Talk:Great Leap Forward/Archive 2

Referred to Content Noticeboard
On WP:Content noticeboard, it says I'm supposed to let people know that I've posted about something to that noticeboard. I have done so, and I am letting you know this here. Zachary Klaas (talk) 23:50, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

A possibly useful source
Mao's Great Leap Forward 'killed 45 million in four years'--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:14, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I have incorporated it into the "consequences" section in this edit. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:11, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

I do not know when I will get a chance to look at it, but I have heard that Dikotter's research in that book is new and reveals many untold aspects of the famine. It may be grounds for recasting several parts of this page. I invite the diligent students of communist China to get to work. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 02:48, 19 September 2010 (UTC)


 * The book is probably more appropriate to the Great Chinese Famine article. The articles about the book undoubtedly give more of what this article doesn't need—sensational death figures and moral outrage—and less of what we do need: the history that isn't so often repeated, but is essential to understanding. Quigley (talk) 04:48, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I guess you are not familiar with Professor Dikotter's work.... The Sound and the Fury (talk) 02:43, 20 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Will you pleasantly surprise me? Quigley (talk) 03:43, 20 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Would that I could. Check out The Age of Openness. He Rocks. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 19:39, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Transcript of the discussion from the Content noticeboard
This edit history documents what I am complaining about:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Leap_Forward&diff=385999654&oldid=385996585

Five reputable sources identify that "Great Leap Backward" is a phrase used to describe China's "Great Leap Forward", including the Harvard scholar Roderick MacFarquhar (acknowledged as a major Chinese history expert and author of a well-regarded book on this period in China's history), historian Huaiyin Li of the University of Texas, two popular media sources (Time and the New York Times) and a guide to the AP World History exam, edited by historian Deborah Vess at Georgia College and State University, explaining the "Great Leap Forward" to would-be takers of the AP test. All five of the sources specifically use this phrase to contradict the assumption built into the term that China experienced some sort of leap forward during this period in history.

The main reason given for the deletion of this segment of the lead is that referring to the period as a "Great Leap Backward" constitutes taking a side and establishing a point of view (WP:POV). The phrase "Great Leap Forward" itself, however, involves a point of view. That is why these historians and journalists have gone out of their way to use this phrase to directly contradict this built-in premise.

Because WP:COMMONNAME specifically allows non-neutral terminology to be used in titles of articles, my previous efforts to find a more neutral title for the article have been rejected. This being the case, I have made an effort instead to ensure that the lead reflects that there do exist persons who reject this term's accuracy. My concern is that people will be confused by the title and end up searching somewhere on the page for clarity about whether the "Great Leap Forward" actually involved some kind of a great leap forward for China. The AP World History exam prep book I cited as a source specifically contradicts this because of the pretty clear concern that those first learning about this period in Chinese history would get the wrong idea because this term "Great Leap Forward" is used to describe the period. Wikipedia never contradicts this assumption that would otherwise likely be made.

It has also been suggested that my additions violate WP:CHERRY. If this were true, then there would be some collection of sources that establish that the "Great Leap Forward" really involved a great leap forward, which I am ignoring, and instead substituting a small number of sources more conducive to my viewpoint. To my knowledge, there are a tiny number of sources, mostly from committed Maoists, that argue that the "Great Leap Forward" was not uniformly horrible, but I am unaware of any large number of reputable sources making the claim that the "Great Leap Forward" involved a great leap forward. There are, on the other hand, numerous sources suggesting the contrary. So that argument doesn't seem plausible.

Comments also suggest my additions violate WP:EDITORIAL. This seems to be based on the idea that it is in-bounds to say that the Great Leap Forward movement "ended in catastrophe" (the actual language currently on the page) but observing that numerous historians and journalists therefore call it a "Great Leap Backward" is out-of-bounds. These are both objective statements. It did end in catastrophe, and notable historians and journalists have termed it the "Great Leap Backward" as a result.

It seems to me that any edit which expunges from the record five sources derived from the analysis of China/world history experts and world affairs journalists demonstrates a pretty clear lack of respect for WP:RS sourcing. Wikipedia is in a scary situation when people delete a statement with five proper and reputable sources because they contradict the assumption built into the article's misleading title. Wikipedia is supposed to reveal facts, not conceal them.

Can editors please look in on the debate at Talk:Great Leap Forward? Zachary Klaas (talk) 23:36, 20 September 2010 (UTC)


 * It is utterly false that "historians and journalists have gone out of their way to use this phrase"—that is, Zachary's favorite new phrase he is using to advance his "truth", "Great Leap Backwards"—when referring to the Great Leap Forward. An instant search on Google web, Google books, and Google Scholar will tell you that much. No one is arguing (not even the Chinese government) that the Great Leap Forward was actually a great leap forward, but the neutral description of the famine and deaths already gives the requisite clarity, as the description of the Hundred Years War (which really wasn't a hundred years) does for its subject. This argument for the inclusion of Zachary's contentious statement, with reference to sources, is relatively new; the bulk of the argument for his changes is that Wikipedia should promote "truth": sources were fished out to support them later, as the article and talk history shows. Quigley (talk) 00:16, 21 September 2010 (UTC)


 * May I request to know whether, by using the word truth in quotes in the above comment, Quigley is accusing me of lying? If he is suggesting that I believe certain things are true and capable of being verified, then of course I do.  But if he is suggesting that my "truth" is not the real one, then he's saying I'm lying.  I think that would, in that case, properly count as a WP:UNCIVIL remark.  May I ask which implication he is making?  Zachary Klaas (talk) 23:55, 21 September 2010 (UTC)


 * No; I was directly quoting you from, in which to people who said that neutrally stating the facts of the deaths and not editorializing was adequate, you replied, "Saying the truth is saying the truth, but admitting that it's the truth is horribly slanted." You have made it clear that the name you are pushing is The Truth, in contrast to the sources' name, which is The Lies. This advocacy is antithetical to Wikipedia. Quigley (talk) 00:07, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Could I ask whomever is ultimately to be responding to this dispute to read that edit Quigley just posted. It's quite clear from the context that's not what I was saying.  I have no more access to The Truth in capital letters than anyone else.  I was saying that it seemed odd to me that numerous examples of how bad the Great Leap Forward was could not be followed with an acknowledgment that, indeed, historians and journalists have drawn that obvious inference.  The analysis of WP:RS sources is from where we should be drawing our conclusions, and I provided five examples of how historians and journalists, in fact, did draw that inference.  That not every article or book that's ever been written uses the phrase "Great Leap Backward" is not the point; the point is that several did, and indeed some are written by reknowned China experts.  I must say that I'm the most upset that the reference to Roderick MacFarquhar, who is listed at the end of the article as the author of a well-received book our readers are suggested to consult for further information, was deleted.  Dr. MacFarquhar is a Harvard political scientist who has written extensively about Chinese politics.  Note his Google Scholar citation list, with numerous highly-regarded works on Chinese politics and history.  Here's what MacFarquhar said in the reference I added:

Looking back on those grim days, Chinese economists are harsh in their condemnation. Hsueh Mu-ch'iao, now the doyen of his profession, has talked about the "colossal waste and disproportion". Sun Yeh-fang described the leap as a "disruption of socialism". Lo Keng-mo, once a Vice Chairman of the State Planning Commission, has said "the great leap forward became a great leap backward".

The figures confirm that judgment.


 * As you can see, an acknowledged Chinese politics expert - as clear of a WP:RS source as there ever was - is quoting a senior Chinese official using this characterisation. And then he, in his professional opinion as a political scientist, confirms that the term is a reasonable characterisation.  There is no part of this that indicates that anyone is making a "joke" or a "pun", or even that this is meant as a "pejorative".  It's a serious and professional characterisation of how the "Great Leap Forward" was, in fact, the opposite of what those words mean. Zachary Klaas (talk) 00:26, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * You are stretching it too far. Mr. MacFarquhar did not make any comment about the appropriateness of the term "Great Leap Forward", nor did Lo Keng-mo, who actually even used Great Leap Forward literally in the "characterization" to describe the initial years (the GDP did grow for a time). Mr. MacFarquhar did not endorse the term; he simply did not disparage it. Its use, as exemplified by the the AP test guide, is as an easy-to-remember catchphrase to quickly categorize the event as "bad". It helps none in understanding the event, which as with all events, had good elements and bad elements. Luckily, unlike politicians (whom Mr. MacFaquhar ultimately quoted), or exam pamphlet makers, Wikipedia can explore the nuances of the Great Leap Forward and neutrally describe the consequences, without making any judgments about whether they were progress or regress, attributed or not. Quigley (talk) 00:52, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I am not stretching it at all. "The figures confirm that judgment" is what he said, and the judgment he was referring to is the judgment that "the great leap forward became a great leap backward".  I am quoting him directly.  Your interpretation of what MacFarquhar "really meant" is WP:OR, if that term has any meaning at all.


