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Comment by retrac | Hacker News Reader

It was greatly worsened by Mao's policies. But a famine would have happened anyway. There's no alternate history where different government policy in China could have completely averted the famine of 1960. It was a very poor year agriculturally.

There had been famine in China previously in 1942 (1 million dead), 1936 (5 million dead), 1929 (5 million dead), 1906 (25 million dead), 1877 (10 million dead), and millions dead from starvation during the Taiping rebellion of the 1860s.

Arguably, quite a few of them were man-made, or at least man-aggravated from warfare. This is not intended as apologia for Mao. His policies likely resulted in several million more deaths than might have otherwise happened. I just want to show that famine was routine in preindustrial agricultural societies.

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>There's no alternate history where different government policy in China could have completely averted the famine of 1960. It was a very poor year agriculturally.

Except the one where China hasn't destroyed much of its industry, or alienated much of the world, and thus can trade for food.

Your examples are illustrative as well, inspite of your intention - the next three famines you list (1942, 1936, 1929) all occurred during a civil war in which Mao was a major player on one side, and at a time when part of the country was at war with/under occupation of imperial Japan.

> His policies likely resulted in several million more deaths than might have otherwise happened.

Perhaps more than several million when estimates are between 15 and 55 million dead.

Just imagine all the coffins / mass burials during COVID and times that by thousands. Must have devastated whole communities and scared them for life.

Mass burials during Covid? I think you might be misremembering.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52241221

> which has been used for more than 150 years by city officials as a mass burial site for those with no next-of-kin, or families who cannot afford funerals.

Interesting. Good to know and also not the impression I got from just "mass burials".

> Normally, about 25 bodies a week are interred on the island, according to the Associated Press news agency. But burial operations have increased from one day a week to five days a week, with around 24 burials each day

> It is not clear how many of the dead have no next-of-kin or could not afford a funeral.

That's a pretty important question to answer. Any idea?

And that was early enough in understanding COVID that it would make sense to do this kind of small mass burial with hazmat suits even if the death rate was unchanged.

> The drone footage comes from Hart Island, off the Bronx in Long Island Sound, which has been used for more than 150 years by city officials as a mass burial site for those with no next-of-kin, or families who cannot afford funerals.

> Normally, about 25 bodies a week are interred on the island, according to the Associated Press news agency.

> But burial operations have increased from one day a week to five days a week, with around 24 burials each day, said Department of Correction spokesman Jason Kersten.

They always did mass burials at this site. It just increased velocity during COVID. Mass burials did not start because of COVID.

I'm not an agronomist, but even back then, couldn't grain be stored for a year or two to buffer a disaster?

China had, since the 1860's, been referred to as the "sick man of the far east", a play on words from a common monicker for I think one of the tzars.

Mostly, this referred to the Qing government, in terms of the extensive corruption, pervasive opium addiction (thanks in part to Britain and the opium wars), etc.

Poor people rarely had much to eat to begin with, and bad years would often mean normally thin meals would be stretched too far. Until the communist revolution, farmers were serfs. After, they operated in collectives, but still were under orders. In both cases, they had little incentive to work, as they didn't keep the food they grew. It belonged to someone else. 1 in 3 children nationwide had stunted growth from malnourishment, almost certainly worse in the countryside. Farmers simply didn't have a surplus of food to store through an entire bad season.

After the 1970s, a combination of infrastructure projects which improved irrigation, some new cultivars of plants that had better yields, and changes to the operations of the farming communes to operate a bit more capitalistically, farmers were able to generate actual surpluses of food.

The original "sick man of the East" was Ottoman Turkey.

Has there been any famous industrialized capitalist countries during famines? I'm curious how they fared.

The Great Irish Famine springs to mind, caused by the policies of the United Kingdom, which arguably invented both industrialization (hello, steam engine) and capitalism (hello, Adam Smith).

I think it would be hard to argue that Ireland at that time was a "great, industrialized society" of any sort.

It was run by such a society - the British. Capitalism was even cited as a justification at the time. If the "market" decided to export food while the Irish starved... well, thats ok. Market knows best.

It essentially mirrored the Holodomor - an occupying power exports all the food from an agrarian colony during a bad harvest. Famine happens. Occupying power shrugs. People wonder if it was a covert attempt at ethnic cleansing. Probably it was.

The difference is that the Irish famine was oh, just a big whoopsie while the Holodomor was an evil plot.

Other than the reality of British occupation, I think most of what you said was provably wrong.

For example...

> The difference is that the Irish famine was just a big whoopsie while the Holodomor was an evil plot.

Have you heard of Charles Trevelyan? He was in charge of relief efforts during the famine, but he had a different take on the issue which informed British policy. In his words:

“The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.”

The Famine was a natural disaster which would have led to some amount of starvation and death, but that natural disaster was GREATLY enhanced by British elites who saw it as a convenient and "natural" solution to Irish overpopulation.

In many ways it shares the hallmarks of the Holodomor, with "we care about trade" used as a cover for genocide.

You seem to be agreeing with everything I wrote apart from the sarcasm.

In 1760 the Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain, in 1801 Ireland joined with Great Britain to form the United Kingdom, and in 1845 the great famine began in the United Kingdom, specifically in Ireland. I'm afraid this feels like moving the goalposts; famine is always going to hit agricultural areas the hardest in any trade-capable country, because even though everyone else still needs food, everyone else still has things to trade for food (and if the agricultural laborers still had anything to trade, there wouldn't be a famine to begin with). It's a bit like saying that the Dust Bowl didn't happen in the industrialized nation of the United States because it happened in Oklahoma.

Fact is that the famine could have easily be averted or at least reduced to a huge extent by the government.

Post-WW2 Germany comes to mind.

Also post WW1 Germany or rather post armistice pre-Versailles when hundreds of thousands died and millions suffered from malnutrition due to the allied blockade (which they maintained “just in case” Germany decided to restart the war..)

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