> The Great Chinese Famine (Chinese: 三年大饥荒, "three years of great famine") was a period between 1959 and 1961 in the history of the People's Republic of China (PRC) characterized by widespread famine.[1][2][3][4][5] Some scholars have also included the years 1958 or 1962.[6][7][8][9] The Great Chinese Famine is widely regarded as the deadliest famine and one of the greatest man-made disasters in human history, with an estimated death toll due to starvation that ranges in the tens of millions (15 to 55 million).[3][4][5][10][11][12][13][14][15]
> The major contributing factors in the famine were the policies of the Great Leap Forward (1958 to 1962) and people's communes, such as inefficient distribution of food due to the planned economy, requiring the use of poor agricultural techniques, the Four Pests Campaign that reduced bird populations (which disrupted the ecosystem), over-reporting of grain production (which was actually decreasing), and ordering millions of farmers to switch to iron and steel production.[3][5][7][12][14][16] During the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference in early 1962, Liu Shaoqi, the second Chairman of the PRC, formally attributed 30% of the famine to natural disasters and 70% to man-made errors ("三分天灾, 七分人祸").[7][17][18] After the launch of Reforms and Opening Up, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officially stated in June 1981 that the famine was mainly due to the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward as well as the Anti-Rightist Campaign, in addition to some natural disasters and the Sino-Soviet split.[1][2]
Taking HN threads into nationalistic flamewar or ideological flamewar will get you banned on HN. No more of this, please. What you posted here was particularly lame and shallow.
I didn't want to make any flamewar, nationalistic or ideological. I was simply pointing out the fact that he had nothing to do with the great famine. The back and forth from others was not my intention. Anyway.
If you really just meant to point out that he had nothing to do with the great famine, then I definitely did not understand your intention, and I dare say almost no other readers did either. That was super unclear!
As for the back and forth, I understand completely how when people start feeling mutually provoked, the discussion tends to spiral downward in a tit-for-tat way that is incredibly hard to resist. We all need to work on that (me included).
So what? Famine has been a thing long before and long after the birth of any modern day ideology. (I say “modern day” because I’m not sure if the very first hunter-gatherers had ideologies.) Even if famine was never a thing, increasing crop yields is still worthwhile research that directly benefits mankind, and it goes beyond boundaries.
A scientist who devoted their entire life to ending hunger just passed away and all you can do is post some generic ideological bait. Somewhere along your ideological quest a line of basic human decency is crossed.
Ever since introduction of potato to China large scale famines disappeared in China except for those caused by war, and by army and government seizing foods. Those modern famines are notable for their scale, duration, and entirely man-made political causes. CCP absolutely insists on calling them "natural disasters," precisely because they are unnatural. That is what!
Not sure what you are trying to say here. As mentioned in the tweet, he is revered because his research truly did improve agriculture. As opposed to the previous generation of agriculture researchers that worked on the Great Leap Forward that caused the famine.
"the previous generation of agriculture researchers that worked on the Great Leap Forward that caused the famine"? What the hell are you talking about? What do you mean "agriculture researchers that worked on the Great Leap Forward"?
The OP said "fighting famine", not "fighting the famine". Without the definite article "the", their sentence can (and arguably should) be read as referring to famine as a class of calamities, not to a particular one.
As a further example, the job of a firefighter is to fight fires as they happen, not to help the UK forever recover from The Great Fire of London.
And? Should people hate him for what he did? What is the dispute here? Would you not feel grateful for his contributions, regardless of what end of the political spectrum you're on?
Please do not perpetuate flamewars on HN. I realize you didn't start it, but if people didn't perpetuate these things, they'd die out quickly, which is what they deserve.
Edit: I just noticed what you wrote in your profile about having an account only for Chinese topics. I appreciate the transparency, but single-purpose accounts like that are not allowed on HN, and especially not on flamewar topics. It's not in keeping with the intended spirit of this site, which is thoughtful, unpredictable conversation on a wide range of curiosity-driven topics.
You can see from the many past explanations at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... that we're aware of the pressure that HN's Chinese users (or those with a background connected to China - for example, family or work) experience on a majority-Western forum like HN. That's an inevitable consequence of geopolitical trends. We can't do anything about that, but we can, and do, insist that HN users follow the site guidelines and treat each other respectfully. When someone else is breaking the rules egregiously, please don't reward them by replying. Instead, flag the comment, and in particularly bad cases please give us a head-up at hn@ycombinator.com.
Quote the Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
> The Great Chinese Famine (Chinese: 三年大饥荒, "three years of great famine") was a period between 1959 and 1961 in the history of the People's Republic of China (PRC) characterized by widespread famine.[1][2][3][4][5] Some scholars have also included the years 1958 or 1962.[6][7][8][9] The Great Chinese Famine is widely regarded as the deadliest famine and one of the greatest man-made disasters in human history, with an estimated death toll due to starvation that ranges in the tens of millions (15 to 55 million).[3][4][5][10][11][12][13][14][15]
> The major contributing factors in the famine were the policies of the Great Leap Forward (1958 to 1962) and people's communes, such as inefficient distribution of food due to the planned economy, requiring the use of poor agricultural techniques, the Four Pests Campaign that reduced bird populations (which disrupted the ecosystem), over-reporting of grain production (which was actually decreasing), and ordering millions of farmers to switch to iron and steel production.[3][5][7][12][14][16] During the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference in early 1962, Liu Shaoqi, the second Chairman of the PRC, formally attributed 30% of the famine to natural disasters and 70% to man-made errors ("三分天灾, 七分人祸").[7][17][18] After the launch of Reforms and Opening Up, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officially stated in June 1981 that the famine was mainly due to the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward as well as the Anti-Rightist Campaign, in addition to some natural disasters and the Sino-Soviet split.[1][2]
BTW: Wikipedia is banned in China.