 * Can I just ask when any editors plan on getting involved in regulating this dispute? Zachary Klaas (talk) 01:01, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Reminder: this is not "what MacFarquhar" said, it is what he quoted, and he quoted the Chinese Vice Chairman of the State Planning Commission, who was the one who actually used the phrase, speaking in capacity of the government. I don't need OR to know the government's recent position on the GLF; because they are quite open about it, and I wrote about that a bit on the article itself. Quigley (talk) 01:19, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I believe it is as plain as it could be that MacFarquhar was both quoting the official and agreeing, in his capacity as a political scientist, with the substance of what the quoted official was saying. Zachary Klaas (talk) 01:28, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * No; saying that the figures support that it was a sharp economic decline is not implicitly commenting on the propriety of the phrase. That phrase only appears once in his book, and that is in that quote of the Vice Minister. If he "agreed" with it, and felt that it was an imperative framing device as you seem to believe, wouldn't he have used it more in the book? He didn't, because explaining the details of the Great Leap Forward is enough; no need for petty name-calling. Quigley (talk) 01:37, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * That is your interpretation. What MacFarquhar actually said is what is at issue here.  He was not equivocal on the matter.  He agreed unreservedly with the official he was quoting.  Zachary Klaas (talk) 01:42, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * He absolutely did not "agree unreservedly with the official he was quoting"; his quote was quite sanitary and detached from his professional endorsement. Quoted, "The figures confirm that judgment". That is, that the Great Leap Forward at one point went into sharp decline. He didn't say, "The phrase 'Great Leap Forward' is misleading, and I recommend people use 'Great Leap Backwards' instead"; that must be your interpretation. Quigley (talk) 01:57, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Continuation
I think we should continue the discussion here where the other editors can see it. Zachary Klaas (talk) 01:47, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * That is a really a logistical nightmare; cut-and-paste duplicating the content in two areas. At least find some way of transcluding it so it updates automatically on both pages. Until then, I will continue to reply at the content dispute page on this particular discussion. Quigley (talk) 01:53, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Do you know how to do that? If so, go ahead and do it.  Zachary Klaas (talk) 01:55, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Of course, bear in mind that the content dispute page specifically says to keep comments short on there and we've already gone way past doing that. So perhaps it would be better to keep things here.  But up to you.  Zachary Klaas (talk) 01:57, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * It does say that, so I will switch my comments to here. In retrospect, not introducing whole new arguments on that board, and just linking to an active discussion here could have kept it really short and not provoked reply. Quigley (talk) 02:02, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Return to the debate
Okay, picking up from your last point - how you get that "the figures confirm that judgment", when applied to a comment suggesting that the "Great Leap Forward" had become the opposite of a great leap forward, isn't a claim that the name "Great Leap Forward" is misleading, I can't fathom in the least. Also, the sense of this doesn't have to be "I recommend people use 'Great Leap Backwards' instead." At no point have I attempted to change the name of the page to that, and it wouldn't be appropriate to do so. But if the name remains an unqualified "Great Leap Forward", not "Great Leap Forward movement" or "Great Leap Forward (campaign)" or something along those lines, then I think it's our responsibility to reflect that the title of the page represents a misnomer because the very opposite of a great leap forward happened. I have no problem calling it the Great Leap Forward movement or campaign because that's what it was. Calling it "Great Leap Forward" gives Wikipedia's endorsement to the idea that it involved a leap forward, and people disagree about that. WP:COMMONNAME is not a license to completely slant the article. Zachary Klaas (talk) 04:20, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * These words are not being parsed literally. "Great Leap Forward" means something different than each individual word combined, "great", "leap", and "forward"—that's why they're in capital letters. It's not only me; your sources also understand this and thus don't need to go into a discussion about the name. If someone did parse the words literally, they wouldn't make sense. How great? Leap from what? Forward in which way? So there is no endorsement of any idea. And the article is not slanted, at least in the way that you're thinking. Quigley (talk) 04:40, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * At last we agree on something. If someone parsed the words literally, they indeed do not make sense.  This, however, was my point the whole time.  :)  Zachary Klaas (talk) 04:45, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * However, most people literate in English realize it is a proper name and don't. That was my point. Quigley (talk) 05:43, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I am sure that you are not suggesting I am not literate, and thus I await your withdrawing this comment, which is WP:UNCIVIL as written. Zachary Klaas (talk) 12:10, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Can I just ask you why you think the heavens will fall down if the name of the page were changed to, let's say, "Great Leap Forward (campaign)"? Was it not a campaign?  Have I changed the words Great Leap Forward?  Also, there is a Great Leap Forward disambiguation page which distinguishes, for example, "Great Leap Forward (band)" or "Great Leap Forward (The 4400 episode)".  This would satisfy me, and, if you think about it, it probably should satisfy you as well.  How does such a title for the page misrepresent anything? Zachary Klaas (talk) 04:52, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Disambiguator parentheses are not needed because this page is what most people want to get to, and is the most referenced subject when people mention the Great Leap Forward. The first clause of the first sentence mentions says that it was a campaign anyway. Quigley (talk) 05:43, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, but it's such a reasonable compromise. I'm going to continue to try and find some kind of way to establish some balance on the page otherwise - perhaps not the things I've tried, but something (you can pretend to be as shocked by this as you want to, but let's face it, I'm not going to let this rest).  This is a compromise which causes no misrepresentation and which would clearly satisfy me, but you're just going to shove your opinion on this down my throat to teach me a lesson not to mess with important editors such as yourself?  If you're suggesting that people would regard the page as non-encyclopedic because it contains the word "(campaign)" in parentheses after the title, aren't you just being melodramatic?  Isn't the problem merely that you perceive me as having a personal agenda, not that any such agenda would be really be served by the change? Zachary Klaas (talk) 11:54, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Zachary do you really take proper name titles so literally that you think they need to be debunked as titles? This continued discussion that the title endorses some false truth is just... preposterous. It is named what it is named. That's all it means. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)


 * When they're policies that resulted in (as the conservative estimates have it) more than ten million people dying, then yes. I'm not aware that the punk band to which you're referring caused any deaths.  This title, however, is a euphemism, suggesting there was some possible "up side" to a policy that, as all concede, resulted in famine and misery.  "War is Peace."  "Freedom is Slavery."  And "China had a Great Leap Forward."  You're damn right it needs to be debunked as a title.  It's doublethink. Zachary Klaas (talk) 11:48, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * And I think you know making the point the way you just made it was designed to present my opinion in a cartoonish sort of way instead of taking my viewpoint seriously, which is WP:UNCIVIL. (People who don't know to what I'm referring should click on the words "proper name titles" in what Schmucky just said to see what that links to.)  Zachary Klaas (talk) 12:01, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Zachary, I don't get the urgency of this request. Is or is not campaign in the first sentence of the article? Can't anyone who reads the lead understand that GLF, like other proper nouns, was the name of a camapaign? The lead doesn't claim "China had a great leap forward called the Great Leap Forward," it documents "China had a campaign called the Great Leap Forward and it was a deadly catastrophe." Such clarifications are not essential to other politically dubious, common names such as Manifest Destiny, Missile gap, or No Child Left Behind, but rigorous discussion of the facts is. Quigley, I would prefer that some summary of outside evaluation, beyond the CPC-internal reviews, be included in the lead, preferably by economists, political scientists, and historians. It's possible that "great leap backward" is the best summary, but I'm not convinced yet; perhaps something less like a slogan and more like an overall characterization. Maybe you two could come to meaningful summary that you can agree on.--Carwil (talk) 12:44, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Your examples, I think, all show what I would hope would be done with this article. The Manifest Destiny article refers to the defined term as a "belief" which "fell out of favor by 1960".  The Missile Gap article refers to the defined term using this characterisation:  "Like the bomber gap of only a few years earlier, it is believed that the 'gap' was known to be illusionary from the start, and was being used solely as a political tool, another example of policy by press release."  The No Child Left Behind article is actually entitled "No Child Left Behind Act", which was its formal name as an Act of Congress, and which serves to make the distinction that it is not a fact accepted by all viewpoints that "no children have been left behind".  All three of these clarifications put the title in the proper context.  We do not have something similar in this article.  It is possible for someone unacquainted with the topic to read the article and still ask the question "well, then why was this a great leap forward for China?"


 * I'd like to think Quigley and others will take your suggestion that a summary of outside evaluation be added to the lead. I'm not sure they will given the state of discourse in here, but I hope that they will.  Zachary Klaas (talk) 13:13, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * No, the reason that the No Child Left Behind Act is named that is because it is an Act of Congress, and by convention (not on Wikipedia, I mean) acts are named this way. It has nothing to do with debunking the title. Quigley (talk) 01:10, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * My fear is that no language, no matter how supported by economists, political scientists or historians, will be accepted if it makes the case that the "leap" involved retrogression rather than progress, hence falsifying (or at least qualifying) the claim of the title. People have made it pretty clear that they consider even scholarly arguments to that effect editorialisations. Zachary Klaas (talk) 13:19, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * You haven't imported any scholarly arguments to the page, and by this I mean figures etc. All that you want to add are simplistic denunciations to refute the title.


 * Also, maybe my language wasn't clear in the past, but the details of the CPC assessment is not in the lead; it just explains the consequences for the government and how it transitioned to another period in Chinese history. If "outside evaluations" add something unique, for example, if one historian explored the effects of the GLF on agriculture in China, or on the subsequent GDP changes, that would certainly merit inclusion. What's being proposed here are not evaluations like this, but a condemnation of the GLF using hyperbolic and derogatory language, hiding behind authorities. Quigley (talk) 01:10, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

For a general view for historians, please consult this link, representing pages from the Cambridge History of China. Note at the bottom of page 483 continuing on to page 484 the following statement:

"In many respects, the best comparison of the degree of disruption in the Great Leap and Cultural Revolution period are the figures for the productivity of investment (capital-output ratios) in Tables 14 and 15 in the following section. As these figures indicate, enormous amounts of investment produced only modest increases in production or none at all. The growth of national income for the entire 1958-65 period was less than half of the 1966-78 period, and it took almost twice the level of investment to produce a given increase in output in the former period as in the latter.  In short, the Great Leap was a very expensive disaster.  The Cultural Revolution at its peak (1967-8) was a severe but essentially temporary interruption of a magnitude experienced by most countries at one time or another."

Skipping ahead to Table 15 on page 493, you can see that the period of the Great Leap (1958-1962) was the only period in which there was no growth for the Chinese economy (a negative growth rate of -4.3%), and hence for which no capital-output ratio could be calculated (using the methodology they use of dividing the elements in column 1 of the table by the elements in column 2, this would be a capital-loss ratio of -7.16).

