[FooBarWidget]

Okay I've been watching your back and forths for a while now and you guys seem to deadlock. I'll add some verifiable data.

Exhibit 1: "From Yao To Mao" by Kenneth James Hammond, history professor at New Mexico State University https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VMEFNcbR0o&t=8m30s This history lecture states that The Great Leap Forward actually achieved many of its goals. One famous failure was the famine. But you better listen to his very interesting explanation of that instead of reading a summary by me.

Exhibit 2: life expectancy from 1850 to 2020. https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1439608272940519430?t=4-p... You see a couple of interesting things. From 1949 onwards, there was a steep gain. Even the famine only managed to slow the gain rather than reversing it. That same thread also refers to the Barefoot Doctor system which was a major contributor to raising life expectancy.

Exhibit 3: Kevin Tellier, a very good China watcher (corroborated by another HN user in this submission), discusses the nature of Xi's power centralization. https://twitter.com/kevtellier/status/1441774309652025346 Rather than grabbing power for the sake of power, Xi's power centralization served a real purpose that is in the interest of the nation, namely removing entrenched interests that keep the country back. The problem of entrenched interests influencing policy is unfortunately an unsolved problem in many democracies.

[chaostheory]

Kenneth James Hammond isn't objective. He's funded by the Confucius Institute. imo his opinion is compromised by money i.e. he is a paid CCP apologist. It's no different from researchers who deny climate change and are conveniently funded by the oil industry. I don't see any change in mental gymnastics just because it's coming from a caucasian. Incentives tend to drive the outcome of anything like someone's public opinion.

Mao was a brilliant military strategist, but he was a complete disaster as a statesman. He is not vindicated. He made Zhou Enlai's work much harder to accomplish and much longer to take effect. There are few statesmen who were worse than Mao like Stalin. I have to question either your logic, or whether or not if you're commenting from inside the mainland.

> Exhibit 2: life expectancy from 1850 to 2020.

Again, how can we trust the data from yet another secretive authoritarian government?

> Exhibit 3: Kevin Tellier, a very good China watcher

I don't know much about Kevin Teller, but if he has a conflict of interest like Hammond, then his opinion is worth less than more objective sources.

For the record, I am neither anti China or even anti CCP (I don't even think it really exists anymore since it's a dictatorship again); nor am I a pro US zealot. I am only anti-Xi, and I am not a fan of Mao's governance.

If something stinks, I'm not going to pretend that it's nice perfume.