6% through the years 1949-76. The economy was subject to great
> fluctuations due to what was happening in the domestic political realm
> and geopolitics. Some analysts call this a political cycle theory of the
> economy. Before 1979, the growth rate of industrial output fluctuated
> widely within a range of -38.2% (in 1961) to 54.8%(in 1958). That of
> heavy industry ranged from -46.5% to 78.8%.

> In general, China's industrial fluctuations have been triggered by
> political cycles and/or by intense sectoral disproportions arising from
> abrupt upsurge in the proportion of the industrial sector, especially
> heavy industry at the expense of agriculture and other non-industrial
> sectors, and/or by intensified inflation pressure and by the interaction
> of all three, accoring to Tien-tung Hsueh and Tun-oy Woo *The Economics
> of Industrial Development in the People's Republic of China* Chinese
> University of Hong Kong Press,1991.

> The authors go on to argue that at first the initiators of the mass
> movements see the good economic performance and proceed to accelerate
> reforms through the whole economy which spin of control and destroy the
> gains that have been made. The system then reverts back to its original
> practice. This problem was familiar in all centrally planned economies
> where enterprise managers
>     did not want to fulfill the plan too well or the planners would up
> output and productivity expectations in the next plan. " During the
> Great Leap Forward (1958-60) the annual growth rates of the industrial
> sector were as high as 34% in GOV(gross output value) and 31.9% in
> NOV(net output value) and those of heavy industry 50.9% in GOV and 45.7%
> in NOV which resulted immediately in a great leap backward -27.4% in GOV
> and -28.6% in NOV for the industrial sector as a whole and -34.6% in GOV
> and -31.6% in NOV for heavy industry in 1961-2" Ibid p 11.

> The real effects of the Great Leap Forward weren't felt until 1961-5...
> The authors argue that the primary problem in the Maoist years was poor
> efficiency and poor planning leading to, amongst other things, a very
> high capital/output ratio and low growth in productivity. According to
> official Chinese stats, the labor productivity growth rate was the same
> in 1991 as it was in 1958. " If the quality of the plan is low, the
> costs become very high. The lack of autonomy and the alienation from
> direct participation in decision making impair initiatives, creativity
> and the sense of self-responsobilty of enterprises and workers, all
> vital to improve dynamic efficiency" Ibid. p 81

> In his *excellent* books -Korea's Place in the Sun- , -War and
> Television- and the  -The Origins of the Korean War- Bruce Cumings
> argues that the 3rd world countries the U.S. has gone to war against are
> portrayed in the mass media the same way chinatown is portrayed in
> "Chinatown". Instead of  "Forget it Jake, its Chinatown" we have,
> "Forget it Dick, its Vietnam" or "Forget it George, its Iraq" or "Forget
> it Bill, its Yugoslavia"