There was no leap. Even the numbers in industry reflect that there was a decline during this period, not an advance. We need language that says this, in so many words. Frankly, directly quoting the Cambridge History of China as I have done here, would satisfy me that we have explained things well. Zachary Klaas (talk) 16:32, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't object to adding such figures to the lead, which are surprisingly absent in an article about an economic campaign (too much focus on starvation). However, it should, as any paragraph in the lead, summarize a part of the article's content (which means adding to the economic effects section, and fixing some of the contradictions—right now the article says that iron production increased for a time) Also, the presentation should be just the facts. Presented neutrally, it will likely have the intended effect of solidifying that the GLF was not an economic advance for the reader, but you must not indulge the temptation to add your own complaints about the title in the text. Quigley (talk) 01:10, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * If this is the kind of stuff you're amenable to adding to the article, I will not have any complaints. I have no objections to continuing to represent that factoid about iron production increasing for a time if you have no objections to presenting that nevertheless, the overall effect of the "leap" from 1958-1962 was negative - that the government spent a lot and things did not only did not improve in some large-scale way but measurably regressed.  The language of the Cambridge History of China describing this is straightforward, and I will have no problems with the title if such language, or something similar, is used.  Would you like to propose some changes to the page and I'll see if we can come to some mutual arrangement?  Sounds like we might actually be getting close to that.  Zachary Klaas (talk) 02:12, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I might (but not so soon), but you can as soon as you wish. As a guide, what we should be adding are facts, rather than debating points. Quigley (talk) 02:41, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I'd prefer you do it, since my "facts" seem to be your "debating points". I want to see what kind of language you would accept.  It would be easier if you could propose some.  Zachary Klaas (talk) 03:45, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * That blockquote from page 483-484 of the Cambridge History of China is an example of language I would accept. Of course, we cannot just copy the quote, because that would be copyright infringement. But notice the tone that I like: strong figures, but not strong rhetoric. Appropriate context is given; it doesn't simply say "this event was bad", or spend time arguing about the semantics. If no one gets around to it before I do, I will draft some improvements to the economic effects section and summarize it in the lead, but I don't feel a strong sense of urgency against the current version as you may feel, and I am not editing WP for as long as I did when we started this discussion. Quigley (talk) 21:35, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * The important question is whether you accept that these figures demonstrate economic regress. I don't want to put in something along the lines of this quote, comment that this quote supports the view that 1958-1962 was the only surveyed period in which the Chinese economy was, overall, regressing, and then get attacked for original research for summarising exactly what those figures demonstrate.  I think the readers need to have the point emphasised that this was a period of economic regress, to have their attentions drawn to that fact so they can then make the judgment about the title with some context.  Will an edit based on this quote be shot down if I do call attention to "economic regress"?  My view is that this is pretty much the whole of what I'm fighting to get included.  Zachary Klaas (talk) 21:45, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Could I get an answer to this question? If you can give me some guidance on whether you will accept my calling attention to "economic regress" during the 1958-1962 period, then I will go ahead and make the changes.  Otherwise, I'm concerned about possibly being reverted the minute the changes are made.  Zachary Klaas (talk) 16:41, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Is it at all controversial that the country went through a period of massive economic regress during the GLF? I didn't think so. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 18:42, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Indeed, the debate is not about whether the GLF was economic regress, but about whether, quoting Zachary, "readers need to have the point emphasised... so they can then make the judgment about the title". Of course, that's euphemistic, because Zachary really believes that the title needs to be heavily refuted, even though it has been explained that with just neutral information and neutral presentation, readers with a modicum of intelligence automatically see the irony of the title without having it forced down their throats. Quigley (talk) 19:32, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Quigley, you answered TheSoundAndTheFury's question, but not mine. And yes, it is about emphasis - but as I see from TheSoundAndTheFury's comment, it is emphasising a point which is not doubted.  Zachary Klaas (talk) 20:33, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Okay, the figures that you pulled out are interesting and merit inclusion [according to proper weight] in an encyclopedia article, but your thesis about the name of the event is not. These two are strictly separated in my mind. Quigley (talk) 21:16, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I just scanned the above discussion. Sorry to have said anything. This is totally stupid: the name needn't be changed at all. I am with Quigley here. If there are some other facts about the breakdown of the Chinese economy, that's fine, include them; but that has nothing to do with the name of the article. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 23:25, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Quigley, can you please clarify your comment. I asked you specifically if I can use the phrase "economic regress" to summarise what is being said by those figures. You have not said yes or no about that. I will not feel comfortable adding a word to this article until you tell me whether you will accept specifically those words. Why are you not directly answering the question? If it's no, what could your reasoning possibly be? The figures demonstrate that regress.

TheSoundAndTheFury, it is evident that you scanned the discussion - if you had read it instead of scanned it, you might have understood it better. I am no longer trying to change the name of the article itself. I am trying to work out what language should be in the lead of the article with Quigley. What I want is appropriate language making it clear that there was no economic "leap". I was asked to produce figures supporting that view. I have done so. You yourself admit that "the country went through a period of massive economic regress during the GLF", so how you can have any objection to language saying exactly that is beyond me. Do you really bear so much of a dislike for me that this causes you not let me add wording to the article that you admit reflects the truth of the matter and that clearly follows from the quote I've provided above? Zachary Klaas (talk) 01:20, 25 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't appreciate the insinuations. As I repeated I-don't-know-how-many-times, the point of dispute is about the article title and whether it needs to be explicitly refuted and condemned. I have never had a problem with "economic regress" or other things. So yes, you can use "economic regress" BUT! in this format: "the GDP dropped from x to y in z years. Based on this, professor A called the GLF an economic regression." This way it is not original analysis. Quigley (talk) 01:28, 25 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Okay, I think I can deal with that. The Cambridge History of China is a collective project, so I guess I will have to cite the editors Roderick MacFarquhar, John K. Fairbank and Denis Twitchett, as well as the specific author of that chapter of the volume containing the quote, who is the Harvard professor of political economy Dwight H. Perkins.  I will note that the Cambridge History considers the years 1953-1985, and I will say that Perkins argued that 1958-1962 was the only period of economic regress, as measured by the growth rate - all the other periods surveyed in the Cambridge History show positive growth rates but this period.  I hope we at last have consensus on this.  Zachary Klaas (talk) 01:45, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

All right, done. Can you tell me if you're satisfied with the change? I hope so. Consensus-building is tiring. :) Zachary Klaas (talk) 02:06, 25 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Zachary, thanks for doing the spade work on this. I think the text is good Wikipedia content, and belongs in the article. However, I'd like to see slightly briefer summary in the lead, where I don't think that book titles and data-compiling historians belong, except as footnotes. If that seems too vague, I'll pitch in in the next couple days. I've downloaded the chapter but haven't looked at the data yet. By the way, when I look, I'll treat this sort of sequence of growth rates--2% 2% 1% 0% 0% 1%--as "stagnation"; and this sequence--2% 2% 0% -1% 2%--as "regress", though I will look for per capita growth, which might make the former into the latter.--Carwil (talk) 14:12, 25 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't see any reason why some of the information couldn't be in the body of the article rather than the lead, if conserving space is your concern. Suggestions for how to do that are welcome, of course.  (I notice the bit that you added to the previous paragraph further makes the case for moving some of the quoted material to the body of the article because it supports the point I was trying to establish.) Zachary Klaas (talk) 00:07, 26 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Space is not the only concern. Lead sections in Wikipedia articles, according to the Manual of Style, should briefly summarize the article's contents, not add new information. Quigley (talk) 00:18, 26 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, but I would regard you deleting what I just added to the lead as being in bad faith after I spent considerable time above saying "I'm about to add this information to the lead. Could you please tell me if you have a problem with me specifically adding this kind of wording to the lead."  You knew the whole time why I wanted to add this specific information, and specifically to the lead.  Besides, if we transfer some of the information to the body of the article, then what remains in the lead will be a summary of what is found in the body of the article. Zachary Klaas (talk) 14:03, 26 September 2010 (UTC)


 * What?! I did not delete what you just added to the lead, nor was my comment above a suggestion to do so. I was expressing agreement with Carwil that it is too long, and needs to be moved to the body, and summarized in the lead. Quigley (talk) 14:58, 26 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Glad to hear that I must have misunderstood you, then. Zachary Klaas (talk) 17:00, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Reliance on backyard furnaces
The last phrase of this sentence appears to be false:
 * In the August 1958 Politburo meetings, it was decided that steel production would be set to double within the year, most of the increase coming through backyard steel furnaces.

Lardy in the Cambridge History of China states, "Although small-scale industry was a highly visible part of the investment drive, most increases were channeled into medium and large-scale state projects." Anyone care to substantiate it? If not, I'll remove it. Backyard steel furnaces might be the most colorfully stupid aspect of the Great Leap, but they were not the center of its industrial plan. (p.s., I've tried to provide a complete picture of industrialization during the Great Leap, something which was missing. A second source might be nice, though.)--Carwil (talk) 16:49, 26 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I'll try and find you something in the next couple of days. Zachary Klaas (talk) 17:02, 26 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Beginning to look now. I took you to mean that you wanted further sources on the "complete picture of industrialization", and specifically how industry fared during the GLF - here are a number of sources that say "Not well".  I will look for something specific about the extent to which the "backyard furnaces" campaign specifically was part of the industrial plan in a bit.
 * Here is another source representing Columbia University's explanation of the period. On page 157, the characterisation of the author, R. Keith Schoppa, is that "The campaign so destabilized the Chinese economy that both industrial and agricultural production suffered drastically."
 * Also, Edwin Pak-Wah Leung's "Modern Chinese History Essentials" says on page 114 that "The Great Leap Forward Campaign was an economic failure. In early 1959, amid signs of rising popular restlessness, the CCP admitted that the favorable production report for 1958 had been exaggerated.  Among the Great Leap Forward Campaign's economic consequences were a drastic shortage of food; shortage of raw materials for industry; over-production of poor-quality goods; deterioration of industrial plants through mismanagement; and exhaustion and demoralization of the peasantry, intellectuals and party and government cadres at all levels."
 * Another source is William Joseph's Politics In China: An Introduction, which characterizes the GLF on page 402 as something which "ended in one of the worst famines in human history and an industrial depression that wiped out nearly all the economic gains of the CCP's first years in power."
 * Marc Blecher's book "China Against The Tides" says "Industrial output value rose rapidly through 1960, but then went into free fall." Since the GLF started in 1958, this indicates that within two years the investment strategy had failed.  There is a table to support this claim, but I cannot access this from Google Books, unfortunately.  Zachary Klaas (talk) 14:29, 30 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Zachary, I wanted an answer to the simpler question: were backyard furnaces the principal initiative of the GLF industrialization. My own edits were based on evidence that industrialization didn't go well, although will more emphasis on transformation (30 million new urban residents) and less on evaluation. Any idea about the relative scale of backyard furnaces and new factories?--Carwil (talk) 21:05, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Addition of Category:Communist genocide
I was just wondering, it the Great leap forward widely considered genocide? Because considering it as such seems terribly POV.  Triplestop  x3  15:35, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * So, basically no-one was hurt by the Communist regime? Peltimikko (talk) 17:06, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Do you even know what a genocide is? 'Fred' 163.1.234.221 (talk) 21:19, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Genocide refers to killing people because of their ethnic identity, so generally speaking the Great Leap Forward was not genocide. Instead the deaths caused intentionally or by willful negligence fall under the broader category of democide, which is murder by government.  If groups of people were starved to death because of their ethnic identity, then that portion of the Great Leap Forward democide would be considered genocide. Wikimedes (talk) 03:30, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Mobo Gao
http://www.confucius.adelaide.edu.au/people/mobogao.html

