June 30, 2011

Revisiting Alleged 30 Million Famine Deaths during China’s Great Leap, Written by Utsa Patnaik, in People's Democracy, (Weekly Organ of the CPI(M), Vol. XXXV No. 26, June 26, 2011



http://bit.ly/jaBMO0


THIRTY years ago, a highly successful vilification campaign was launched against Mao Zedong, saying that a massive famine in which 27 to 30 million people died in China took place during the Great Leap period, 1958 to 1961, which marked the formation of the people’s communes under his leadership. The main basis of this assertion was, first, the population deficit in China during 1958 to 1961 and, second, the work of two North American demographers, A J Coale (Rapid Population Change in China 1952-1982, 1982) and Judith Banister (China’s Changing Population, 1987). No one bothered to look at the highly dubious method through which these demographers had arrived at their apocalyptic figures.



The ‘estimate’ was later widely publicised by Amartya K Sen who built an entire theory, saying that democratic freedom, especially press freedom, in India meant that famine was avoided while its absence in China explains why the world did not know that such a massive famine had taken place until as much as a quarter century later when the North American demographers painstakingly uncovered it.



The capitalist press was happy to reciprocate the compliment by repeatedly writing of “30 million famine deaths,” to the extent that a fiction was established as historical fact in readers’ minds. The London Economist had a special issue on China some years ago, which repeated the allegation of 30 million deaths in three separate articles and refused to publish the Letter to the Editor this author sent contradicting the claim. More recently, in his Introduction to the book Mao Zedong on Practice and Contradiction, which he edited and published in 2006, Slavoj Zizek also mentioned the figure of 30 millions as though it were a given fact. Well known intellectuals have to be taken seriously and the claim examined.



TWO ROUTES

There are two routes through which very large ‘famine deaths’ have been claimed --- firstly, population deficit and, secondly, imputing births and deaths which did not actually take place. Looking at China’s official population data from its 1953 and 1964 censuses, we see that if the rate of population increase up to 1958 had been maintained, the population should have been 27 million higher over the period over 1959-1961 than it actually was. This population deficit is also discussed by the demographers Pravin Visaria and Leela Visaria. The population deficit was widely equated with ‘famine deaths.’ But 18 million of the people alleged to have died in a famine were not born in the first place. The decline in the birth rate from 29 in 1958 to 18 in 1961 is being counted as famine deaths. The Chinese are a highly talented people, but they have not learnt the art of dying without being born.



There is a basic responsibility that everyone, and more particularly academics, has to be clear and precise about. To say or write that “27 million people died in the famine in China” conveys to the reader that people who were actually present and alive, starved to death.  But this did not actually happen and the statement that it did is false.



China had lowered it death rate sharply from 20 to 12 per thousand between 1953 and 1958. (India did not reach the latter level until over a quarter century later.) After the radical land reforms and the formation of rural cooperatives, there were mass campaigns to clean up the environment and do away with disease bearing pests while a basic rural health care system was put in place. That a dramatic reduction in the rural death rate was achieved, is not disputed by anyone. During the early commune formation from 1958, there was a massive mobilisation of peasants for a stupendous construction effort, which completely altered for a few years the normal patterns of peasant family life. Women were drawn into the workforce, communal kitchens were established and children looked after in crèches as most of the able-bodied population moved to irrigation and other work sites during the slack season. We find a graphic description of this period of mass mobilisation in Wiliam Hinton’s Shenfan. When this author spent three weeks in China in 1983, visiting several communes --- which still existed at that time --- she was told every time that “we built our water conservation system during the Great Leap.” The birth rate fall from 1959 had to do with labour mobilisation, and not low nutrition since the 1958 foodgrain output was exceptionally good at 200 million tons (mt).



