[dgoldstein0]

This is interesting, but my quick read: that was not the intent, but rather a combination of agricultural mismanagement and poor food distribution.

What about the great depression in the US? The dust bowl? Various bank runs in the 19th century? Hell, African-American deaths due to slavery? Civil war deaths? Deaths of native Americans in our various undeclared wars against them?

Probably China still has a higher number either way, but if we're going to do a fair comparison, we probably should compare percentages of the population. The US civil war killed a single digit percentage of US population at the time, so perhaps not as extreme as the great Chinese famine but still huge (it was the bloodiest war for US lives ever, by a huge margin)

[mlindner]

I think you're making an unfair argument. It was rarely (if ever) the intent of the US to kill civilians in it's various wars it's done. You're making the "collateral damage" argument that is often used as a point to attack the US on. Be consistent.

As to all your examples, we could have a large discussion about each, but most are from the independent actions of the populace rather than government policy forcing deaths upon the populace at effective gun point. And none of them killed anywhere near the number that the great famine did. Most of them in fact killed zero people and just caused economic hardship. (Also while the American civil war killed 1%, the Chinese great famine killed over 10% in many areas.)

When farmers are dying of starvation and aren't allowed to eat the food that they're growing, you've gone seriously off the rails.

[ashwagary]

>rather a combination of agricultural mismanagement and poor food distribution.

And western countries embargoing/blockading Chinese food imports during an emerging food crisis.

American educators tend to gloss over inconvenient truths like America's role in that famine.