Apparently the US version takes on a different cover in itself. Whether or not it's even relevant to Great Leap Forward famine as well is in need of questioning as well. Although these are not "smoking gun" falsifications against the new anti-communist publishing, "Mao's Great Famine", they're certainly great enough to show how even before one is to start reading Dikötter's latest book, the reader is already being exposed to misrepresentations.

Little lies such as this always tend to do great damage against Communist history. Which is why, as little as they may be, they are in need of being exposed.

By reminded us of the brutality of KMT's regime I'm thankful for Mr. Dikötter’s help, albeit unintentional, in proving that without the revolution there would have been continuous, much greater famine, unchecked warlordism and despotic feudalism that closed off any chances for progress.

Here's a rebuttal from a post-Deng era Chinese businessman who takes issue with the claim of mass starvation: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/FD01Ad04.html

The most interesting part I found was the basis of the claim of 20-30 million dead, mostly based on census records from years prior to the GLP that were terribly flawed.

Lately I've been trying to study the history of planned economies and try to account for their "failures". In the past I've read accounts and analyses by the usual crowd of denouncers. While they can trot out figures, point to emigration and make sweeping statements about why humans can't plan resource distribution equitably or at least in a utilitarian fashion, there are the same problems with all of these cases:
1. Comparison of developing socialist countries to advanced capitalist ones. For instance, to truly gauge the effectiveness of Cuba's planned economy (to name one), one cannot put it next to the US (although it beats the US with a mallet in health and educations indices). Compare it to Mexico, or Columbia, and the difference is more apparent.
2. Comparison of the standard of living for the average worker or professional in a developing socialist country with that of an upper-middle class or wealthy resident of a capitalist country. If you took the average service or education worker in the former DDR and compare his or her life to that of a worker in a similar business in a capitalist country, you will see who was better off, or whose life was easier on them.
3. No comparison of emigration rates between developing socialist countries and developing capitalist countries. Again, let's look at the case of Cuba. Cuba allows the (fairly) free movement of the average person from that country (although it does restrict the exit of those deemed "essential": engineers, some classes of scientists, athletes, etc.). Yet, a much smaller segment of its population emigrates or attempts to emigrate each year than do their Haitian, Mexican or Central American counterparts. I would have to research this further, but I suspect the actual or attempted emigration of persons from the USSR or the Eastern Bloc was not significantly higher than that of western Europeans moving to the US or Canada.
4. The impact of successive business cycles in the capitalist countries on their economies and their impact on developing socialist countries. It's rough on everyone, but how do these countries fare against capitalist countries in the same category.
5. Most importantly, though, all of these analyses that I have seen over the years do not address the specific structural issues for which they blame the economic troubles they see in the socialist countries. In other words, get beyond what are essentially ideological points about incentivization, "human nature", the law of value, etc. and point out the actual and specific problems in the planning institutions, management and distribution that created these so-called hells on earth.

For sure, there have been some colossal mistakes made in the various systems of planned economies attempted. It's a huge learning curve. But the economic and historic "experts" of the West don't seem to have a handle on it other than to try to portray it as something more nightmarish than the reality of life under capitalism for the majority of its subjects.

As I said, I'm still trying to study this issue. I'll take any reading suggestions that address this matter to the extent that I mentioned.

One of the things that has always made me feel that these allegations that the "greatest famine in history" occurred during the Great Leap Forward are bunk is that not a single photograph of the famine has ever surfaced. If what this book says is true, that 45 million people(1 out of 13 of China's entire population) perished, how can there be no photographs at all? The excuses are legion-China was an underdeveloped country, it was closed to the outside world, political censorship, etc. But the same conditions existed in the Soviet Union during the Ukraine famine of 1932-33 and photographs emerged. Heck, during the massive famine in British colonial India in the 1870's, when photography was much more difficult then in the 20th, there are photographs.
I'm not denying that there was hardship and no doubt hunger in parts of China, but the question is whether this was anything worse then the chronic famine China had experienced throughout its history, and how much the Communists alleviated hunger.

> But the same conditions existed in the Soviet Union during the Ukraine famine of 1932-33 and photographs emerged.

Not true. Photographs were cribbed from the famine of 1921-2 and recycled. Some were even recycled several times, first appearing in the Folkish Observer ran from out of the Third Reich in 1933-4 and then again later in the Hearst Press in 1935 with the claim no being that the pictures had been taken in 1934 (when historians agree that there was no famine taking place). Some of these bogus photos still crop up whenever the Ukrainian Right-wing wants to organize an exhibition.

> the question is whether this was anything worse then the chronic famine China had experienced throughout its history

Yes, that is a key issue. The demographic constructions made by Judith Banister do not support the claim that this famine was anything special in terms of absolute mortality rates for China. The reason it can appear to stand out is because it's agreed that general mortality rates in China had been reduced to an unprecedented extent by 1957, so that a famine in 1960 with absolute mortality rates on about the same level as previous famines can appear more stark against the just recently lowered mortality rate of 1957.