HOLES IN THE ARGUMENT

There was excess mortality compared to the 1958 level over the next three years, of a much smaller order. Let us be clear on the basic facts about what did happen: there was a run of three years of bad harvests in China --- drought in some parts, floods in others, and pest attacks. Foodgrain output fell from the 1958 good harvest of 200 mt to 170 mt in 1959 and further to 143.5 mt in 1960, with 1961 registering a small recovery to 147 million tons. This was a one-third decline, larger than the one-quarter decline India saw during its mid-1960s drought and food crisis. Grain output drop coincided in time with the formation of the communes, and this lent itself to a fallacious causal link being argued by the academics who were inclined to do so, and they blamed the commune formation for the output decline. One can much more plausibly argue precisely the opposite --- that without the egalitarian distribution that the communes practised, the impact on people of the output decline, which arose for independent reasons and would have taken place anyway, would have been far worse. Further, without the 46,000 reservoirs built with collective labour on the communes up to 1980, the effects of later droughts would have been very severe. Recovery to the 200 million ton level took place only by 1965. Throughout, however, the per capita foodgrain output in China even during the worst year, 1960, remained substantially above that in India.



As output declined from 1959, there was a rise in the officially measured death rate from 12 in 1958 to 14.6 in 1959, followed by a sharp rise in 1960 to 25.4 per thousand, falling the next year to 14.2 and further to 10 in 1962. While, clearly, 1960 was an abnormal year with about 8 million deaths in excess of the 1958 level, note that this peak official ‘famine’ death rate of 25.4 per thousand in China was little different from India’s 24.8 death rate in the same year which was considered quite normal and attracted no criticism. If we take the remarkably low death rate of 12 per thousand that China had achieved by 1958 as the benchmark, and calculate the deaths in excess of this over the period 1959 to 1961, it totals 11.5 million. This is the maximal estimate of possible ‘famine deaths.’ Even this order of excess deaths is puzzling given the egalitarian distribution in China, since its average grain output per head was considerably above India’s level even in the worst year, and India saw no generalised famine in the mid-1960s.   



IDEOLOGICAL BIAS

Relative to China’s population, this figure of plausible excess mortality is low and it did not satisfy the academics in northern universities who have been always strongly opposed to socialised production. Coale’s and Banister’s estimates gave them the ammunition they were looking for to attack the communes. How exactly do Coale and Banister reach a figure of ‘famine deaths’ which is three times higher than the maximal plausible estimate? Examining carefully how they arrived at 30 million ‘famine deaths’ estimate, we find that the figure was manufactured by using indefensible assumptions, and has had no scholarly basis.



In the 1982 census, there was a survey on fertility covering one million persons or a mere 0.1 per cent sample of the population, who were asked about births and deaths from the early 1950s onwards. The very high total fertility rate obtained from this 1982 survey is used by them to say that millions more were actually born between the two census years, 1953 and 1964, than were officially recorded. They ignore the birth rate of 37 per thousand derived from a very much larger 1953 sample which had covered five per cent of all households and was specially designed to collect the information on births and deaths used in the official estimates. Instead, they impute birth rates of 43 to 44 per thousand to the 1950s, using the 1982 survey. There is no justification for such an arbitrary procedure of using a much later reported high fertility rate for a long distant past. We know that a distant recall period makes responses inaccurate. These imputed extra births between 1953 and 1964 total a massive 50 million but according to them did not increase by an iota the 1964 population total, 694.6 million, the official figure which they assume as correct. Thus, although all official birth and death rates are rejected by them, the official population totals are accepted. This opportunistic assumption is clearly necessary for their purpose because it allows them to assert that the same number of extra people died between 1953 and 1964, as the extra people they claim were born.



FALLACIOUS CLAIMS

But the demographers are still not satisfied with the 50 million extra births and deaths that they have conjured up. Fitting a linear time trend to the falling death rate of the early fifties is done to say that deaths should have continued to decline steeply after 1958 and since it did not, the difference from the trend meant additional ‘famine deaths.’ Such straight-line trend fitting is a senseless procedure since the death rate necessarily shows non-linear behaviour. It cannot continue falling at the same steep rate; it has to flatten out and cannot reach zero in any population --- not even the inimitable Chinese people could hope to become immortal. The final estimate of extra deaths in both authors is raised thereby to a massive 60 million, a heroic 65 per cent higher than the official total of deaths over the inter-censal period.



