Kissinger the Exterminator

[Steven Maas (CUTR)]

On Wed, 5 Mar 1997, MonteDavis wrote:
> Purely in point of numbers, "the biggest genocidal purge since WWII" is
> awfully small potatoes compared to the ~30 million dead in the Great
> Leap Forward famines of 1959-61.
> 
> But then, the instigators and the victims were pretty much all Han, so
> it can't qualify as genocide.
> 
> But then, it had nothing whatever to do with US corporations, the
> military-industrial complex, or anything more recent or Western than
> Leninism, so it probably wasn't so bad.

Well, I wouldn't say it has nothing to do with these things.  Much of the
reason China was in the state it was at the time you mention was due to
the relationship between China and the Western powers in the previous
couple of hundred years.  Mercantilism and imperialism had destroyed the
ancient Chinese system (mind you I'm not saying it was a great system) and
to a large degree the formation of the People's Republic there (which of
course led to the ill-fated great leaps forward) can be traced to this. 

	Steve Maas

> 
> Jeez, can't you give the Indonesians themselves *any* credit?
> 
> -Monte