Why the downvotes? The Wikipedia link confers a degree of assumption of neutrality even though it reads exactly like the content in one of those `.cn` posts. So, why not go to the source.
You were correctly downvoted because you took the thread straight into flamewar—nationalistic and ideological. We don't want that here. It's predictable, and therefore tedious, and therefore off topic on HN. Also, it invariably turns nasty, which is destructive of the respectful spirit we want here.
Edited to add: In theory, one might think there ought to be a difference between an obituary and a encyclopedia entry. This is more shrine to a person as opposed to a less propagandist, more objective account.
The implications of the CCP line, the Wikipedia article, and the tone here is that better rice was what was needed to avoid famine.
The reality is with property rights, proper prices, without central planning, there would not have been a famine.
Maybe he is as great as people claim ... Or, maybe his reputation is manufactured _ex post facto_ to diminish the role of the ideology in causing the disaster.
As for saving people from hunger elsewhere, people in the Sudan or Yemen or Ethiopia have not been dying because they planted the inferior crop.
Not sure why others are down voting you, and I so far can't down vote anybody.
As a Chinese, I never considered myself as a communist-lover, and I probably saw more shady things happened in the country than probably most foreigners here. But, I assume that's not why people clicked this thread.
Yuan Longping is an icon. A scientist who dedicated almost his entire life to improve the life of the others through his research and groundworks, which saved billions of people from starvation across the world. This alone deserve some praise, regardless which political party you're in.
Now, if you're still unconvinced, think about this: He increased the yields of rice, and rice is a kind of food people eat. The only way rice could hurt people is through probably obesity, you can't even make or launch nuclear bombs with it. So why feel triggered?
Icons can be and are used by governments for propaganda, to improve the sentiment of nationalism, when great achievements of people is shown as achievement of the nation. This has been done by almost every governments, regardless of political leaning.
Reading others comments in the whole page, it appears that's what people see in that news, as they can't filter the propaganda from the achievements of a great man.
That's trivially disprovable by a few seconds' acquaintance with the search box at the bottom of every page.
Please don't break the site guidelines by going on about downvotes, insinuating brigading when you have zero evidence, or posting nationalistic or ideological flamewar comments to HN. We ban accounts that do these things.
Edit: we actually banned you for nationalistic flamewar a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25985852. I'm not sure why we unbanned you after that, but it looks like it was by mistake. I won't punish you for our mistake by banning you again without a warning, but I do have to tell you: please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamewar comments to HN, or we will ban you again. Those things are not what this site is for. That goes double for ideological battle comments and triple for nationalistic battle comments.
It's not what you say, it's the way you say it, the way you go about it, and the thread you choose to say it in. That's why me and many other people downvoted and flagged you.