Having created these 60 million extra deaths at their own sweet will out of nothing, the authors then proceed to allocate them over the years 1953 to 1964, arbitrarily attributing a higher portion to the great leap years in particular. The arbitrariness is clear from the variation in their own manipulations of the figures. Coale’s allocation raises his peak death rate in 1960 to 38.8 per thousand while Banister is bolder and raises it to 44.6 compared to the official 25.4 for that year, and 30 million ‘famine deaths’ are claimed over the Great Leap years after all this  smart legerdemain. Having violated every tenet of reason, these ‘academics’ may as well have allocated all their imaginary deaths to the Great Leap years and claimed that 60 million died --- why hang themselves only for a lamb rather than for a sheep! Seldom have we seen basic norms of academic probity and honesty being more blatantly violated, than in this travesty of statistical ‘estimates.’ And seldom have  noted intellectuals, who might have been expected to show more common sense, shown instead more credulous naivete and  irresponsibility, by accepting without investigation and propagating such nonsensical ‘estimates,’ giving them the status of historical fact. In the process, they have libelled and continue to libel Mao Zedong, a great patriot and revolutionary. They have unwittingly confirmed the principle attributed to Goebbels --- that a lie has to be a really big lie and be endlessly repeated; then it is bound to be believed.



Thirty million or three crores is not a small figure. When one million people died in Britain’s colony, Ireland, in 1846-47, the world knew about it. When three million people died in the 1943-44 Bengal famine, the fact that a famine occurred was known. Yet 30 million people are supposed to have died in China without anyone knowing at that time that a famine took place. The reason no one knew about it is simple, for a massive famine did not take place at all. The intellectuals who quote the massive famine deaths figure of 30 million today, are no doubt outstandingly clever in the small, im kleinen, but are proving themselves to be rather foolish im grossen, in the large. A person has to be very foolhardy indeed to say that 30 million people died in a famine without anyone including the foreign diplomats in China and the China-watchers abroad having the slightest inkling of it. And those who credulously believe this claim and uncritically repeat it show an even greater folly than the originators of the claim.                                                
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GREECE: Public Outrage over Austerity Plan, by Bego Astigarraga, IPS, 30 June, 2011

http://bit.ly/k6F32b

ATHENS, Jun 30 (IPS) - The mass protests in Greece swelled by the hour as parliament voted this Thursday to implement the social and economic adjustment plan approved Wednesday, including measures for privatisation, tax hikes, spending cuts and mass lay-offs in the state sector.
The increasingly disappointed and restless crowd continued to demonstrate in the streets of Athens against the new Medium Term Fiscal Strategy 2012-2015, that will seriously affect middle- and low-income families and was approved at the insistence of the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

A prime target of the protestors' wrath is German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "She is to blame for handing Greece over to the speculators," said Nikiforos, one of the thousands of demonstrators gathered in front of the parliament building in Syntagma Square. "We must carry on demonstrating and organise a united social movement in Europe."

Konstantine, a physics student at the University of Athens, said: "The situation for workers is tragic, as they are on the edge of levels of genuine poverty." "University matriculation used to be free, but it now costs 800 euros (1,161 dollars). Schools are being closed, and public transport fares have risen by 40 percent," she told IPS.

For his part, Alexander, a psychologist and teacher of children with disabilities who belongs to the Front of the Anti-Capitalist Left (ANTARSYA), told IPS the government "wants to sell the country out to the IMF in order to save the bankers.

"Do they want to strangle us even more? We won't let them," he said.

In spite of the pressure exerted by a two-day general strike, the crowds of demonstrators surrounding parliament and the clashes with police that have left dozens of people injured, parliament narrowly passed the new adjustment plan Wednesday, with 155 votes in favour, 138 against and five abstentions. Only one lawmaker of the rightwing opposition New Democracy party voted with the governing Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK).

Panayotis Kurublis, the sole socialist lawmaker who voted against the austerity programme, was immediately expelled from the party, further narrowing the government's parliamentary majority.

Kurublis and the opposition appear to agree with over 80 percent of Greeks who in various polls rejected the stringent austerity plan and said they were totally against "selling their country at the diktats" of the so-called "troika" of the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF.

Following the approval of the plan, a condition laid down by the troika for proceeding with the second phase of a financial bailout, the government of Prime Minister George Papandreou will have to implement a vast privatisation programme this year.

