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Comment by mynameishere | Hacker News Reader

Also did the communists do a bad job...

Compare West and East Germany. Compare North and South Korea. Compare Mainland China and Taiwan. And once you've done those comparisons ask yourself about what kind of job the communists have done. Many millions dead. Many more millions in poverty. That's the job they've done.

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If you want understand what communists did in China it's better look on other numbers. For example, rise of life expectancy was incredible (especially if you look at comparable country like India) http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&c...

Child mortality http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&c...

Brad Delong an economist at UC Berkeley once gave a good prsentation on the comparison between communist and market economies.

http://delong.typepad.com/files/20091103-115.pdf

What about comparing mainland and Taiwan? I don't think there exists an obvious conclusion from this comparison if you look at status quo. If you are judging based on the situation before 2000s, I agree with you that there is an obvious conclusion.

Per capita GDP in terms of PPP

US: ~$50000 Taiwan: ~$39000 EU: ~$35000 China: ~$9000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP...

That's right, lets take our Western-pro-US measuring stick out and measure china against it in order to show they are not as "successful".

China's goal posts are not in the same spot as the US's.

What measure do you propose we use to compare mainland China with Taiwan?

Taiwan is still well ahead of the P.R.C. both in economic development and personal liberty.

Of course they are, Taiwan is a small country that is supported by the only superpower left. (another example of such a country: Israel)

Where do you think that the economic development of Taiwan would be if it wasn't backed by the US? And where do you think they will be in 20 years, with China constantly rising in power and influence.

I don't think it's controversial to say that they'll probably be part of China, considering that there is even political support for that in Taiwan.

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