Talk:Mao: The Unknown Story

Mobo Gao is officially an employee of HanBan, which is a propaganda apparatus of the Chinese Government, so his opinions reflect official Chinese communist view points. Arilang   talk  04:16, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

This is a farcical claim; it no more follows that working for the Hanban Gao presents an official line (which on the Great Leap is in any case not the line Gao does espouse - have you actually read his work?) than working for the British Council would mean someone would edit Wikipedia in support of British government policy of the day. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.0.3.164 (talk) 21:11, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

User PCPP, you know that when come to topic such as Great Leap Forward and Great Famine, official Chinese government versions do not worth anything, because they are all propaganda stuff. We need to have a bit of common sense. Arilang   talk  07:56, 3 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I think your arguments borderline WP:LAWYER and WP:OR. None of the sources even come from the PRC government, with at least one source being published by academic sources such as University of Hawaii and Pluto Press.--PCPP (talk) 08:05, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * PCPP, if you trust Mobo Gao, you would have to trust this:

 Arilang   talk  08:17, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

If you read Mobo Gao's work, you'll find it fairly clear that he is actually really rather critical of the Communist Party leadership in the PCR under Deng Xiaoping and since then. He argues that Mao's policies benefited millions of working class Chinese, but never denies that there were human rights violations in this period. If you wish to refuse to acknowledge Gao's work because he works for an agency that is funded by the Chinese goverment (a government he himself is critical of), you would also have to refuse to acknowledge the work of Roderick MacFarquhar, another historian focusing on Maoist China, as he used to write for a journal that was financed by the CIA. (Midnightblueowl (talk) 19:54, 18 January 2011 (UTC))


 * Mobo Gao's Chinese New Left POV is not mainstream scholarly work, should not be used to turn all China related articles into pro-Mao and pro-Marxist articles. Arilang   talk  14:07, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Dubious claims
I've labelled these claims "dubious" The only citation for them (not my first choice, but the one here in the article already) is a CCP history of China which among other things says: Okay, so there is a lot of ideological blather here, but the underlying facts aren't invisible. It would be nice to read them from a less politically motivated source, as well. However, "a vain attempt for influence" is a massive understatement for the Cultural Revolution, which lasted up to ten years and had Mao Zedong frequently leading (he was far more than "consulted", and he certainly was not in the "political background of the party" until his death). (The CR, incidentally, is a far better example of zeal motivating deadly violence than the GLF, despite the fact that economic disaster was ultimately more costly in lives lost.) Surely we can re-write this with more clarity and accuracy.--Carwil (talk) 21:07, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Following the 1962 conference, Mao became a "dead ancestor", as he labeled himself: a person who was respected but never consulted, occupying the political background of the Party.
 * He launched a vain attempt for influence in 1966 with the Cultural Revolution, but died ten years later, leaving the forces within the party that opposed the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward in power.
 * "At the 10th Plenary Session of the Party's Eighth Central Committee in September 1962, Comrade Mao Zedong widened and absolutized the class struggle"
 * "All the successes in these 10 years [1955-65, apparently] were achieved under the collective leadership of the Central Committee of the Party headed by Comrade Mao Zedong. Likewise, responsibility for the errors committed in the work of this period rested with the same collective leadership."
 * "The "cultural revolution, " which lasted from May 1966 to October 1976, was responsible for the most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the Party, the state and the people since the founding of the People's Republic. It was initiated and led by Comrade Mao Zedong."
 * "Comrades Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai ingeniously thwarted the plotted coup [by Lin Bao and allies in 1970-71]. Supported by Comrade Mao Zedong, Comrade Zhou Enlai took charge of the day-to-day work of the Central Committee and things began to improve in all fields. During the criticism and repudiation of Lin Biao in 1972, he correctly proposed criticism of the ultra-Left trend of thought."

Alternative interpretations
Having had a look at this article, I think this section needs work. It has a lot of "others say x", which is really awkward. Can I recommend that all such terms be removed and the section just be reworked to say "person X says this" and "person Y says that". If more than one person makes a similar point, refer to both.

Also please be careful of transposing opinion into fact. Is it really 100% correct to say that this toll has to be evaluated in light of the overall impressive achievement of Maoist China in dramatically improving life expectancy? Did China under Mao's rule really do what no one else could have done? If not, then it's not really that impressive, it's just what should have happened. To me it sounds like someone is regurgitating what Gao Mobo said in his book.

Finally the section title sounds awkward. These aren't interpretations, they're points made in mitigation as to why the Great Leap Foward wasn't so bad. Why not have a title saying something like "mitigating points", "defending the Great Leap Forward", etc? As currently titled it sounds rather meaningless. Perhaps the whole section should be removed and the text incorporated into the existing sections that deal with the relevant topics. Then if people read about something like death counts, they can see that Ming Li said that the death rates weren't unusual. John Smith&#39;s (talk) 12:03, 4 January 2011 (UTC)


 * The point is, there are quite a few pro-Beijing editors around, they are all very busy trying to paint a rosy picture of their beloved motherland. Arilang   talk  12:14, 4 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I think this section should be properly integrated into the rest of the article, rather than regrouping all these fringe POVs in their own section. I also wonder if there's a WP:UNDUE issue here. Are these commonly held views? I don't think so. Laurent (talk) 06:57, 7 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I think both Laurent and JohnSmiths make the best point here, about integrating information from here into the rest of the article rather than having it stand alone.(Midnightblueowl (talk) 19:57, 18 January 2011 (UTC))

The Indian/Chinese death toll comparison
It looks silly to have this kind of comparison at all. What purpose does it serve? Are they saying, tens of millions Chinese were starved to death, hey, doesn't matter, there were more dead Indians around. This kind of "content" does not help any readers at all.

And this statement is very strange:"net positive value of 35 billion extra years of life to the Chinese people." Just how did he come up with such a number? Arilang   talk  12:38, 4 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree. It is cited to relativize the horrors of this event, which is described by many reliable scholars as one of the worst tragedies in this country's history. And now some unregistered user by the name of User:Zaidaluseung (which I suspect is a sockpuppet of another editor already making these sweeping controversial additions citing the most radical sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Zaidaluseung) is placing this in the lede. Such extreme views should not even be present in the article IMO, but now that they are should be relegated to the "alternative perspectives" section. I can no longer revert or would be violating 3rr.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 15:07, 4 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I must say that there's a double standard here to classify Yang and Dikotter, the latter being sponsored Chiang Ching Kuo Foundation, as "reliable sources" and not Li Minqi, Economics Professors at the University of Utah. The purporse of the article is to inform, not your presonal playground to "expose the horrors of communism". I believe in the spirits of WP:NPOV, alternate perspectives should be introduced.--PCPP (talk) 15:37, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

：：PCPP, please allow me to remind you of this: "Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means that articles should not give minority views as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views."


 * Li Minqi is a "minority view" when compared to Dikotter's view, which is a "more widely held views" accepted by many well known scholars of the academic world. Likewise, Mobo Gao's view is also a "minority view", and "Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all." per WP:Neutral point of view.  Arilang   talk  03:06, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

User PCPP is always busy trumpeting official Chinese government view points, as if Xinhua is not loud enough.  Arilang   talk  02:08, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The official Chinese government viewpoint is to condemn Mao and his regime pretty damningly, and I wouldn;t say that that is what these authors are necessarily doing.(Midnightblueowl (talk) 19:57, 18 January 2011 (UTC))

The quote by Amartya Sen was taken out of context in the following quote: “despite the gigantic size of excess mortality in the Chinese famine, the extra mortality in India from regular deprivation in normal times vastly overshadows the former.”

According to: http://www.bookrags.com/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Capitalism Amartya's statement was in regard to infant mortality rate — Preceding unsigned comment added by Phatrice (talk • contribs) 01:28, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Regarding this, such information need only appear in a section for comparisons anyway. About sources, those that are based on archival research are most valuable. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 20:47, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

WP:Identifying reliable sources "The accuracy of quoted material is paramount and the accuracy of quotations from living persons is especially sensitive. To ensure accuracy, the text of quoted material is best taken from (and cited to) the original source being quoted... Partisan secondary sources should be viewed with suspicion as they may misquote or quote out of context. In such cases, look for neutral corroboration from another source."