"We must prevent the country's collapse at all costs," said Papandreou ahead of the parliamentary vote. The passage of the austerity plan freed up the payment of the next tranche of 17 billion dollars out of a bailout loan totalling 157 billion dollars that was approved in May 2010 by the EU and IMF.

Experts say Greece's debt, the highest in the EU, will grow to 166 percent of GDP by 2012.

The new austerity package - the second since March 2010 - aims to make savings of some 28.4 billion euros (over 40 billion dollars) between 2012 and 2015 from tax hikes and public spending cuts. The government's target is to reduce the deficit to below three percent of GDP in 2015.

An estimated 45 billion euros (65.3 billion dollars) of revenue during the same period is expected from the total or partial sale of dozens of public enterprises, such as state-owned refineries, power stations, ATEbank (a largely agricultural bank), as well as management concessions for airports, highways and ports, mining rights, real estate and land.

A "solidarity tax" has been introduced which will be a one-off levy of one to five percent of personal incomes, with the highest rates being applied to the highest income brackets. The minimum taxable income threshold will be lowered, although earnings of workers under 30 and pensioners' incomes will remain tax-free.

Value added tax in bars and restaurants will be raised from 13 to 23 percent.

Despite the draconian nature of the austerity plan, international analysts are sceptical of the results it will bring for the country, which is on the brink of default. Meanwhile, popular discontent is growing and further unrest is feared.

The two-day general strike, in which all the unions joined with a very high participation rate, was a clear sign that Greek citizens are not prepared to accept more spending cuts and higher taxes.

The last straw could be the decision to eliminate 150,000 of the current 700,000 public employee posts. The government intends not to renew the contracts of temporary workers, tantamount to dismissal, and to replace only one in 10 public officials who retire.

June 19, 2011

Communist Party Israel condemns repression in Syria while opposing imperialist interference, by Uri Weltmann , Sunday, June 19 2011


http://bit.ly/iBT4Ev


CPI never backed oppression: Response to Yossi Gurvitz


This weekend, Yossi Gurvitz accused former MK Muhammad Naffa, secretary-general of the Communist Party of Israel of backing the suppression of the Syrian uprising. Uri Weltmann, a member of the Communist Party of Israel, denies these allegations and clarifies the party position below. Yossi Gurvitz replies to Uri Weltmann, here.



Reading Yossi Gurvitz’s article, which aims to “expose” the position of the Communist Party of Israel (CPI) on the developments in Syria, one is attacked by an eerie feeling of déjà vu. Suddenly, we are thrown back to the old days of the Cold War era, where facts need not stand in the way of finger pointing, and a truthful account of events is just a distraction from the fanning of anti-Communist hysteria.

The title of Gurvitz’s article – “Israeli Communist Party supports Bashar Assad (but only in Arabic)” – is doubly false: First, because the position of the CPI is not one of support for Assad, nor of support towards the criminal ways in which the Syrian army is treating the protesters; Second, because the sinister allegation that the views expressed in the Arabic press of the Party, are somehow different from the views expressed in the Hebrew press of the Party, is an old re-hash of an old lie.

Gurvtiz bases all of its claims on one blog post, by the former-Communist Joseph Algazy, which contains numerous slanders, half-truths and plain falsehoods. Gurvitz – who doesn’t read Arabic – took these claims to be true, without ever bothering to check them against facts. He is not the only Israeli Left blogger who has re-posted the slanderous piece by Algazy, but he has done so with the most enthusiasm, adding his own attacks on the principle of Jewish-Arab partnership inside the CPI (which he refers to as “a facade”).

Normally, one would not bother to write a response to such a piece. But the fact that more than one reader was fooled by the fallacies which Gurvitz, Algazy and co. peddle, demands that the record be set straight.

What exactly is the position of the CPI towards the protests in Syria?

On March 24th, shortly after the Syrian protests became a widespread mass phenomena, the Political Bureau of the CPI met, and published the following statement:

The Political Bureau emphasizes its complete rejection of the way in which the Syrian regime had chosen to act, and denounces its crimes towards the protesters, especially in Daraa, which has caused the injury and deaths of many protesters. The Syrian regime, which is threatened by US Imperialism and Israel, must meet the just demands of the protesters for freedom, democracy, a dignified life, and against corruption and emergency laws.

