By Jeff J. Brown
Pictured above: the phenomenal success of China’s progress and development during the Mao Era, 1949-1978 has to be censored and denied in the West, and the leader behind it all, Mao Zedong must be demonized and dehumanized. Why? The West’s capitalist elites cannot allow any communist-socialist country to be seen in a positive light, past, present or future. Otherwise, their citizens may start demanding beneficial change for the 99%, at the expense of the 1%. They are thus inundated with a relentless tsunami of mainstream lies, distortions, fake news, propaganda and false flags to hide the truth.
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Live from the streets of China, Jeff
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I was sent a good mainstream article about China’s development (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/looking-back-last-40-years-reforms-china-ray-dalio/). Ray Dalio, a billionaire hedge fund manager talks about all of China’s successes since 1978, which is the end of the Mao Era. As usual, you would never know that China’s many developmental successes started in 1949, when the Communist Party of China (CPC) and People’s Liberation Army (PLA), defeated and kicked out Japanese and Chinese fascists, along with their partners in crime, Western capitalists and drug cartel dealers, mainly Americans, British and French.
In books #2 (China Rising, https://www.amazon.com/China-Rising-Capitalist-Socialist-Destinations/dp/0996487042/) and #3 (China Is Communist Dammit, https://www.amazon.com/China-Communist-Dammit-Dawn-Dynasty/dp/6027354380/) of The China Trilogy (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2017/05/19/the-china-trilogy/), I wrote extensively about the amazing success story of Mao Zedong and his government’s leadership, in freeing their people from foreign exploitation, while transforming the nation into an industrial, agricultural, military and technological powerhouse. This, in spite of Uncle Sam’s illegal and cruel blockade of the country, just like what it is still doing to other communist-socialist countries such as Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Eritrea and Venezuela today.
I thought it would be interesting to take the statistics table from Mr. Dalio’s article and add a column for 1949 (see below). The results from the beginning to the end of the Mao Era are remarkable. After 110 years of Western rape, plunder and unlimited importation of illegal opium, per capita income in China was only $23/year when its people gained their freedom from imperialism. Virtually the entire population was living in poverty, except the elites. Life expectancy was an unbelievable 35 years of age. One-fifth of infants were dying, due to Western/Japanese colonialism. Only one in five citizens could read and the country had no spoken lingua franca, with thousands of regional and local dialects keeping citizens separated. Few people went to school and not for very long.
The only numbers that are outlying are the share of world GDP, but this and the high percentage for poverty in 1978 have an explanation. Due to the Mao Era’s communist economic system, prices of inputs and goods were much lower than in Western countries. Thus, the $1.90 per day threshold for poverty is skewed, since $1.90/day back in the day could actually buy a lot, not to mention close to free housing, medical and education costs. This communist pricing system therefore also artificially deflated the share of world GDP.
| China’s Development Since 1949, Including the Mao Era for Comparison | ||||
| Start Mao Era | End Mao Era | |||
| Category/Year | 1949 | 1978 | 1998 | 2018 |
| RGDP per Capita (2011 USD, PPP adj) | $ 23 | $ 650 | $ 3,244 | $ 15,309 |
| Share of World GDP | 4.5% | 2% | 7% | 22% |
| Population below the Poverty Line ($1.90/day) | 97.0% | 88.30% | 41.0% | 1.4% |
| Life Expectancy | 35 | 66 | 71 | 76 |
| Infant Mortality Rate (per 1,000 births) | 201 | 53 | 33 | 8 |
| Urbanization | 10.6% | 18% | 34% | 57% |
| Literacy | 20% | 70% | 93% | 96% |
| Average Years of Education | 1.2 | 4.4 | 6.6 | 7.7 |
| Note: numbers in italics are calculated estimates. | ||||
| Note: China’s share of world GDP was historically 25-32%, until the West’s rape and plunder of the country, with the onset of the Opium Wars and forced UK/US drug imports, 1839-1949. | ||||
Within two years of liberation, the Mao administration had wiped out drugs, organized crime, prostitution and gambling. During the Mao Era, hundreds of thousands of clinics, hospitals, schools, post/telegraph offices, dams, canals, irrigation projects, businesses and factories of all sizes were built. Tens of thousands of kilometers of roads and rail lines were laid. The GDP increased 600%, grain production 300% and the Great Leap Forward saw the greatest burst of industrial production in human history, far outstripping the three best years for Britain, Germany, the United States and Japan during the Industrial Revolution. The Mao Era built the atomic bomb, nuclear missiles and launched a satellite into space, even though the US shut it off from the outside world. Need I mention Uncle Sam’s humiliating defeat at the hands of communist China (by far the biggest contributor), USSR and North Korea, during that peninsula’s war, 1950-53? There’s a reason Americans want it to be kept as, “the forgotten war”. They got their butts whipped with Mao at the helm (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2018/05/20/china-not-relevant-in-korea-msm-flunks-journalism-101-as-usual-china-rising-radio-sinoland-180520/).
This is just the tip of the iceberg for how wildly successful the Mao Era was. Compare the startling 1949 and 1978 numbers above. Life expectancy, infant mortality and literacy are especially telling. It is clear that Mao’s government did all of the heavy lifting necessary for the Deng Era of reform and opening up to succeed. China in the 1980s and beyond could have never been able to achieve its phenomenal growth and productivity without Mao’s rock-solid foundation.
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Why and How China works: With a Mirror to Our Own History
JEFF J. BROWN, Editor, China Rising, and Senior Editor & China Correspondent, Dispatch from Beijing, The Greanville Post
Jeff J. Brown is a geopolitical analyst, journalist, lecturer and the author of The China Trilogy. It consists of 44 Days Backpacking in China – The Middle Kingdom in the 21st Century, with the United States, Europe and the Fate of the World in Its Looking Glass (2013); Punto Press released China Rising – Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations (2016); and for Badak Merah, Jeff authored China Is Communist, Dammit! – Dawn of the Red Dynasty (2017). As well, he published a textbook, Doctor WriteRead’s Treasure Trove to Great English (2015). Jeff is a Senior Editor & China Correspondent for The Greanville Post, where he keeps a column, Dispatch from Beijing and is a Global Opinion Leader at 21st Century. He also writes a column for The Saker, called the Moscow-Beijing Express. Jeff writes, interviews and podcasts on his own program, China Rising Radio Sinoland, which is also available on YouTube, Stitcher Radio, iTunes, Ivoox and RUvid. Guests have included Ramsey Clark, James Bradley, Moti Nissani, Godfree Roberts, Hiroyuki Hamada, The Saker and many others. [/su_spoiler]
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do you have any sources for these figures?
Yes, the book, “China Is Communist Dammit! Dawn of the Red Dynasty”. Available in print or ebook on Amazon.