The Amartya Sen quote looks very much like a "misquote or quote out of context" per WP:RS, unless the "original source" being presented, my suggestion is that we remove the quote in question. Arilang   talk  02:47, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree that an interpretations/comparisons section is the ideal place for Sen's view. However, comparison of large events is precisely an encyclopedic thing to do. Sen's view may offer a way of doing so that can be separately from ideological POV concerns. Here's a passage from another publication by Sen making the same point:
 * Perhaps it might be useful to compare the extent of extra mortality from famines with that from endemic deprivation (of health services and medical attention as well as of food) in China and India, respectively. In the Chinese famines of 1958-61, which have come to be discussed only in recent years, the magnitude of extra mortality was extraordinarily high, amounting to 29.5 million extra deaths according to one estimate.29 This makes it almost certainly the largest famine in this century.
 * The famine was clearly connected with the economic problems generated by the Great Leap Forward. One of the interesting aspects of this famine concerns its persistence for at least three years, without official admission of its existence (excepting many years later), and without a radical revision of the policies that were responsible for its genesis and tenacity. It has been argued that such a sluggish response to a gigantic famine was possible precisely because of the absence of political pressure on the government to change its course and also because of the absence of an independent and forceful critical media. This issue relates to the question discussed earlier about the role of political activism and active journalism. 30 The contrast is particularly striking since the Chinese achievement in nutritional intervention and general reduction of endemic hunger has been very much more impressive than that of India.
 * While there was this extra mortality connected with famine in China during the years 1958-61, normal mortality in China has in fact come down much more sharply than in India, with a crude death rate around 7 per thousand in China and around 12 in India. Indeed, if India had the Chinese death rate now, the level of mortality in India would be very substantially lower. Using the 1981 census figures, and applying the difference in mortality rates between China and India, it would appear that there would have been about 3.3 million fewer deaths in India each year. This implies that the extra famine mortality in China of 29.5 million would have been more than compensated by extra normal mortality in India on a regular basis in less than 9 years. Thus, despite the monstrous scale of the Chinese famine (unprecedented in modern times), India still has a substantially worse record than China in allowing avoidable deaths.
 * I've quoted at length so that there's no doubt about Sen's overall interpretation.--Carwil (talk) 18:54, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I've quoted at length so that there's no doubt about Sen's overall interpretation.--Carwil (talk) 18:54, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

The reliability of a source depends on context. Each source must be carefully weighed to judge whether it is reliable for the statement being made and is the best such source for that context. WP:RS


 * The Sen's quote is definitely out of context per WP:RS, as the cited reference is a study of world hunger, and comparing famine death and mortality rate in China, India, Bangladesh, Africa nations. The book "Hunger and Entitlements" is not a study of Chinese GLF, so the quote is out of context, it belongs to article such as Comparative study of Great Famine of the World, if someone care to create it. Arilang   talk  23:39, 23 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Sen is one of the pre-eminent scholars of famines, widely acknowledged as being such. Your notion of context ("is not a study of Chinese GLF") is asking far too much, and has nothing to due with the reliability of the source.
 * It's perfectly appropriate to have a section on comparative studies here, as suggested by The Sound and the Fury above. And a variety of scholars, including the clearly non-fringe Sen have made this comparison.
 * You are right, of course, that this material could also amplify Famine and Theories of famines.--Carwil (talk) 13:19, 24 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Carwil, I have read the Sen's article via the link provided by you, the whole article is about comparison study of modern times famine mortality rate in China, India, Bangladesh, Africa nations. GLF was mentioned in a "casual" kind of way(if casual is the right word to use). The article's main focus was not about GLF at all. GLF only lasted 3 to 4 years. If he is doing study of mortality rate of all these nations between 1958 and 1961(GLF time span), fine, his quote should be included. The fact that his study time span is at least 10-20 years, which is completely irrelevant to GLF, thus it is out of context, should be removed.  Arilang   talk  23:13, 24 February 2011 (UTC)


 * About "Monthly Review", isn't that a socialist publication? Does that not make it an unreliable source on this matter? See edit here: The Sound and the Fury (talk) 17:27, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Monthly Review
Monthly Review : "The editors of Monthly Review have been prominent Marxist academics, economists and authors." I would say " Marxist academics, economists and authors." would be of fringe and minority view points, should not be used as wikipedia reference.  Arilang   talk  02:00, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
 * However, Wikipedia is not a source. Where is that ultimately traceable to? I believe that it is clearly a Marxist journal whose role in discussing the GLF should be liminted to an area of the article where it's clear that we are getting the orthodox Marxist perspective. I don't say it has no place: merely that it's place is limited. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 03:24, 20 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Source:"The Monthly Review was attractive to people who were leaving the Communist Party and other sectarian groups, said John Bellamy Foster, a co-editor of the publication now. It was and is Marxist, but did not hew to the party line or get into sectarian struggles."

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE5D9173FF931A35750C0A9629C8B63

WP:Neutral point of view "Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means that articles should not give minority views as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views. Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all." Wouldn't Marxist theory be regarded as "tiny minorities " nowadays ?  Arilang   talk  07:18, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I would certainly say so. On this subject in particular, a Marxist publication cannot be expected to take a neutral stand. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 02:52, 22 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Conclusion: consensus reached to remove Marxist "tiny minorities view points" from this article per WP:Neutral point of view.   Arilang   talk  06:21, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Too fast and too exclusionary, IMHO. Particularly given that China at the time was governed by a Marxist Communist party, "tiny minority" does not apply. The minority viewpoint should be stated and attributed. Moreover, the Chinese Communist Party's performance is an important aspect of Marxism in practice. If possible, more extensive Marxist commentary should go in a history of the CCP.--Carwil (talk) 16:50, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
 * If strictly relegated to a small section titled "Marxist analysis," that would make sense. In any other context it would be inappropriate, in my opinion. We should be mainly concerned with facts, in articles like this, not ideological defences etc. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 23:12, 22 February 2011 (UTC)


 * No one can deny that Mao's Marxist experimentation in China was a complete failure and a human catastrophe(to quote Frank Dikotter), and this failure has been documented in many books by as many scholars. Editor's job here is to present documented facts, not Mao's utopian myth. Arilang   talk  02:40, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Broadly agree. But the fact that some still cling to the myth is an interesting reflection on human psychology. Also, people still say similar things even in mainstream discourse. The way it is set up now is fine: 'Alternative interpretations.' Though perhaps another name could be used. One doesn't very well see an 'alternative interpretation' of, for example, the Holocaust or the Povolzhye famine. So maybe it should be deleted for the reason that it has nothing to do with facts and is instead just intellectual pontification? I don't know the answer to that. Nor, I should point out, have I closely examined the arguments the apologists present. I mostly read Gao's book. I disagree with whoever said that it's not propaganda and apologism; Gao doesn't shy away from that, actually. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 07:23, 23 February 2011 (UTC)


 * "Alternative interpretation" is definitely a wrong name, a sneaky "undercover" name for the insertion of ultra-leftist Maoism POV.   Arilang   talk  08:17, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Then why not call it 'Maoist interpretations'? There may be non-Maoist ones, so we should be careful. But what about 'Maoist and other interpretations'? Or maybe just scrap the whole thing. They're not mainstream, after all. I don't know the answer. But I do think the article should mostly concern itself with facts, and that these views are not fact-based. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 03:55, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

"Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means that articles should not give minority views as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views. Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all. WP:Neutral point of view"


 * My opinion is the section should be removed per WP rules. Arilang   <sup style="color:blue;">talk  12:54, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah, policy. Thank you. That's a relief. Some solid ground to stand on. The only question is then whether these are tiny minority views. And I think the answer to that is clear: of course they are. Maoists and their apologists are extinct as an intellectual species. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 07:19, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Swish goes the cutting blade. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 07:21, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Congratulation to a job well done TSATF. Please have a look here:Talk:Great Chinese Famine

, your input is very much appreciated. Arilang   <sup style="color:blue;">talk  07:50, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Too bad it was found to be reliable by the RS noticeboard, since he works for a respected Australian Univerity. This sounds like a case of IDONTLIKEIT to me. May I also point out Arilang's utter dishonesty here,, where other editors noted that the reviews he cited are cherry picked, when neither reviewers gave a negative review. Furthermore, Gao's works are quoted are used in other academic analysis such as Prof Greg Benton's Was Mao Really a Monster.--59.167.141.97 (talk) 11:42, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Mobo Gao references may be regarded as Reliable Source, they still need to pass WP:Neutral point of view. The above two reviewers would about sum up the Western mainstream academic view point on Gao. I have spend hours doing Google search on Gao's book, hoping to discover some "positive" reviews, unfortunately, I failed. Looks like The Battle for China's Past: Mao & the Cultural Revolution has been more or less ignored by the general academic world.

I did not question the "Reliable source" nature of Mobo Gao, instead, I was pointing out Gao being a "minority view point" among mainstream academy world. Arilang   <sup style="color:blue;">talk  08:30, 2 March 2011 (UTC)


 * The removal of 5000 bytes of content was done between 4/1 and 27/2, after extensive discussion between me, TheSoundAndTheFury, Carwil, PCPP, and C.J. Griffin,  and consensus was reached on removing the content per

WP:Neutral point of view. IP user 59.167.141.97 sudden and adamant action prior to talkpage discussion would be reported as WP:Vandalism.  Arilang   <sup style="color:blue;">talk  13:10, 1 March 2011 (UTC)


 * The IP's actions are not vandalism, because they are in good faith. And while all of the users you listed made a comment somewhere on the talk page, not all of them endorse all of the removals that you (and to a lesser extent, TheSoundAndTheFury) have made. They can be challenged, especially because the assertion-as-rationale from Arilang that Marxist views are "minority", and therefore should be removed, is thoroughly unsatisfying. So, too, is TheSoundAndTheFury's pontification that "Maoists and their apologists are extinct as an intellectual species." But putting together all reinterpretive authors under an "Alternative interpretations" section, like its cousin the criticism section, is an invitation to attacks based on WP:UNDUE, so advocates of the inclusion the material would do well to integrate the material more effectively: the comparisons with the Indian famine would go great alongside the comparison to the Soviet famine, for example; and Wertheim's census calculations with Dikotter's. On the other hand, it is questionable that the anecdote about Gao's Jiangxi home village belongs in any current section. The contested section cannot be spoken of as a 5000-byte block, and there is no overarching consensus either way. Quigley (talk) 00:39, 2 March 2011 (UTC)


