The 152 documented killings (and doubtless more undocumented) of African Americans between 1945-1951 are very sad, but you do realize that China carried out millions of political slayings about a decade later during the Cultural Revolution, right?
As for crimes abroad during the period you selected, China actually annexed an entire country (Tibet).
None of this is to excuse US failures to defend human rights and civil liberties, but China is in a whole different ballpark.
> The 152 documented killings (and doubtless more undocumented) of African Americans between 1945-1951 are very sad
I'm not even sure what this is trying to do except lowballing numbers? African Americans were not just killed, also not only "152", they were assassinated and locked up as political prisoners [0].
In places like US occupied Japan, it was weirdly enough only black soldiers that got court martial and executed over the blatant mass rapes that were going on [1].
> As for crimes abroad during the period you selected, China actually annexed an entire country (Tibet).
As opposed to the US, who never annexed any countries? I wonder how the people of Hawaii would feel about that claim, or any of the people in the dozens of countries the US has bombed to rubble and left with mines and unexploded ordnance for many future generations to worry about? At least they didn't get annexed! At least most of them didn't.
> None of this is to excuse US failures to defend human rights and civil liberties, but China is in a whole different ballpark.
"Failure to defend human rights"? Wow, that's some seriously weird language you are using there to handwave away the fact how the US government didn't "accidentally" commit atrocities but in many cases committed them with full intent.
Tbh it's saddening to see these "American exceptionalism!" response on HN out of all places.
China is violating fundamental human rights of over a billion people - both Chinese nationals and others abroad who can't speak negatively of China out of fear of repression - on a daily basis due to its heavy curb on freedom of expression. Whatever restrictions western democracies have on expression cannot even begin to approach China's.
China's stance on freedom is a calamity and the magnitude and impact of its state policies is one of the great tragedies in human history.
+1 And it's worth noting that the CCP* is still actively pursuing these repressions, increasing it's extent, and unapologetic for it. Versus, for example, Steven Harper as Prime Minister of Canada in 2008 made an apology to indigenous people for the residential school program and established the TRC to progress to reconciliation.
This is a world of difference than a 2021 report of torture and sexual assault of Uyghurs[1]. I think the most damning part to western cultures is just that we were willing to go to war over this happening to Jewish people, but not willing to do it over Uyghur people.
*: (i'm careful to not say Chinese, because there's a collision with race and this is not a genetic thing, there is actually many good aspects of long standing Chinese culture!)
Will all due respect and speaking as somebody who hates the CCP, painting the "Great Leap forward" as anything other than a tragedy borne from massive government incompetence and a breakdown of communication is propoganda.
The US keeps trying to paint it as if the CCP decided (for some reason) that what would best help their goals is to kill millions of their own population and plunge their country into a food crisis.
It would be like the CCP pretending like the mass deaths of the indigenous people of America from smallpox was intended genocide by the Europeans instead of a consequence of the lack of knowledge of microbes and the lack of domesticated animals for the indigenous peoples, except at least that lie is some level of plausible.
> massive government incompetence and a breakdown of communication is propoganda.
The difference is that many of us believe that the authoritarian communist style of government they have causes these issues. No one believes that the US government of the time causes small pox.
Now there maybe a good argument about the profit motivated system not placing sufficient value on human life over growth & exploration.
Except it had little to do authoritarianism or communism, it had to do with the fact that at the time, telecommunication technology had not sufficiently proliferated in the rural communities for individuals aside from the beauracrats sent by Mao to oversee the project would have been able to report the unfolding disaster.
The beauracrats were ironically sent to those rural communities precisely because Mao was worried that the government was becoming overly Byzantine in it's structure so the motivation was in fact to flatten power structures. The problem is that those bureaucrats were motivated to misrepresent the level of success the agriculture project was having out of a desire for increasing their standing.
Mao primary fuck up here was in assuming that these cushy officials would somehow be "purified" by being forced to interact with the salt of the earth rural people. In fact, they just recreated the social hierarchies that they were used to prior to the revolution - using Mao as their justification which would have been fairly effective since he was fairly beloved in the rural communities at the time prior to the cluster fuck that was about to unfold.
Ultimately, the real lesson is that the myth of the "strong leader" is innately counter revolutionary. Mao should have realised this since he had studied some anarchist theory as well as what happened with Lenin when he decided to patronise his entire population and murdered all the independent worker communes and any chance of democracy in the post-Tsar Russia.
Mao tried many experiments including trying to form equitable arrangements with capitalists and land owners, and a national day dedicated to facilitating criticisms of the government. Ultimately though, a combination of ego and niavity ruined what could have been a far more successful and less destructive revolution than what happened in Russia.
Of course the modern day CCP is so byzantine in structure and dehumanising that even Mao's worst nightmares couldn't have imagined it.
