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Comment by flurben | Hacker News Reader

As I responded to someone else : --- China was actually quite wealthy under the Qing Dynasty, and fluctuated between 10% and 35% of global GDP.

In 1949, when the PRC was formed, they represented 9.5% of the global economy. In 1990, after 41 years of Communist Party rule, China was 1.59% of the global economy. ----

So while it is accurate to say that China's economy did poorly in the 19th and early 20th century, it is also true to say that the CPC proceeded to drive the nation into abject poverty.

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Always ignored in similar discussions, in 1950 the US convinced the UN to establish an embargo against China lasting for twenty years. Mao's economic policies were undoubtedly terrible, but the Western destruction of the Chinese economy did not stop in 1949.

That was a direct consequence of the PRC's decision to attack the UN coalition army in Korea, and is the result of another failed policy of the PRC.

I feel you are misrepresenting what happened. As I understand it the PRC did not want this conflict and tried to prevent it, but failed. They were basically forced into the conflict by the Soviets and the Americans and suffered immense losses.

You will have to clarify how the Soviets "forced" the PRC to engage in a foreign war.

The UN coalition army that refused to acknowledge China's existence, invaded China's neighbor and marched to China's border. That does not justify twenty years of an embargo.

That is factually untrue. The war began when North Korea invaded South Korea.

As I said, the PRC's policies are what drove its people into poverty. It was a choice the PRC made to attack the UN armies, it chose to do so fully aware of the consequences of supporting North Korea and Kim Il-sung.

The 'UN' at that pinpoint in time had no representation from China or Russia, so it was basically NATO.

>That is factually untrue. The war began when North Korea invaded South Korea.

Which led to almost everything that happened in my post, the UN had already refused to acknowledge China. Nothing factually untrue in it at all.

>it chose to do so fully aware of the consequences of supporting North Korea and Kim Il-sung.

Mao called the decision blackmail at the time, and it's a fairly apt description. Imagine the hell that would be raised if China helped a Mexican despot and marched an army to the US border.

Charts on China's historical relative share of GDP and other measures beg to differ. Or at least they suggest that the first derivative matters a lot more than snapshot numbers.

Nobody's defending that repression and misguided autocracy weren't pure stupidity and self-flagellation. The 'Great Leap Forward' of the late 50's caused extreme damage to life and economy, compared to the west rebuilding and setting up the first pieces of a transition to the digital economy, and the rest of East Asia gearing up for its own export-driven 'miracle'.

But in general, social and economic things have momentum, and that momentum in infrastructure, technology, education, reserves, everything really, had stagnated and was thus in a downward relative spiral vs a rapidly developing west since the 1800's. After WWII, China had a quarter of the production capacity of the late 20's, a mostly illiterate and increasingly angry rural population, and hyperinflation. There was no golden goose to slaughter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Maddison_statistics_of_t...

https://www.principles.com/the-changing-world-order/#chapter...

Hmm, I wonder what happened between the fall of the Qing Dynasty and 1949.

Do you have a source for this 1.59% figure that you're posting everywhere? I've honestly looked and can't find one.

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