 * IP User:59.167.141.97's 5000 byte mass insertion of content involve three references:(1)Mobo Gao, (2)Li Minqi and (3) Amartya Sen. The only excuse put forward is this, which is a discussion on Gao alone. 59.167.141.97 did not care to discuss Li Minqi and Amartya Sen's references, his action should be reported per WP:Disruptive editing.  Arilang   <sup style="color:blue;">talk  03:05, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Seeking consensus to remove Mobo Gao reference
On Cultural Revolution talkpage, there is extensive discussion on Mobo Gao. see: Talk:Cultural Revolution. Similar open discussion is open here, editors are welcome to join in. Arilang   <sup style="color:blue;">talk  06:45, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Again, I don't think there's a need to block out these views entirely. I think putting them in their own, brief section is fine. Don't ask me what I think of them, though. Someone better explain where he gets that life expectancy information. It sounds absurd. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 23:26, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Seeking consensus to remove Amartya Sen's reference
Carwil, I have read the Sen's article via the link provided by you, the whole article is about comparison study of modern times famine mortality rate in China, India, Bangladesh, Africa nations. GLF was mentioned in a "casual" kind of way(if casual is the right word to use). The article's main focus was not about GLF at all. GLF only lasted 3 to 4 years. If he is doing study of mortality rate of all these nations between 1958 and 1961(GLF time span), fine, his quote should be included. The fact that his study time span is at least 10-20 years, which is completely irrelevant to GLF, thus it is out of context, should be removed. Arilang   <sup style="color:blue;">talk  23:13, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree with removal. It is just absurd how some people forget that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and it is here to state matter as they are but some people are trying to use it to remove focus from main article. If this is allowed then whole wiki will be filled with similar 'X nation did it bad but look at Y it did even worse' type of content. I ask the posters to give us a reason Why shouldn't we remove something which violates the Wikipedia norm? Should nuclear bombing of Japan shall be justified by saying 'Oh, OK we killed millions but look how many people war was killing!'. Remember every single thing/event has alternative explanation but we shall focus only on facts and core article. To wrap it up I think there shall not be an 'Alternative Interpretations' in a wiki as it makes it more like a popcorn magazine rather than encyclopedia. Swift&amp;silent (talk) 18:13, 31 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree with user S&S, the Amartya Sen's comment should be removed. Arilang   <sup style="color:blue;">talk  23:04, 31 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I disagree with user S&S; Amartya's Sen's comment should not be removed. Superlatives like "one of the most deadly" mean nothing without context and comparison. If anything, matching China's famine mortality rates with those of other countries adds focus to the article. Regarding S&S's comment about the atomic bombings of Japan, the death toll of a ground invasion or continued air attacks are quantified and compared with that of with the bombings on Wikipedia. If the national data collection does not line up perfectly with the diktats of the movement, then that is fine, because it still includes the years of the movement.


 * I have said above that I do not prefer and did not choose the section title, "alternative interpretations", because that title does not correctly characterize the content within. If the content at present were to be grouped altogether as a temporary measure, a better title would be "subsequent scholarship". Quigley (talk) 23:37, 31 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Amartya Sen is a pre-eminent scholar of famine who has made the Great Leap famine one of the central cases in arguing what is now one of the most widely cited theories of famine. On those grounds alone, his views on the Great Leap famine ought to be here. And Sen's comments should not be limited to this one comparison, but to the corresponding comparison that China's political system made famine more likely, despite the much greater deaths from malnutrition in India.
 * One original citation for Sen is this: . In the research paper, Sen states:
 * "In the Chinese famines of 1958-61, which have come to be discussed only in recent years, the magnitude of extra mortality was extraordinarily high, amounting to 29.5 million extra deaths according to one estimate.29 This makes it almost certainly the largest famine in this century."
 * and "Thus, despite the monstrous scale of the Chinese famine (unprecedented in modern times), India still has a substantially worse record than China in allowing avoidable deaths." both on p. 25
 * Sen also devotes a substantial section of the article "Development: Which Way Now?" [in ] to the Chinese and Indian cases. Both seem more like further scholarship than alternative interpretations.
 * In any case, comparisons are a normal part of understanding an event, and careful systematic comparisons help illuminate even the most tragic of historical occurences.--Carwil (talk) 00:20, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

 Arilang   <sup style="color:blue;">talk  05:26, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
 * User Carwil, Amartya Sen's statement only purpose here is to tell readers that A is evil, but B is worst than A, so A is acceptable. According to Dikotter, this is not a natural disaster, but a catastrophe orchestrated by Mao and his communist colleagues. This GLF is a well documented mass murder of grand scale. The mortality rate comparison is irrelevant in this sense. "Page 6 Preface of Frank Dikotter's Mao's Great Famine :"But as the fresh evidence presented in this book demonstrates, coercion, terror and systematic violence were the foundation of the Great Leap Forward...between 1958 and 1962 by a rough approximation 6 to 8 per cent of the victims were tortured to death or summarily killed-amounting to at least 2.5 million people. Other victims were deliberately deprived of food and starved to death. Many more vanished because they were too old, weak or sick to work-and hence unable to earn their keep. People were killed selectively because they were rich...Countless people were killed indirectly through neglect, as local cadres were under pressure to focus on figures rather than on people, making sure they fulfilled the targets they were handed by the top planners."


 * I agree with Arilang   and would like to say to @Quigley you are missing the crux of the argument I gave you an example and you try to squeeze it. The Atomic bombing was between two parties which were engaged in war and was direct result of events that both countries were forcing each other through war. While on the other hand you are supporting Mao death toll by comparing with data of a country which has nothing to do with Great Leap. The point here is - Is it OK to justify ones missteps by dragging in a third party? It lends 'focus' to article you say! How it can lend focus if India has absolutely nothing to do with Great Leap!
 * Perhaps We should edit all India's poverty related articles and add two paras in the end, just like this article did, saying 'Though ofcourse India lost XYZ life due to poverty but look at what China did. Mao kill X millions in Great Leap'. Would that too be justified?

Swift&amp;silent (talk) 05:39, 1 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Mao and his communist regime knew that tens of millions of Chinese will die, in fact, this is a mass murder of historical scale. In this sense, any comparison of mortality rate is plain nonsense. Whatever the cause of death, be it starvation, or being beaten to death, those Chinese were being murdered. Arilang   <sup style="color:blue;">talk  06:52, 1 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Amartya Sen's aim was obviously not to to say that "the GLF is acceptable", nor to "support" or "justify" it; we see from the Carwil's quote above that he takes a negative view (calling it "monstrous" among other things). The quote in the article just raises the interesting point that India's mortality rates, regardless of the level of government intervention, were paradoxically higher and receiving of less criticism at the same time. Nobody said that this justifies the GLF except you. Quigley (talk) 19:54, 1 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Arilang and Swift&Silent, your descriptions of Mao's role the famine go far beyond even Dikotter's impassioned position, and are somehow running over what should be a fairly calm discussion of whether a prominent historical comparison is appropriate.
 * I think it would be most appropriate to present Sen's position as part of a section discussing "comparative studies of famine," as we both discussed above. And in that section, we would not supply a one-off comparison "to tell readers that A is evil, but B is worst than A, so A is acceptable." Instead we would describe accurately the GLFamine's place in comparative studies of famine: a key case that illustrates the prominent thesis that the absence of democracy (a free press circulating information and means of pressure upon governments from below) makes famines worse and more prolonged. Alongside that, we can cite Sen's two observations that this holds in the GLFamine despite the Chinese government's commitment to improving access to nutrition over the longer historical period in which the GLF took place. And that the GLFamine's toll was not the only tragic failure to supply adequate nutrition of its scale at the time in took place. If it would make you feel better, I suspect we can find text from Sen decrying Mao's responsibility for the GLF as well, although "almost certainly the largest famine in this century" is a pretty good indicator of his opinion on the GLFamine.
 * Now, Arilang's narrative of the Great Leap Forward and its associated famine is a whole other matter. If we take this way of looking at things, then your attempt to exclude Sen seems morally reasonable, even if not in keeping with WP:NPOV. Arilang writes, "Mao and his communist regime knew that tens of millions of Chinese [would] die, in fact, this is a mass murder of historical scale." This narrative of the Great Leap Forward is an agressive misinterpretation of Dikotter, whose work is not fully embraced by scholars. I'll talk about this separately, however.--Carwil (talk) 20:18, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Allow me to remind Carwil that the removal of Sen's comparison of mortality rate among world famines is not a "Moral" judgement at all. That single quote at the end of the article is completely out of context, and misleading. No one is stopping Carwil from creating a new section dealing with a proper and scholarly comparison study of all the famines, including the Indian one. Until that time, this out of context quote should be removed, because such a casual and unprofessional statement dose not help no readers at all.  Arilang   <sup style="color:blue;">talk  02:54, 2 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Amartya Sen's reference was out pf context not only in the sense of article but also in the sense of his writings and what he wanted to convey. Sen's economic theories were an amalgamation of political,social and economic factors and he supported the idea of democracy as a tool to fight famines. As a matter of fact he said that famines don't occur in democratic countries, no matter how poor in his book development as freedom. I am not trying to suggest he was right or wrong, I merely want to point out that the quotes shall be representative of author's ideas in general, which wasn't the case here.
 * Swift&amp;silent (talk) 19:36, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Reasons for removal of India from Great Leap
1- Content mismatch - Great leap was an socio-economic movement and the deaths were result of, to quote "Page 6 Preface of Frank Dikotter's Mao's Great Famine :"But as the fresh evidence presented in this book demonstrates, coercion, terror and systematic violence were the foundation of the Great Leap Forward...between 1958 and 1962 by a rough approximation 6 to 8 per cent of the victims were tortured to death or summarily killed-amounting to at least 2.5 million people. Other victims were deliberately deprived of food and starved to death. Many more vanished because they were too old, weak or sick to work-and hence unable to earn their keep. People were killed selectively because they were rich...Countless people were killed indirectly through neglect, as local cadres were under pressure to focus on figures rather than on people, making sure they fulfilled the targets they were handed by the top planners." . How can that be compared to poverty and natural deaths which India suffered? As Arilang   rightly pointed out "According to Dikotter, this is not a natural disaster, but a catastrophe orchestrated by Mao and his communist colleagues. This GLF is a well documented mass murder of grand scale. The mortality rate comparison is irrelevant in this sense."

2- Dragging of Third party into an article - India is an unrelated party to this 'Great Leap Forward' which was strictly an internal movement.

3- Playing the Blame Game- There is no mention of India anywhere in the article (due to reason mentioned above) though conveniently in the last two paras India's mortality rate is mentioned and the article ends with mention of India's death toll due to poverty stating India has 'more skeleton in its cupboard'. So basically this article says that it is OK for Mao to kill millions of Chinese through an internal political/social/economic movement and murdering approx 2.5 millions because errr... ummm... look India has more deaths due to poverty!

Swift&amp;silent (talk) 07:08, 1 April 2011 (UTC)


 * In many famines like those in China and in India, parties hotly dispute how many deaths should be apportioned between intentional mismanagement and natural deaths. Dikotter's is but one (very opinionated) voice in GLF historiography; there are similar disputes about the role of government in India's famines. You ask how India's and China's contemporaneous famines can be compared as a moral question, but it is not a moral question: they can be compared because reliable sources compare them, and that's it. Again, no one is saying "that it is OK for Mao to kill millions of Chinese" except you. Quigley (talk) 19:54, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

You are again trying to circumvent the core argument behind removal-

1- It was not a Famine as you claim that killed people in China. Great Leap Forward is known as a state orchestrated movement and deaths were result of that movement. I would recommend you to read the article first. GLF was not a natural phenomenon. How can you compare that to India's mortality rate?

