主题：关于毛的一本新书：《毛真的是恶魔吗？》 -- 细脖大头鬼

14. 38 Million Deaths in 1958 – 1961

The famine is no doubt the biggest disaster to the Chinese people under the CCP and Mao in particular. JC is entitled to choose the highest estimated death toll to condemn Mao. But her claim that Mao intentionally made this famine cannot be substantiated by her evidence which suggests the opposite.

JC writes: “Close to 38 million people died of starvation and overwork in the Great Leap Forward and the famine. . . . Mao knowingly starved and worked these tens of millions of people to death” (pp. 456–457).

The number of deaths claimed in the book is not JC’s finding, but to insert the word “knowingly” is definitely her innovation. She gives no evidence that Mao knew that millions of people were dying and did not take actions to stop it. Her strongest argument is: “During the two critical years 1958–9, grain exports alone, almost exactly 7m tons, would have provided the equivalent of over 840 calories per day for 38 million people – the difference between life and death” (p. 457).

The Chinese government had to make its export plans for 1958 and 1959 about one year earlier, mainly based on the grain production in 1957 and 1958 respectively. The bad news had not emerged then. Mao could not know that millions of people would die. The large scale of grain export in 1959 reflected Mao’s false estimate of the grain production one year earlier, which led him to “announce that the harvest figure for 1958 was more than double 1957’s” (p. 461), which he apparently believed. This unreliable estimate in turn was based on a nationwide misreporting. For example, as cited by JC, “in September (1958), People’s Daily reported that ‘the biggest rice sputnik’ yet had produced over 70 tons from less than 1/5th of an acre, which was hundreds of times the norm” (p. 446). Mao should be condemned for his bad judgment and responsibility for creating the political atmosphere conducive to such misinformation. He could also be blamed for not abolishing grain export contracts earlier, possibly in part due to his national pride. But these are different from “knowingly starved . . . tens of millions of people to death”.

To judge whether JC’s word “knowingly” is valid, we should not underestimate the difficulty of getting accurate information at that time. A convincing example is related to JC herself. According to her autobiography, Wild Swans, her father was the minister of Sichuan’s Department of Propaganda (she coined a special name for her father’s unit, “Department of Public Affair”). His main job was to visit peasants and provide needed help. According to JC, 7 million people die in Sichuan during the famine. No one should know this better than her father. If he reported what he saw, it is extremely unlikely that he could hide it from his wife (another “Public Affair” official – propagandist) for more than a decade. It is even more unlikely that his wife could hide it from JC for the next three decades. However, in neither Wild Swans nor this book can one find any information that JC’s father knew about the famine in Sichuan. Even the figure of 7 million deaths, was told to JC more than a decade after her departure from China. If the top “Public Affair” official in the province did not know it, how could Mao in Beijing “knowingly starved . . . tens of millions of people to death”?

In fact, it should not be so difficult for JC to prove her word “knowingly”. She could simply present evidence that the Sichuan government had reported to Beijing that people were starving to death and asked for urgent food relief, but got no immediate response. If JC claims the absence of such evidence was because of Mao’s terror, she should offer at least one example that Mao had punished anyone for asking food relief. Her story of Peng Dehuai (p. 468–70) does not fit here, because he did many other things, e.g., he “contemplated something akin to a military coup” (p. 464) and during the party congress in Lushan he publicly asked why he could not fuck Mao (p. 273 for a partial quote).

Why does JC fail to give such evidence? The fact is, the Sichuan party leadership concealed millions of death in Sichuan very well. When the news of mass starvation reached Beijing, most famine stricken provinces saw their party bosses sacked for not reporting people’s suffering in time (Wu Zhifu of Henan, Zeng Xisheng of Anhui, Shu Tong of Shandong, Zhang Zhongliang of Gansu etc). The only exception is the Sichuan boss Li Jingquan who was promoted instead. Li put all the blames on his inferiors, at county or commune levels, accusing them of “knowingly starved . . . people to death”. Most people in Sichuan believe that Li just used them for scapegoats. The issue may be debatable. But it seems fair to say that if we use word “knowingly” on Li, the same has to apply to those local officials, unless their plea for help was ignored by the provincial authority. For the same reason, if JC accuses Mao of “knowingly starved . . . people to death”, the same charge must apply to Li and his colleagues, unless their plea for help was ignored by Beijing.

For Li to conceal starvation and his own responsibility there was a crucial and necessary condition: the full cooperation of the Sichuan media, which was under the absolute control of the Department of “Public Affair” – Department of Propaganda, led by JC’s father. Let’s stop here.

Moreover, for readers’ information, the death toll of 38 million is the highest among many widely varying estimates. It is, astonishingly, as high as the estimated total Chinese deaths during the Sino-Japanese war in 1937–45. To convince readers its validity, JC provides the death rates and population numbers, backed up by China Statistics Year Book 1983 in her references. However, neither of these data cited by her agrees with those published in the yearbook. Without telling readers those disagreements, JC argues, “The official statistics published in 1983 are recognized as partly defective, because local policemen understated the number of deaths in the years 1959-61” (p. 457 fn). If Chinese statisticians are professional, they should have corrected such obvious defects in the yearbook, unless JC proves the otherwise. JC does not explain how her “corrected” data come out, though the correction is not minor. For instance, her 1960 death rate is 4.34%, while the official one is 2.54%. This alone generates extra deaths of 12 million, almost one third of her total death toll.

