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1 of 18 people found the following review helpful
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This review is from: The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village (Paperback)
The author's credentials are indisputable. He grew up in China and has an intimate knowledge of Chinese history and Mao's policies. But, his version of history does not agree with 99% of the academic community, and indeed, official Chinese history.I would suggest that readers keep in mind that there were intelligent, well-educated, scientific and academic members of the Nazi party who were completely smitten with Hitler and defended him to their graves. Sometimes closeness to a historical event does not yield clarity of thought. Comments
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Posted on
Jan 16, 2012 12:18:04 AM PST
Double Dubs says:
And sometimes to many foreign authors have to much to gain for discounting every aspect of a countries attempt at radical change, including the current Chinese government who gained a lot by turning back to the good old capitalist ways.
Posted on
Jul 4, 2012 9:18:09 AM PDT
Last edited by the author on Jul 4, 2012 9:18:52 AM PDT
Lloyd Lofthouse says:
Let's see. In 1949, the average lifespan in China was 35, more than 90% of Chinese lived in severe poverty, 80% were illiterate and China suffered from loss of life caused by famines in one or more provinces on an annual basis-deaths by starvation from famines have been documented going back annually for more than 2000 years. For the first time in China's history, deaths from famine
During the Mao's era, the average lifespan in years doubled, there was only one famine that caused deaths from starvation (1959-1961), people living in severe poverty vanished (however, there are still many that live in poverty but it is not severe poverty). In fact, since 1976, literacy improved from 20% to more than 90% and China's middle class grew from less than 5% to about 300 million people today with estimates that there may be 600 to 800 million middle class Chinese by 2025. All of these improvements in lifestyle quality have been documented by the World Bank and the United Nations although we seldom if ever hear about this in the Western media or in books written by so-called experts in Western Academia that focus only on the dark side of the CCP. How about if e focus on the dark side of American democracy instead? Civil War, slavery (today and historically), the battle for women's rights, poverty (almost 40 million Americans live in poverty more than 10% of the population), starvation in America, endless foreign wars, continued racism, etc. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOPf2mUbUg News we should be covering a lot more than we are in America. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPqtYDAzGW
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