Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Killing sparrows led to famines in China

historydefined.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 118 posts

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#91

Post by [deleted] »

dirtyid wrote: post #87
cryptonector wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> >worse outcomes long-term > Contrary hot take. PRC post WW2 traded lives for progress was net good for long-term outcomes. "You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette." "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." "By all means necessary." "The ends justify the means." Disgusting.

>Disgusting Yes, but effective. Manifest some destiny. Future generations reap reward. All of sudden it's 5% bad and 95% good. Maybe 10% bad and 90% good during periods of introspection. The sins of founding father(s) are easy to cleanse.

[deleted]

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#92

Post by boeingUH60 »

type0 wrote: post #80
emaginniss wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't blame Mao, blame the system Mao built!

He was a delusional psychopat that was happy to kill as many people as he could

You just described all communist leaders. Fortunately, most of them are extinct at this point.

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#94

Post by cbluth »

Brybry wrote: post #27
goda90 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally those efforts are targeted at disease carrying mosquitoes. There are other species of mosquitoes in the same regions and there aren't any animals that only eat one kind of mosquito.

To add to this, the disease carrying mosquito species like aedes aegypti and aedes albopictus are invasive species in the Americas. These mosquitoes do some pollination but given that they're invasive it probably wouldn't be a big deal to wipe them out. Also, invasiveness is true of a lot of pests in North America: the American cockroach isn't American, it's from Africa. Brown rats, red/fire ants, and wild pigs are a…

I dunno, i think these pale in comparison to humans. Pot kettle black, and all that.

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#96

Post by seesawtron »

bluSCALE4 wrote: post #7

This is why I was concerned when I heard Google, of all companies, released lab grown mosquitos to wipe them out. I'm curious what happened with this effort. It's not exactly a vote of confidence when the other guy trying to do this is Bill Gates.

Bill Gates foundation is also sponsoring GMOs in Africa. These include lab designed mosquitos that can be introduced in the existing population to eradicate mosquitos.

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#97

Post by netsharc »

idoubtit wrote: post #57

I've read about this several times, and I'm not surprised the story is popular. Many people see China as a foe, so they like to smear it. That's alright, but anyone should be extra cautious when a story is just what most people want. Stories tend to inflate and bend to please their auditory. For instance, consider the claim that China had to import 250,000 sparrows from the USSR. Where does it come from? This article…

How about a Russian source, or are they also propaganda pieces against China? https://russian7.ru/post/kak-sssr-spas-kitay-prodav-obychnyk...

Google Translate says the USSR sent wagonfuls of sparrows. Btw Mr. Smartypants, no need for your "(sic)" "Russia" is allowed too, it'd be like a country asking the EU for help and Germany responding, Russia was a country which was part of the USSR.

The Russian article references papers written by Chinese and Russian scholars, I find it peculiar that you're wary of Western propaganda but yet rely on just English-language sources...

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#98

Post by CrackerNews »

PicassoCTs wrote: post #89
cryptonector wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Killing the sparrows didn't help, but it wasn't the main cause of the famine. It was the same as Stalin's famines, and he didn't try to get rid of the sparrows. It was just a matter of taking away all incentives for farmers to farm, abusing them, and then using whatever food was available as a weapon for exacting compliance in the ensuing famine. Using food as a weapon means making the famine worse. Add to this…

And after that, rewrite history, to make it seem like an accident. After all, the plan of the party could never be horrible. Same today, building more coal plants, while half of the country in the south is sliding towards a wet-bulb scenario. 400 Mio living in an area, that could become uninhabitable within a human lifetime, and the plan for that? Get rich faster and run, fuck the peasants, obviously. The chinese des…

While there are dangers to bad top-down management, the criticisms laid out in this thread can still apply to the CPC and Chinese mainland society today, but they don't suffer from famines on the same level anymore.

I don't think they disagree with the goal and intent of rapidly industrializing China from peasant-based into urban workers. They will still uphold Mao's legacy even if they disagreed with his excesses and failures. They are about economic development because it is a required stage for their goal of achieving socialism and communism. Economic development is their longterm planning and "working science."

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#99

Post by CrackerNews »

PicassoCTs wrote: post #46

This article has the causality inverted. The sparrows were just a sideshow to distract from the famines cause. Most famines were caused by the culture of face and the nature of the party. The party dictated a plan, and as failing the plan and making the great leader loose face, ment the local governments loosing face would get them Maos wrath, all the members of the party reported success when it came to harvests. So…

Part of Mao's enduring legacy was his concept of the party line adapting to the will of the masses, and the sparrow extermination campaign was a failure in adapting the party line to this farmer discontent too well.

Mao did change Chinese culture, but it was by purging Western-style intellectuals and promoting mass organization to take command from the bottom-up, because he saw people on the ground being more correct than intellectuals who might not apply their learning to the actual conditions.

The successors after Mao adopting Deng Xiaoping's liberal attitudes towards economic development can be seen as a Party rebuke of Mao's policies. Yet they will still uphold Mao's legacy.

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#100

Post by CrackerNews »

zabzonk wrote: post #53
fdye wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I think its fair to say the USSR, China, Cuba, North Kora were a form of communism that had the following characteristics. 1. Authoritarian 2. Central planning (perhaps the same thing) 3. Slow to change These are all valid criticisms based on what we know from history, etc. I think there is a bit of nuance here though based on a glance of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines and some basic history. 1. Chi…

> people don't start revolutions and try out radical types of government because their lives are going just swell! of course they don't, and i deeply sympathise. but what they always seem to end up with like genocidal maniacs like mao and stalin. both communists. and of course, in the west, we had hitler. but after 1945 i would say human life has improved in the west - more than i can say for china (despite industria…

In the USSR and China, the large scale deaths were linked to failures during economic development. Despite the failures, there were improvements in quality of life. (The CIA factbook about USSR nutrition being on par or better than the West being one example.) They end up being a class ahead of the poorest of the third world. The issue was that the USSR did not catch up to the leaps the West made. China is catching up using their illiberalism to enforce protectionism and national economic development. If anything, this seems to emphasize that economic development requieres global trade, and this was an issue with the USSR and early China.
Post reply on HN