Furthermore, whatever the true figures should be, the abnormal deaths, as explained by JC (pp. 456–7 fn), include all deaths related but not directly caused by starvation or overwork, such as deaths caused by illness partially due to malnutrition, and those caused by various injuries and senile problems due to poor medical and social care. These deaths may account for a larger part of the “abnormal deaths” shown in statistic data, but were not considered “starved to death”, and did not draw immediate attention from the society and government. This is probably why there is no widespread evidence of large scale starvation in China, nearly compatible to JC’s claim. If we apply JC’s method to the Russian population data after the shock therapy, the abnormal death rate would be higher than those during China’s famine. Yeltsin could be blamed for genocide, as some Russians (unfairly) alleged.

Finally, let us see how JC shows that Mao even intended to let tens of million people die. She wrote: “We can now say with assurance how many people Mao was ready to dispense with. . . . On 21 November 1958, talking to his inner circle about the labour-intensive projects like waterworks and making ‘steel’, and tacitly, almost casually, assuming a context where peasants had too little to eat and were being worked to exhaustion, Mao said: ‘Working like this, with all these projects, half of China may well have to die. If not half, one-third, or one-tenth --- 50 million --- die.’ Aware that these remarks might ssound too shocking, he tried to shirk his own responsibility. ‘Fifty million deaths’, he went on, ‘I could be fired, and I might even lose my head . . . but if you insist, I’ll let you do it, and you can’t blame me when people die’.” (p. 457 – 458)

In her interview with BBC, Jung Chang uses this quotation to show that Mao knew that half of the population would die under his policy and he “deliberately” starved tens of millions of people to death. It is worthwhile to check where this sinister quotation comes.

These words are taken from Mao’s speech in the politburo meeting in Wuchang, 21 November 1958. The honest translation including the context should be as follows:

“Do not pursuit the vanity, and get a disaster. We should reduce the amount of our task. On the waterworks, the whole nation accomplished 50 billion cubic meters of earth in the last winter and this spring, but for this winter and the next spring, the plan is 190 billion, three times more. There are various other tasks, steel, iron, copper, aluminum, coal, transport, machinery, chemicals, how much labor and financial resource needed? Working like this, I am afraid that, half of China may well have to die. If not half, one-third, or one-tenth --- 50 million deaths. 50 million deaths, if you are not fired, at least I will be. Should we do so much? It is ok if you really want, but the principle is no death. If you insist, I cannot stop you, but I should not be killed when people die. Next year’s plan is to produce 30 million tons of steel, should we plan so much? Can we do it? How many people must work for it? Will people die? We should lower our tone in this meeting, cool the air down. The string of the Huchin (a Chinese instrument) should not be pulled too tightly. There is a risk of breaking down.”

After seeing the true text, indeed, “we can now say with assurance how many people Mao was ready to dispense with.”

15. Three Million Deaths in 1966-76

The last occurrence of deaths on a large scale under Mao took place during the Cultural Revolution. JC adds three million to Mao’s record. Her number is not based on professional research. Her evidence points to Mao’s general responsibility for launching the Cultural Revolution, but not direct involvement or encouragement of violence and brutality, which caused most deaths in some, mostly remote, provinces.

“In the ten years from when Mao started the Purge until his death in 1976, at least 3 million people died violent deaths. . . . The killings were sponsored by the state” (p. 569).

The number of 3 million is much higher than the official estimate. JC’s main reference for this number was from an article published in China Spring, a fervent anti-Chinese government magazine in the U.S., not well known for its neutrality and objectiveness.

There were 29 provinces/regions in China at that time. The worst case on JC’s list is Guangxi, where “killing claimed some 100,000 lives” (p. 566). To get a total 3 million nationwide we must have the same figure for all provinces following Guangxi. In JC’s second and third positions, however, we find Yunnan where some “seventeen thousand of them were executed or beaten to death, or driven to suicide”, and Inner Mongolia where “16,222 died” (p. 567). If we count every province except Guangxi with 20,000 deaths, the total number would be 0.66 million. The rest of the 2.34 million claimed by JC, have to remain her “unknown story”.

Now let us consider Mao’s responsibility. JC’s No. 1 case of Guangxi indeed offers “the clearest illustration”, where “one faction refused to recognize the authority of Mao’s point man, General (Wei) Guo-qing” (p. 565). So the killing was mainly due to faction fighting. JC provides the following evidence for Mao’s attitude towards such violence. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, “Mao had Chou En-lai announce to a Red Guard rally on Tiananmen on 31 August (1966): ‘Denounce by words, and not by violence’” (p. 540). “In 1968, factional clashes with firearms had shown little sign of abating, despite a flood of commands from Peking. One man who was being conspicuously unruly was Kuai Da-fu, the Qinghua University student whom Mao had used to torment Liu Shao-chi and his wife. Kuai had by now become the most famous ‘leftist’ in the country, and he was determined to bring his opponents in the university to their knees. He ignored repeated orders to stop. . . Mao had to step in personally to get him to toe the line, and simultaneously made an example of him to send a warning to the whole country that faction wars had to stop” (pp. 564-5). Since Mao personally stopped his most favorite ‘leftist’ using violence in faction fighting, he would unlikely have supported other provincial leftists doing so. The real story was probably what JC tells us: “Mao had unleashed a dynamic that was undermining his own power. He had to abandon his attempt to identify factions as Left and Conservative, and called for all groups to unite. But his orders were ignored” (p. 564).

According to JC’s evidence, Mao was guilty of miscalculation, without evil intention.