2- Again, I can't understand why drag a third party in to it when it has absolutely nothing to do with Great Leap. You are just trying to bash India to make GLF look OK.

3- "Again, no one is saying "that it is OK for Mao to kill millions of Chinese" except you." Please read the full sentence before quoting me. The full sentence stated the this article ends with a justification to GLF by dragging a third party in last lines and comparing its mortality rate to killing committed by Mao's regime.

Thus I am reverting your edit. I and Arilang   agree that this part is there just to divert focus from article. Revert and I shall ask other editors to intervene and let them decide if it is OK to play blame game in a Encyclopedia. Swift&amp;silent (talk) 04:18, 2 April 2011 (UTC)


 * User:Quigley's argument is both very weak and unconvincing, to say the least. It is very obvious that the Sen statement is a out of context quote, that mortality rate comparison is very casual and thus unprofessional, should be removed. Arilang   <sup style="color:blue;">talk  04:34, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Seeking consensus to remove Li Minqi reference
Li Minqi is a "minority view" when compared to Dikotter's view, which is a "more widely held views" accepted by many well known scholars of the academic world. Likewise, Mobo Gao's view is also a "minority view", and "Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all." per WP:Neutral point of view.  Arilang   <sup style="color:blue;">talk  03:06, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

900 million peasants?
First paragraph, last sentence reads: "In less than twelve months 900 million Chinese peasants were moved into enormous collective farms....[1]"

Source is a TV documentary. But Wikipedia says: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China

There were about 700 million people in China at that point of time. How could 900 million chinese peasants be moved into collective farms then? Another source: http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/china_1950_population.htm 188.98.179.68 (talk) 09:04, 9 April 2011 (UTC)


 * The 900 million peasants statement needed removing a second time. I hope that if it gets added again, the person adding it will at least discuss why they think more people were mobilized than existed (and why all were peasants, all were moved to collective farms, etc.)Wikimedes (talk) 05:03, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Backyard furnaces
This comment was originally pasted on Talk:Great Leap Forward/to do - I moved it here.  Chzz  ► 15:00, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

The discussion of the 'backyard furnaces' contains a number of important mistakes. Four types of small blast furnace were in play in the campaign - small-modern, large-traditional, small-traditional, and the so-called backyard furnaces of the mass campaign. Of these most commentators seem to think only the 'backyard furnaces' existed, but these lasted only a couple of months before the mass campaign was stopped. The others were part of small-scale ironworks, either private or run by communes, which had a limited success. When Mao visited an ironworks in Anhui he undoubtedly saw one of the small-traditional blast furnaces: this was part of the Dabieshan region, where the traditional types of furnace had never gone out of uuse. It is incorrect to assume that the results seen were faked. On all this see Background to the Great Leap Forward in Iron and Steel: The Traditional Chinese iron industry and its modern fate. http://staff.hum.ku.dk/dbwagner/MS-English/MS-English.html. Dbwagner (talk) 14:41, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Dikötter in perspective
UserX: Why should we even consider Dikotter as a scholarly source? He is sponsored by the The Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation and the cover photo of his book is incorrectly sourced from a 1946 LIFE magazine article about a famine caused by the KMT, 14 years before the Great Leap Forward. Just because it is a popular book does not excuse it from academic scrutiny. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.200.69.158 (talk) 17:36, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I would encourage everyone to read the following review article on Frank Dikötter's work:. Cormac Ó Gráda is a widely published academic writer on famine, who recently published Famine: A Short History. His writing and citations help to place Dikötter within the wider range of scholars working on the Great Leap Forward and its associated famine. While critical of Dikötter's position, he also helps to illuminate places where Dikötter's book itself disagrees with some of the more extreme positions taken on this talk page. I'm excerpting some quotes from the review article here.--Carwil (talk) 20:40, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
 * "Frank Dikötter’s Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62 is the longest and most detailed study of the Great Leap Forward (GLF) famine to appear in English to date. … Harrowing images of brutality and suffering based on these documents (rarely, however, quoted directly) give a vivid and graphic character to MGF, although whether the end result fundamentally ‘transforms’ our understanding of the GLF and accompanying famine is moot."
 * "MGF may become the best-known account of the GLF famine for a while. But should it? It is not a comprehensive account of the famine; it is dismissive of academic work on the topic; it is weak on context and unreliable with data; and it fails to note that many of the horrors it describes were recurrent features of Chinese history during the previous century or so. More attention to economic history and geography and to the comparative history of famines would have made for a much more useful book."
 * "MGF’s brief account (pp. 324-34) of the famine’s death toll arrives at a figure far beyond the range of between 18 million and 32.5 million proposed hitherto by specialist demographers (e. g. Yao 1999; Peng 1987; Ashton et al. 1984; Cao 2005). Rather than engage with the competing assumptions behind these numbers, Dikötter selects Cao Shuji’s estimate of 32.5 million and then adds fifty per cent to it on the basis of discrepancies between archival reports and gazetteer data, thereby generating a minimum total of 45 million excess deaths."
 * "Finally, as Dikötter highlights, not all Leap deaths were famine deaths. His anecdotal evidence on the terror campaigns waged by local cadres is compelling, although his figures for deaths in the ‘gulag’ (‘at least 3 million’), by suicide (‘between 1 and 3 million’), and from torture and beatings (‘at least 2.5 million’) are just weakly-supported guesses (pp. 291, 298, 304)."
 * "As Ireland and Ukraine attest, the temptation to turn famines into genocides is strong. Dikötter, perhaps rightly sensing that this can distort reality, does not go quite as far as Chang and Halliday’s claim that Mao ‘knowingly’ allowed millions to starve. Indeed, one plausible reading of MGF’s narrative chapters is that it took a long time for the leadership in Beijing to grasp the scale of the catastrophe at its height. Utopian euphoria and a revolutionary impatience to catch up quickly had prompted the Great Leap."
 * "How much did Beijing know when the famine was at its height? Despite MGF’s relentless anti-Mao stance, it accepts that nobody at the top realized beforehand how murderous the economic war against the peasantry would be."
 * "None of this absolves Mao from responsibility for the policies that caused the greatest famine ever. But reckless miscalculation and culpable ignorance are not quite the same as deliberately or knowingly starving millions (Jin 2009:152). Few of the myriad deaths in 1959-61 were sanctioned or ordained from the centre in the sense that deaths in the Soviet Gulag or the Nazi gas chambers were."

If we look at this:The Ditch, thousands of accused "rightists" being imprisoned in the middle of Gobi Desert, with watery gruel as standard rations, it is difficult not to compare them with Soviet Gulag and the Nazi gas chambers. Arilang   <sup style="color:blue;">talk  23:45, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

"VENICE -- The Chinese equivalent of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's horror stories from the Russian gulags, "The Ditch" is a heart-wrenching memorial to 1 million Chinese citizens who were caught up in the political purges of the 1950s and deported to forced-labor camps, from which many never returned. In his first fiction work, director Wang Bing brings a documentarian's eye to the inhuman conditions of one of these "re-education" camps in the trackless, windswept Gobi desert, recounting immense tragedy and suffering with emotional restraint.http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/ditch-film-review-29956

Arilang: you are an idiot. What happened at Jiabiangou was local officials going overboard. As this article says: "The tragedy at Jiabiangou caught the attention of senior Party officials in Beijing in December of 1960. The central government dispatched a task force to investigate the situation at Jiabiangou. Realizing the Gansu provincial government had gone overboard in its purges, the senior leadership soon issued an amnesty. By the time the government trucks arrived at Jiabiangou to move the Rightists out of the death camp at the beginning of 1961, there were only 500 some survivors . . . "http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/index.php?id=2124

Clearly Mao knew nothing about the goings on at Jiabiangou, and when senior officials found out they issued an amnesty and closed the camp down. In fact this incident alone, explains that Mao was never in the business of intending to kill people - even those deemed politically unreliable - let alone ordinary peasants from whom he had always drawn the strongest support.

Afb2am (talk) 07:02, 3 June 2011 (UTC)"  Arilang   <sup style="color:blue;">talk  01:47, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not having this argument to defend Mao, Communist party discipline, or Chinese prison camps. I am interested, however, in showing the history of the four very consequential years of Chinese history using reliable sources, measured language, and the range of existing scholarship. So no to Hollywood Reporter quotes in the article, yes to reliably sourced comparisons between the anti-rightist campaign and the gulag, but above all yes to an accurate and nuanced narrative that explains both the CCP leaderships relationship to the anti-rightist campaign (they sponsored it, endorsed it in the near aftermath, and rejected it following Mao's death) and to the mass deaths from famine (they made decisions that enabled it, walked back these moves in early to mid-1959, reauthorized these decisions at Lushan, recoiled in horror after the "Xinyang incident"; and authorized a policy free-for-all to respond to it thereafter). This latter narrative is just a summary of what I've been reading in multiple reliable sources. Of course we should include outlying and polemical positions as well, sourced to those reliable sources who bring them forward.--Carwil (talk) 11:30, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
 * What about these: Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine, Xinyang Incident, and "Tombstone: An Account of Chinese Famine in the 1960s"), Hong Kong: Cosmos Books (Tiandi Tushu), 2008, ISBN 9789882119093, by Yang Jisheng, shouldn't these books be added to the reading list? Arilang   <sup style="color:blue;">talk  03:30, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
 * It's perfectly legit to cite these among the broad range of readings. However, we also should try to reflect the range of widely held views on the nature, size, and causes of the deaths during the Great Leap. The divergences in opinions have the most to do with assessing responsibility, an issue that is currently meshed in the text and might be separated into its own section.--Carwil (talk) 21:07, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

According to the various reports cited in this wiki many millions of Chinese people died during the period of the Great Leap Forward. Believing that most of these reports are anti communist commentaries along the lines of Communists Eat Babies I would be interested to know if there is any evidence from direct eye witness of the level of deaths in the GLF? What are the results if local residents are asked what happened in the GLF? Has anyone done this? There are millions of Chinese who directly experienced the GLF who could offer valuable insights and have no axe to grind unlike the many authors, broadcasters, dissidents etc who offer much of the accepted wisdom. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.94.187.141 (talk) 10:23, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

“Alternative interpretations” section incorporated into article, related restructuring and cleanup.
I decided to be bold and incorporate the alternative interpretations section into the rest of the article. I did some restructuring and cleanup as well. This being a contentious article, here’s a lengthy description of the edits. (Or just compare the old and new consequences sections and see what you think.) There is still much improvement to be done, but I hope this is a step in the right direction.

