[bwv848]

Also fun fact, he advised Mao on agriculture during the Great Leap Forward, using rough estimates of photosynthetic efficiency to calculate potential crop yields. Those estimates were far removed from reality and indirectly contributed to the Great Chinese Famine, while other countries were benefiting from the success of the Green Revolution.

[porphyra]

He didn't advise Mao directly. He published his "rough estimate" in China Youth Daily on June 16, 1958 as 《粮食亩产量会有多少？》. It's possible, though unconfirmed, that Mao (or his secretary) read this article and was influenced. But yeah, the math was bad and off by an order of magnitude. Even geniuses can't be right all the time and I guess he was quite irresponsible for publishing a hand-wavy back-of-the-envelope estimate like that.

[bwv848]

Qian gave a talk about agriculture at the 6th Supreme State Conference in 1956, Mao directly talked to Qian about his article in 1958 '你在青年报上写的那篇文章我看了，陆定一同志很热心，到处帮你介绍。你在那个时候敢于说四万斤的数字，不错啊。你是学力学的，学力学而谈农业，你又是个农学家。', while later Qian admitted it was theoretically only and he miscalculated, he probably did it out of modesty and he didn't say shit about his impact on tens of millions of death whatsoever. In fact, Mao's secretary at the time was Li Rui, who was a pragmatist and quite liberal during his lifetime. He questioned Mao's sanity, and Mao just blamed Qian.

[porphyra]

Thanks for the correction. That sucks then. Dude should have stayed in his lane making rockets instead of commenting on agriculture.

[defen]

It's a compelling example of the common phenomenon where a certified genius in one field makes a blunder by attempting to reason from first principles to analyze a problem in another field. Not that such things never work; there are success stories too, but it's not guaranteed.

[contingencies]

Central planning and heterogeneous large scale distributed agriculture don't mix.

[fragmede]

That seems like an oversimplification of what happened to Soviet Russia and China under Mao.

[trhway]

I grew up in USSR, and wrt agriculture it isnt oversimplification, it is exactly how it was there. It was the key factor resulting in the food shortages, and that was a major factor in the USSR collapse.

[worik]

Central planning and agriculture don't mix.

[BigTTYGothGF]

China seems to be doing OK these days, are they no longer planning centrally?

[wagwang]

This is probably just him trying to survive Mao's insanity

[bwv848]

Wrong. Mao didn’t have full control at the time. Before the Lushan Conference in 1959, China had a system of collective leadership, and Mao more or less respected it. Mao was always insane, even before the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference and the Cultural Revolution, but Qian was definitely not under pressure, he simply enjoyed his alliance with Mao so much that his last words were: ‘毛泽东思想活着，中国就永远年轻’ (‘As long as Maoism lives, China will remain forever young.’)

[wagwang]

You might be right, I don't actually know Qian that well, but this idea of collective leadership misses the point that Mao had all the power and backing of the military/peasants.