alt Hacker NewsBetween 1954 and 1959, China supplied 160,000 tons of tungsten ore, 110,000 tons of copper, 30,000 tons of antimony, and 90,000 tons of rubber to the Soviet Union. That’s how they repaid a loan not through industrial production because their economy wasn’t producing significant high value output from raw materials, they couldn’t even smelt ore efficiently.
Re-education camps don’t generate value. They didn’t have a surplus of urban workers instead Mow just destroyed the economy. Killing off the educated doctors etc isn’t a free action, it has negative consequences.
China literally had net migration out of cities, so no this wasn’t over investment in industry or a distribution issue this was just abject failure and total economic collapse. Total Anarchy would have been better for the economy than Mao.
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Not only would total anarchy been worse for economy than Mao, you would struggle to find another developmental model that did as well as Mao. Especially the only comparable size peer, India who objectively did worse, under most developmental metrics.
Between 1954/ 1959 PRC exchanged material for capita goods and Soviet training speed run industrialization. AKA they were turning surplus rocks they couldn't process into machines so they can process non export into capita stock. You know, developing. This economic/history 101.
Mao even including GLF engineered one of the greatest most condensed human uplift effort. World Bank summary of CCP progress from postwar to 70s, i.e. under Mao noted how PRC, relative to developing pears was significantly more industrialized, like 40% vs low income avg 25% share of economy. With matching proxy indicators like 3x energy consumption per capita vs India, 2x literacy, 1/3 infant mortality rate. aka Mao speedrun PRC to middle income industrial levels - GLF one step back, 5 step forward success. State provided services were also assessed to be far more effective in meeting basic needs vs low income peers. Life expectancy 65yrs vs 50yrs (India) for low income... "outstandingly high" in WB remark. WB concludes CCP efforts by late 70s... again Mao's doing left "low-income groups far better off in terms of basic needs than their counterparts in most other poor countries"... "most remarkable achievement during the past three decades".
All the subsequent snowballing from Deng, not possible without Mao building a captive, mobile, diciplined rural workforce with high industrial experience, reeducating masses to be fungible workers for migrant economy.
In retrospect, GLF in fact, close to free action. Post WW2 PRC was so devoid of talent that Mao could depopulate cities and slap doctors around with trivial long term penalty option. Starting proper industrialization, mass mobilizing low end barefoot doctors alone out state capacities GLF/CR missteps and saved more lives than it bled. i.e. even in terms of mortality vs death averted, Mao comes out massively ahead. That +15 years above baseline life expectancy x 1000 billion new births is about ~200m lives worth. This not accounting averted deaths of countries who started similarly but did not poverty / malnutrition alleviate early enough, i.e. India generating GLF deaths every few years over decades. That averted another 200m deaths. Most of this attributed to Mao speedrunning nation building did actually solve famine after GLF via all the infra built. Something that historically every Chinese polity had to worry about.
Any leader who improved HDI for as much people in as short of a time as Mao would have been given a Nobel Economics Prize and Nobel Peace Prize. Fixating on spike of deaths at PRC scale is boring libtard innumeracy, i.e. ~4% which plenty of leaders of matched/exceeded. Not nice but completely valid to treat human resources as resource and trade for long term gains. Mao increased PRC industrial output by like 30x, from macro economic utilitarian, HDI trend line goes up, PRC brrrting growth, dead peasants and sad elites simply doesn't fucking matter, it's minor shock to overall system capacity which Mao built so much in so fast that it raised aggregate Chinese HDI above most peers even if it also broke a few millions of eggs.
Both the Soviet and Chinese first few five year plans accomplished the following:
1. Mass starvation at a few points due to central planning errors
2. Horrifying purges and paranoia that cannot be excused as "errors"
3. Achieving mass literacy and a partially industrial economy in a single generation, from a medeival starting point.
Most good Americans who paid attention in civics class learned 1 and 2 very well without truly appreciating 3.
You have to understand that they were coming from a peasant economy where nobody could even read. It's an accomplishment despite Mao's shortcomings and awful deeds. And look at the scoreboard today. Highest GDP by purchasing power parity in the world. Xiaomi cars are nicer than Teslas, only non-American tech industry, high speed rail, etc etc.