Comment

Comment by Retric

Between 1954 and 1959, China supplied 160,000 tons of tungsten ore, 110,000 tons of copper, 30,000 tons of antimony, and 90,000 tons of rubber to the Soviet Union. That’s how they repaid a loan not through industrial production because their economy wasn’t producing significant high value output from raw materials, they couldn’t even smelt ore efficiently.

Re-education camps don’t generate value. They didn’t have a surplus of urban workers instead Mow just destroyed the economy. Killing off the educated doctors etc isn’t a free action, it has negative consequences.

China literally had net migration out of cities, so no this wasn’t over investment in industry or a distribution issue this was just abject failure and total economic collapse. Total Anarchy would have been better for the economy than Mao.

parent Retric 8 months ago

Discussion

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton