And no, I’m not saying don’t vote; I’m saying that there comes a point when voting isn’t going to solve the problem
Do you feel that one isolated graph justifies everything Mao did though? Like, 15 – 55 million people died in the Great Leap Forward, some 20 – 30 million died due to the Four Pests campaign, and so on and so on, but life expectancy got better so that’s OK? How much of that is even Mao’s doing? He kicked the bucket in the mid 70’s after all
No, Mao did a lot of terrible things which I would not defend. But he also made very significant improvements in the lives of a lot of people, and imo the graph puts a lot of things into perspective. During the enormous failure of the Great Leap Forward, that’s where the line stagnates before continuing upwards. The steep climb afterwards was actually during the Cultural Revolution, the chaos and destruction is far outweighed by the implementation of the Barefoot Doctors program, in which doctors were trained quickly and sent out to the provinces to administer the basics of modern medicine, such as vaccines.
Of course you’re right that it wasn’t all Mao’s doing. While life expectancy drastically increased during the time he was in power, people were still living in conditions of extreme poverty. The reforms in the 80’s beginning with Deng led to 800 million people being lifted out of poverty, which amounted to 3/4 of worldwide poverty reduction. But Westerners, not having experienced anything like the conditions that the communists in China eliminated, generally ignore these accomplishments and disavow the entire project as a total failure.
It’s fair to criticize Mao for sure, but there’s a lot of space in between “idolization” and “incompetent psycho.” If you have any sort of complex or nuanced view on him, however, that means that you’re a tankie.
I don’t think people are generally against nuance (or at least they shouldn’t be) but it’s not like actual tankies – ie. authoritarian communists – have very nuanced views. So yes, of course there’s a whole gradient between “idolization” and “incompetent psycho” and I was being hyperbolic, but especially with Mao I’d argue that he really was fairly incompetent. Likely not an actual psychopath like Stalin seemed to be, but a shining example of competence he wasn’t (Four Pests is just one example). This doesn’t mean that nothing good happened under his rule though.
“Actual” tankies don’t exist, outside of perhaps a handful of edgy teens. The way I use the term is defined by common use, regardless of the stated definition. In actual practice, anyone who defends anything a communist government has ever done, even if it’s something as minor as acknowledging the success of Cuba’s literacy program, is liable to be called a tankie by someone. I could try to fight it but I’d be fighting virtually every time the term is used, and I prefer to just reclaim it. You might as well ignore it, or love the word instead, because you ain’t done nothing if you ain’t been called a Red
