this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2025
1464 points (98.5% liked)
solarpunk memes
4147 readers
704 users here now
For when you need a laugh!
The definition of a "meme" here is intentionally pretty loose. Images, screenshots, and the like are welcome!
But, keep it lighthearted and/or within our server's ideals.
Posts and comments that are hateful, trolling, inciting, and/or overly negative will be removed at the moderators' discretion.
Please follow all slrpnk.net rules and community guidelines
Have fun!
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
me checks timeline and notices that this poverty allevation didn't start until long after Mao's death and only after China switched to a capitalist mode of production...
Fake news. Life expectancy in China before Mao was 35, by the time he died was close to 60, Maoism saved hundreds of millions of lives.
Lol, that is fake news. Life expectancy dropped during the war period as expected, but it was about as high before the war as it was after. The methods Mao employed rather delayed the recovery.
I had the same discussion with one of your fellow MLs before, and this is just completely silly cherry-picking of data to make the disasterous policies of Mao look somehow less bad 🤡
So easy to prove libs wrong man
Lol, can you even read that graph? MLs constantly disproving themselves with their own sources 🙄
And I am not a "lib", but an Anarchist 😅
Edit: and compare your above graph with this: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1088199/life-expectancy-south-korea-historical/ and then think about during which years Mao had the most influence on policy decisions in China...
Life expectancy from the graph was stable at abourt35 years old from 1850 to 1945, then Mao wins the war, and dies in 1976 with 60 years of life expectancy. Can you please tell me how to misread that?
An anarchist is indistinguishable from a lib when it comes to uneducated criticism of communism.
The data in your graph is too coarse to show the war dip, but other similar graphs your ML friends always cite, conveniently start right in the middle of the war period.
But regardless of that, your graph clearly shows that the before and after war life expectency was about the same, then there was a significantly delayed improvement during Mao's reign of terror, and when he was sidelined due to illness in the 1970ties and capitalist policies adopted, China finally caught up to its peer counties.
Just compare your graph with the development in South Korea: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1088199/life-expectancy-south-korea-historical/
And you can clearly see that Mao delayed the improvements seen during that time all over the world. And no, I am not claiming SK was a great country during that time, yet somehow despite having a brutal military dictatorship they still outperformed China under Mao on this metric, which shows just how bad Mao did.
You're misreading the data. The biggest step in the graph is from 1965 to 1970, full Maoism, and from 1970 to 1975 it's still during Mao. I explicitly said at the beginning that life went from 35 to 60 and you said that's false, you literally didn't know the data, and now you're moving the goalposts from "Maoism didn't increase life expectancy" to "maybe it did but less so than in South Korea".
As for why China developed slower than South Korea, South Korea is an American military base with a population of just a few tens of millions. It received humongous investments and tech transfer from the US as part of a specific policy. If you want to compare to something more akin to China, you could compare China to Indonesia or Philippines, which didn't receive the same amount of American resources. What does life expectancy and poverty reduction tell you there?
All over the world? South Korea is the exception. Look at life expectancy evolution in India, Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh or Pakistan, all countries with a much greater population than South Korea. China industrialised because of communism, there's a reason why it's more developed than any of the aforementioned countries even if it had a very similar starting point in the early 1900s.
Also, you really think that telling me "Dengism in China uplifted 800mn people from poverty" is an argument against communism? The communist party of China literally envisioned the policies necessary to attract the level of western investment to grow so fast, and managed to direct this investment in a way that would industrialise the country and not just exploit it as the west does in South America and Southeast Asia. It's the best example in history of poverty alleviation through conscious state policy. Dengism in China is not "capitalism", it's socialism with Chinese characteristics, and it's what allowed China to become arguably the most powerful country in the 21st century in a way that Europe and the US can't even begin to understand. I take it you're a supporter of the modern Communist Party of China, which enabled all of this?
Also: what a fucking anarchist, mate, defending the literally fascist dictatorship of South Korea up to 1990 as the growth model of a country. You're dirtying the name of anarchists, and I say it as a Marxist Leninist
Lol, what an absurd interpretation of the data, and accusing me of moving goal posts when all I did was pointing out that the data doesn't fit to your warped story.
And 1965 to 1970 was the hight of the cultural revolution, meaning the communist party was mostly engulfed in an internal power struggle, which left the people in China mostly to their own devices (and not actively damaged by earlier disasterous policies by Mao, like the great leap forward), and in 1970 to 1975 the reformist around Deng already started getting the upper hand in actual implementation and the result is the state-capitalist country we know today ("communism", lol 🤦).
And I explicitly stated that I do not defend the military dictatorship in SK. I only pointed out that your beloved Maoists in China somehow did significantly worse than them until China started adopting similar policies in the 1970ties. Literally doing nothing would have been the better strategy for the Chinese government, as the 1965 to 1970 data clearly shows.
P.S.: The Phillipines seem to also have somewhat outperformed China on that metric in the 1950ties (at least they didn't do worse), but were later held back by the Marcos regime: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1072232/life-expectancy-philippines-historical/
P.P.S.: Indonesia also doesn't show a Mao induced delay in the raise of life expectancy: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1072197/life-expectancy-indonesia-historical/
You're literally coming up with the argumentation as you go. Firstly it was "Deng already in the 70s" explaining the 1965-1970 growth of life expectancy, now it's internal power struggle. You're just making shit up as you type, deeply unserious analysis. The Cultural Revolution from Mao is precisely this 1965-1975 period, it wasn't "internal power struggle". Surely this is the stable point of Chinese history in which Chinese were left to themselves?
I'm gonna stop arguing with you because you're simply talking from ignorance of Chinese history and making up shit as you speak. Maybe consider for one second why India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia or Philippines aren't as developed as China are, having a comparable starting point in early 1900s. Spoiler: they're not communists
Lol, you literally have no idea what you are talking about (including non-propagandized 20th century Chinese history). And that you continue to claim that China post 1970ties is communist (or even just socialist) is hilarious. Maybe try looking up the number of Chinese billionaires as a start 🤦
Sure buddy, you as a westerner know more about Chinese socialism than the literal ideological heirs of the Chinese revolution whom are still in government. Xi Jinping's dad was a hardcore commie leader all his life, and Xi himself has a PhD in Marxism. Getting high up the Communist Party of China is one of the higher-functioning meritocracies, requires extremely high educational standards in the history of socialism, and a high degree of involvement and being a good example of party activity and hard work. But you, from your western sofa, know more than the Chinese who literally became the strongest country in the world and uplifted 800 million people from poverty (you keep not answering to why India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Philippines and Indonesia didn't achieve this feat).
Fine, keep ignoring obvious facts and lie to yourself that China isn't full on capitalist these days. The cognitive dissonance must be painful 🤦
Keep being a western chauvinist who thinks knows more about socialism than the literal best of the nations which implemented it