Trump now tied with Clition nationally according to Real Clear Poltics average

[ReptilianPeon]

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To possibly claim the US killed more people then China is the whole of history, you'd have to do some real magic with numbers. For example bringing up the Native Americans who were largely killed by small pox before the US was even a country. I see that commonly attributed to America. Also people will attribute all the deaths in Iraq or Vietnam to America, even when most of both examples were the Iraqis and Vietnamese killing each other. Meanwhile China has existed for thousands of years in one form or another. During those times they've committed and been the victim of numerous genocides that vastly outnumber anything America has done. Like Divity said, you must be totally ignoring the great leap forward. Not only that but also the early 20th century genocide of Mongol people, the massive genocides in the 12th century, the estimated 2 million slave laborers who died in contruction projects in the early 1st century. It takes real mental gymnastics to claim America has killed more.

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Yes, it was silly of me to even suggest comparing deaths. Chinas population is four times the size of the United States after all. I feel I should give some thoughts on the Great Leap Forward though.


I've always thought that the number of deaths in the 'Great Leap Forward' was, at least somewhat, exaggerated. The estimates vary widely and it's probably impossible to get a truly accurate figure, as with the Atlantic and Arab slave trades, etc. We must also remember, that the people that took control after Mao were the very people who enacted the market reforms, so it would be in their interests to discredit Mao, thus exaggerating the amount of deaths.

It also just so happens that during the Great Leap Forward happened during a time of drought (and this is far from the first the first such famine in China) . How many deaths attributed to the Great Leap Forward were actually as a result of the drought instead? Almost immediately after the Great Leap Forward, China's life expectancy shot up dramatically (the graph at the link uses United Nations data). I don't want to claim the Great Leap Forward was a good idea, but the numbers suggest the Great Leap Forward had some benefits. In ten years the life expectancy of the average Chinese citizen seems to have gone from its low of about 43, during the drought, to over 65 years.

I can't say that I agree with Mao, but I have trouble accepting he only did terrible things. One good thing I can think of, off of the top of my head, was that he got rid of the warlords for example. I would like to believe that saved a few lives in long term.