Here's a comment from a book review which pertains to the issue of cribbed photographs:

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=30622 />
"Admittedly, the quality of the exhibitions and the film was not very good. The film about the Ukrainian famine showed footage of a 1920s famine filmed in the Volga basin (Povolzhye), but the accompanying commentary suggested that these tragic events were filmed in Ukraine in 1932-33. It also cynically asserted that while people in Ukraine were “dying” from famine, people who lived in the Volga basin were only “suffering” from famine. This situation caused great distrust regarding the whole idea of the Holodomor.[7] It was also revealed that some pictures of the “Ukrainian Holodomor” presented at the exhibitions were in actuality photos taken in the United States during the Great Depression and in Povolzhye in the 1920s.[8]"

The footnote 8 cites an article which was published in Russian:

http://www.nr2.ru/crimea/223417.html

I don't have the necessary expertise to translate it, but perhaps someone else does? In any event, the photogrpahs themselves are interesting.

see this relevant item via MRZine: http://bit.ly/b2l5Wh

Patrick, here's a translation of that page: http://tinyurl.com/32vr43v

http://www.systransoft.com has a great translation feature. Either enter text, or a URL, and you can get a pretty good output.

Not intended as a he-did it, too, but: an example of (one of) Churchill’s' famines - he's not found generally linked with mao and stalin - in today's Harper's inline at harpers.org:

Churchill’s Dark Side: Six Questions for Madhusree Mukerjee, By Scott Horton

Madhusree Mukerjee, a former editor at Scientific American and the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, has published a bombshell book about Churchill’s attitudes toward India and the steps that he took during World War II that contributed to a horrific famine in Bengal in 1943. I put six questions to her about her book and some of the pushback it has drawn from Churchill’s defenders...

4. The central thesis in your book is that Churchill and the War Cabinet took a series of decisions which led inexorably to the starvation of between 1.5 and 3 million persons in 1943. You do not, however, charge that it was their conscious intention to starve these people to death—unlike what the Nazis did in east central Europe about this same time, when starvation was a conscious policy objective. But do you believe that they knew or should have known that this catastrophe would follow from their decisions?

The War Cabinet received repeated warnings that famine could result from its exhaustive use of Indian resources for the war effort—and ignored them.

The Japanese occupation of Burma in March 1942 cut off rice imports, of between one and two million tons per year, to India. Instead of protecting the Indian public from the resultant food shortage, the War Cabinet insisted that India absorb this loss and, further, export rice to countries that could no longer get it from South East Asia. As a result, after war arrived at India’s borders, the colony exported 260,000 tons of rice in the fiscal year 1942-43.

Meanwhile India’s war expenditures increased ten fold, and the government printed paper money to pay for them. In August 1942 a representative of India’s viceroy told the War Cabinet that runaway inflation could lead to “famines and riots.”

In December 1942, Viceroy Linlithgow warned that India’s grain supply was seriously short and he urgently needed 600,000 tons of wheat to feed soldiers and the most essential industrial workers. The War Cabinet stated that ships were not available. In January 1943, Churchill moved most of the merchant ships operating in the Indian Ocean over to the Atlantic, in order to build up the United Kingdom’s stockpile of food and raw materials. The Ministry of War Transport cautioned him that the shift would result in “violent changes and perhaps cataclysms” in trade around the Indian Ocean. (In addition to India, the colonies of Kenya, Tanganyika, and British Somaliland all suffered famine in 1943.) Although refusing to meet India’s need for wheat, Churchill insisted that India continue to export rice.

With famine raging, in July 1943 Viceroy Linlithgow halted rice exports and again asked the War Cabinet for wheat imports, this time of 500,000 tons. That was the minimum required to feed the army and otherwise maintain the war effort. The news of impending shipments would indirectly ease the famine, he noted: any hoarders would anticipate a fall in prices and release grain, causing prices to fall in reality. But at a meeting on August 4, the War Cabinet failed to schedule even a single shipment of wheat for India. Instead, it ordered the buildup of a stockpile of wheat for feeding European civilians after they had been liberated. So 170,000 tons of Australian wheat bypassed starving India—destined not for consumption but for storage.

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom’s stockpile of food and raw materials, intended for shoring up the postwar British economy, reached 18.5 million tons, the highest ever. Sugar and oilseeds overflowed warehouses and had to be stored outdoors, under tarpaulins.

Of course Churchill knew that his priorities would result in mass death. In one of his tirades against Indians, he said they were “breeding like rabbits” anyway. On behalf of Indians, the War Cabinet ignored an offer of 100,000 tons of Burmese rice from freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose (who was allied with the Japanese), discouraged a gift of wheat from Canada, and turned down rice and wheat volunteered by the United States.

The War Cabinet eventually ordered for India 80,000 tons of wheat and 130,000 tons of barley. (Barley was useless for famine relief because it had no impact on prices.) The first of these meager shipments reached India in November. All the while, the Indian Army consumed local rice and wheat that might otherwise have fed the starving. The famine came to an end in December 1943, when Bengal harvested its own rice crop—at which point Churchill and his friend Cherwell renewed their demand for rice exports.