First the restructuring and cleanup:
I moved the “climate conditions and famine” and “modes of resistance” sections into the “consequences” section and renamed the first to “famine”. All mentions of responsibility in the “deaths by starvation” section listed government policies (although there was mention in the climate conditions and famine section that weather contributed as well). Resistance to the GLF is clearly a result of the GLF. Aside from improving 2 references and an earlier edit to the famine section, I did not alter these sections (IIRC).

I was not very diligent in finding a home for the 3 somewhat random paragraphs that were at the beginning of the consequences section. (One sentence I moved to the “effects on government” section.)  If anyone sees fit to re-include them, please do.

I split off text in the famine deaths section discussing causes and responsibility for the famine into its own section and added lead paragraphs to it, the consequences, and the famine deaths section. Some of the information in the new causes and responsibility section is descriptive of the famine and probably could be moved to the main famine section. The article had quite a bit of criticism of methods used to arrive at death tolls, so I took a stab at describing the methods in one paragraph and the uncertainties inherent in the methods (criticisms) in another, using most of the criticisms as references and footnotes instead of quoting them in the body. The methods paragraph probably needs expansion, especially to correlate the different estimates with their methods (more on that in a separate section on the discussion page).

Now the incorporation of the alternative interpretations:
The four paragraphs in the section can be found in the 16:40, 5 September 2011 version of the article. I moved 3 of the 4 paragraphs into the rest of the article and will discuss them all individually:

1) The first paragraph was basically a claim that some of the data used to estimate famine deaths is unreliable. There were two other similar statements from the same source already in the famine deaths section of the article.  I find the basic claim both relevant and uncontentious, and have used this paragraph (and the other 2 statements) as a reference in the paragraph describing uncertainties of methods.  There was a misinterpretation of the excerpted text in the reference that the disputed population increase from 450m to 600m occurred from 1953 to 1960, when in fact the excerpted text assigned 600m to 1953 and 450m to some indeterminate “short time” before.  I corrected this in the paragraph's new incarnation as a footnote.  (The footnote is long and may need pairing down).

I do have a concern about this source: It appears to be advocating a fringe theory:  One of its main points (unreferenced and basically unsupported) is that the famine deaths of 1961-1962 (no mention of deaths in 1958-1960) would not have occurred if it were not for the “U.S. embargo” (no mention of a UN embargo). However the GLF article uses the source’s excerpt from Wertheim, who in turn discusses the work of Ping-Ti Ho. Looking at a list of their works contained in the local university library, they both seem to be reliable sources. If anyone has bothered to read this far, could you provide input on how to deal with quotes of reliable sources in fringe theory articles, when a fringe theory article can be considered a reliable source, and how this applies to this reference in particular?

2) The second paragraph addresses responsibility, so I have moved it (slightly modified) to that section. I did take the part about logic and rationality out, because just about everything has some sort of logic and rationality, and it doesn’t seem worthwhile to mention it.

3) The third paragraph I left out of the article. It was a statement about life expectancy over the entirety of Mao’s rule, and may be appropriate in an article on Mao or the demographics of the PRC, but not this article.  (Saying in effect “sure, Mao’s policies killed millions of people in 1958-1961, but that’s really great because overall life expectancy increased during his rule” strikes me as very wrong on a fundamental moral level. But that may not be relevant to inclusion in the article.)

4) I’m actually not sure what comparisons to the China of a decade and more earlier are relevant to this article. I moved this paragraph to a new one in the famine deaths section which mentions the frequent famines in China’s past and the harsh social conditions (e.g. war) that increased mortality in the decades before 1949.  This paragraph would be greatly improved if there was a description of how Li arrived at his numbers, which years he is comparing, and what his death rate estimates for those years were, so I have left a few tags.--Wikimedes (talk) 16:04, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

@3: I removed Rummel's total PRC democide estimate for pretty much the same reason; It is also more appropriate for an article on the PRC or the demographics of the PRC than one on the GLF. Covering either of these controversial statements adequately would be a distraction from the GLF.--Wikimedes (talk) 01:10, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Famine deaths in perspective
2 of the 4 paragraphs in the former “alternative views section” dealt with putting the number of famine deaths in perspective. There was a concern about undue weight in that section. Below is a list of things for possible inclusion in the article that might be useful and appropriate in terms of perspective. I hope that compiling a list of relevant comparisons in one place will help in discussing and judging due weight.--Wikimedes (talk) 16:04, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Request for information: expanded table of death tolls
I have begun an expanded table of famine death estimates in my sandbox here. It breaks down the death toll by year and summarizes the methods used by the authors to arrive at their numbers. Estimates are uncertain and methods are often criticized, so it’s useful to know who used what method. If you feel it is worthwhile to include in the article and have referenced information on any of the estimates, please add it to the table. Feel free to discuss or offer suggestions on its talk page. Additional death toll estimates are welcome.--Wikimedes (talk) 16:04, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

References and notes format
Would anyone mind terribly if I renamed the "References" section to "Notes" and used abbreviated citations (e.g. Hinton 1984, pp. 234–240, 247-249) and put the full citations in a separate "references" section? This would be similar to the format in Incorporation of Tibet into the People's Republic of China. (I would also rename the "Bibliography and further reading" section to "Further reading"). It would make the notes section much less bulky and make adding new citations from works already cited quicker.--Wikimedes (talk) 02:55, 6 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I am not big on the 'standardization' of reference formatting. I think you should just use whatever works. Often it is good practice to list out the first reference in full and then subsequent references with just "author, page number". This saves the trouble of compiling a separate list, but can be cumbersome when you are 'section-editing' only. Colipon+ (Talk) 00:59, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Done. Your suggestion about writing the first reference in full, etc. worked best; after listing all the references I could see that there were about 50 of them for 75 citations, so copying them all to the bibliography section wouldn't have saved any space.--Wikimedes (talk) 03:38, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Becker’s death toll estimate and Wemheuer’s citation
I’ve been reading Jasper Becker and he takes Banister’s 30 million as “the most reliable estimate we have” (p.270) and uses it (p.274) to calculate the percentage of China’s population lost to the GLF. While he does mention Chen Yizhe’s recollection of an internal investigation of the Chinese government arriving at 43-46 million deaths (p.272) Becker did not yet accept these figures because they have not been publicly released so it is impossible to tell whether they represent total or excess deaths and whether they take into account internal migrations (p.272-273).

Wemheuer’s citation contains at least 2 other errors: Although Wemheuer writes in 2010, he uses Ansley Coale’s 1981 estimate of 16.5 million excess deaths instead of Coale’s more recent 1984 estimate of 27 million. He also claims that Peng Xizhe estimates that 14 million excess deaths occurred in 14 provinces, when in fact Peng estimates 14.2 million excess deaths in 14 provinces, which Peng then extrapolates to 23 million excess deaths in all of China (p.649).

So I corrected Becker’s estimate in the table, and changed the range of death toll estimates accordingly. This (along with earlier changes by me) leaves nothing that uses Wemheuer’s citation as a reference, which is probably for the best.--Wikimedes (talk) 22:54, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Caught by surprise?
Did the "droughts, floods, and general bad weather" really catch the leadership by surprise? Given the frequency of such disasters in China prior to the Great Leap, this is difficult to believe.--Wikimedes (talk) 22:07, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

recent addition to lead moved here for later inclusion in article
The following text was recently added to the 2nd paragraph of the lead:

After the collapse of the Great Leap Forward, the Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister, later President, Li Xiannian, got the toughest task of rescuing the economy. Li is strongly in favor of liberal reforms, but because Mao strict about this issue, Li failed to "squeeze" the reform and save people from starvation.Li Xiannian was sharply criticized Mao's ideas and call them bad and utopian.This his words cost him dearly in the Cultural Revolution when he was constantly criticized and eventually removed, but on the instigation of Zhou Enlai,Mao returned Li to the same core of leadership in 1973.

This level of detail probably belongs in a separate section on how the GLF ended or its aftermath rather than the lead. Since no such section currently exists (I'm sporadically working on them), I've put it here until such a section exists. One thing I'm curious about, does this information also come from the Dwight Perkins reference?--Wikimedes (talk) 11:11, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The section in question was added by a sock puppet (see Sockpuppet investigations/Ana Sušac) in an attempt to evade prior blocks. The sock master and its puppets have been responsible for a large swath of non-neutral editing about Li throughout Wikipedia.  Li's role in the aftermath of the GLF may or may not have been significant, but based on the editor's prior edits, it is unlikely that this information was sourced from the same Perkins source, but rather more likely that it is the editor's own interpretation of events.  WikiDan61 ChatMe!ReadMe!! 13:20, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Typo on page?
I think there may be a typo here, but I wouldn't say I was expert enough to say without conferring...

"The years of the Great Leap Forward in fact saw economic regression, with 1958 through 1961 being the only years between 1953 and 1983 in which China's economy saw negative growth."

Should that not end "positive growth"? Otherwise the implication is that most years had positive growth, and so there was not generally "economic regression"?

FBJimmy (talk) 13:37, 16 April 2012 (UTC)


 * The negative growth refers to the years 1958 through 1961, which was the period of the Great Leap Forward and the period of economic regression. The sentence is worded correctly, though if it's unclear perhaps it can be improved.--Wikimedes (talk) 16:54, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Possibility of locking article?
This article is not locked. Can we get a general confirmation of everything said (scholarly confirmation), and then lock it?

Seems like a sensitive subject that someone (or something) would want to discard altogether. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.204.106.13 (talk) 14:30, 30 November 2012 (UTC)


 * No. I have no idea why you would suggest this. The article isn't frequently vandalized and there are no editing disputes.--Atlan (talk) 15:49, 30 November 2012 (UTC)