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China's Bloody Century: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900

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A prime example of how data is mishandled in this book can be found when the author goes off on page 248 by first telling us that 9.5 million had died in the famine of 1877-8 and then contrasting this with a range of estimates which he quotes from various people about the famine of 1960. He then settles on concluding that 27 million is the best estimate for this. Going on he mentions briefly the issue of natural disaster and claims that a similar type of disaster "might have caused a million or so deaths had it occurred in the 1930s." Pfft! Very dishonest, I must say.

First of all, as a small detail, the Chinese famine of 1936 is usually ascribed a death toll of 5 million, not just million. But let's not quibble too much over that. Let's allow that Rummel have included this with the phrase "or so." What is really absurd, and becomes clear to anyone who takes the time to actually go over what exists as demographic data, is that all of the attempts to ascribe a death toll in the tens of millions to the 1960 events rest upon assuming a normal mortality standard which is far below anything which had existed in pre-revolutionary China, or even pre-revolutionary Russia.

Czarist Russia is a good point for comparison here simply because we have more complete data on it than we do on pre-revolutionary China. All of the reports about China, coming from sources which are in no way connected to the Chinese Communist Party and in fact assembled their data before the CCP had become a notable political presence, agree that China had been a land of perpetual famine. See the 1926 publication of the American Geographical Society by Walter Mallory, CHINA: LAND OF FAMINE, for more on this. But since there is no broad statistical information gathered together, it helps to consult data on Czarist Russia while remaining aware that actual mortality rates in pre-revolutionary China were certainly much higher than what occurred in Russia. Death rates among the population of those provinces in Czarist Russia that remained within the USSR after 1917 are given by Frank Lorimer, THE POPULATION OF THE SOVIET UNION.

Year__________Deaths per thousand among the population

1899__________33.4

1900__________32.3

1901__________33.6

1902__________33.1

1903__________31.1

1904__________31.1

1905__________33.2

1906__________31.6

1907__________30.2

1908__________30.2

1909__________31.6

1910__________33.3

1911__________29.2

1912__________28.7

1913__________30.9

You can find some books which give the number 30.2 for the year 1913 instead of Lorimer's 30.9. That has to do with the 11 other provinces of Czarist Russia which broke away from the USSR in 1917. Either way, we can safely assume that mortality rates in China during the early 20th century were significantly higher under even the most normal conditions than any of these numbers which hold for Czarist Russia. China was widely regarded by western observers of that time as the land of perpetual famine. It is against the background of these types of very high ordinary mortality rates that one must consider something like the evaluation of the 1936 famine which assigns it 5 million victims. That estimate of 5 million is made against a backward which assumes higher death rates from the onset as normal.

But when one starts going through the literature to seek information about the demographics of China in the late '50s and early '60s, it becomes apparent that every author has assumed mortality rates which are far below what would have been the norm in pre-revolutionary China. They then proceed to count every death above this much lower assumed normal mortality rate as a famine death to be blamed on Mao. This is exactly what one must aware of when reading on page 248 that "according to the demographer John Aird, an unpublished U.S. Bureau of the Census study, and other informed estimates, during the late 1950s and early 1960s in communist China possibly as many as 40,000,000 died by starvation." Since his references don't give us access to any general demographic constructions it's pointless to try to make too much of this. But I can most certainly assure anyone that any estimates of a famine death toll in these years which approach 20 million are made by assuming a standard of mortality which is far lower than the pre-revolutionary deaths rates.

The closest thing to an authoritative published demographic study of China since the revolution is Judith Banister's CHINA'S CHANGING POPULATION. Banister's given numbers are as follows:

Year__________Deaths per thousand among the population

1949__________38

1950__________35

1951__________32

1952__________29

1953__________25.77

1954__________24.20

1955__________22.33

1956__________20.11

1957__________18.12

1958__________20.65

1959__________22.06

1960__________44.60

1961__________23.01

1962__________14.02

1963__________13.81

Data like this makes it clear just how completely meaningless and deceptive Rummel's comments, where he tosses around numbers like 27-40 million and yet maintains that only about 1 million would have died in a similar famine in the 1930s, really are. Even some of Rummel's fellow hucksters, when presses for actual data, end up giving numbers as estimates for a standard of mortality which are obviously far too low. Jung Chang, MAO: THE UNKNOWN STORY, claims that the mortality rate of 1957 in China was 10.8 per thousand. Jean-Louis Margolin in THE BLACK BOOK OF COMMUNISM gives a similar number with a misprint where he says "11 percent" for what was clearly meant to be "11 per thousand." Banister's estimate of 18.12 per thousand as the death rate of China in 1957 is more realistic and probably closer to the truth. But the thing to get here is that all of these numbers given as estimates for the death rate of 1957 in China are much lower than anything which was ever attained in Czarist Russia, as the statistics given above from Lorimer show. They are certainly far, far lower than anything which had ever existed in pre-revolutionary China. That is why it is not all honest to attempt to compute famine death tolls for 1960 using the lower mortality rate of 1957 and then compare them to something like the 5 million death toll usually estimated for the 1936 famine. You're comparing apples to oranges when you do that.

If one actually sits down with a calculator and goes over Banister's population estimates for China on a year-by-year basis, and combines this with the estimates of death rates for each year, Banister's numbers suggest that about 25.4 million people died in the years 1958-61 that would not have died had the death rate remained at the level which Banister assigns to 1957. At the same time, Banister's numbers tell us that the death rates in China for the years 1958-9 and 1961 were significantly better than what was the norm in Czarist Russia. They were certainly better than anything which had existed in the old China. The only year here which stands out by the standards of Czarist Russia is 1960, to which Banister assigns a death rate of 44.6 per thousand. If compared with the number of 38 which Banister assigns to 1949, that implies a death toll of 4.35 million. This suggests that the famine of 1960 was actually not all that unusual by the standards of the old China. What was unusual after 1949 was that China ceased to be the "land of famine" which it had been known as.

To repeat the essential point then, Rummel's attempts to draw comparisons between wild estimates for the 1960 famine, reaching as high as 40 million, and his claim that "a million or so" might have died "had it occurred in the 1930s" is not based upon an honestly drawn standard of comparison. It has been deliberately skewed for ideological reasons. If we agreed to count every death which happened in 1936 beyond the level of 18.12 per thousand as a famine death then the usual estimate of 5 million would skyrocket. This could be done with many other famines which regularly occurred in China although not as bad as the 1936 famine. But Rummel skewed the data so that the uninformed reader will not realize this.