Contrary to the outrageous claims made by Gurvitz against the CPI, this statement – indeed, like all Party statements – was published in Hebrew, as well as in Arabic.

This position was repeated time and again in the Party press. One recent example, published last week, would be the article in “Zo Haderech” by Tamar Gozansky (Member of the Political Bureau, and former member of Knesset), who not only condemned the killing of protesters, but also warned against the danger of imperialist intervention.

This twofold position – of condemning the killings, while warning against the plans of imperialism – was repeated in the article in “Al-Ittihad” by Faten Ghattas, (Chairperson of the Party’s Central Control Commission).

In the blog post of Algazy, which was re-posted by Gurvitz, Muhammad Naffa, Secretary General of the CPI, is accused of supporting Bashar Assad. Gurvitz – following Algazy – had no misgivings about journalistic norms, when he goes on to plainly state, without a shred of proof, that Naffa had “denounced the [Syrian] uprising”. But while Algazy quotes extensively from those who criticize an article published by Naffa in “Al-Ittihad”, he doesn’t quote a single word from what Naffa had actually said. Why is that? And why hadn’t he provided a link to that article, so that the readers could judge for themselves?

In the above-mentioned article, Naffa says: “We support that the brave Syrian people will receive all of their rights, and we oppose the corruption, the State Security courts, the arbitrary arrests, the emergency laws, and the attacks on the freedom of expression, and other freedoms.” Quite a “denunciation”, isn’t it?

Naffa goes on to warn against the danger of imperialist intervention (like the Political Bureau did in its March statement, and like Gozansky and Ghattas did in their last week articles), but neither “support for Bashar Assad”, nor “denunciation of the Syrian uprising”, are anywhere to be found.

The same views by Naffa can be found in an interview, published in Saturday on the website of the CPI, and in Sunday’s issue of “Al-Ittihad.”

Algazy continued to practice “creative journalism” when he quoted a sentence, taken from a statement by a meeting of Communist Parties in Europe, which calls on Communist Parties “to express their support for Syria in the face of the imperialist plots”. This part of the statement has received criticism from some Arab thinkers, whose objections to this wording are quoted in detail by Algazy. But never once did he mention that the CPI did not actually participate in that meeting of Parties, nor was it a signatory of that statement – although he knowingly lends his readers to believe that is the case.

Why did the principled position taken by the CPI arouse so much anger among various “Left” bloggers in Israel?

Unlike some liberals on the Left, who give unconditional support to the protesters, regardless of their demands, the CPI has refused to take imperialism out of the equation. It would be plain ignorance to claim that US imperialism is indifferent towards the developments in Syria, or that it doesn’t have an interest in having a specific political line to become dominant among the protesters. Therefore, any analysis of the developments in Syria has to start by taking them in context. Not every demand by the protesters has to be automatically supported, but things have to be weighed objectively.

On the other side, contrary to some would-be “anti-imperialists”, who play the erroneous game of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”, the CPI had consistently pressed for the demands of the Syrian people for democracy, freedom and social justice to be met. The Party had been quite clear that arbitrary use of power, and killing of innocent and peaceful protesters, is something that we unequivocally condemn.

Is ours a complicated position? Indeed, and rightly so. One cannot provide a simple solution to a complicated situation. Those on the Left who would try to do so, will necessarily find themselves either siding with a repressive and corrupt government, or with an occupying imperialist power.

The CPI’s position might prove to be unpopular – both to those who ignore imperialism, as well as to the apologists of the repressive Syrian government – but it is a principled stand. For more than 90 years, the Communists in this country, Jews and Arabs alike, held on to their principles, even at times when doing so was difficult, or even life-risking. We are greatly proud of that. And we will continue to do so.

Uri Weltmann is a member of the Communist Party of Israel (CPI), and member of the National Secretariat of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash). He works as a high school Mathematics teacher, and is currently studying towards his Masters degree in Philosophy of Science, at Haifa University.

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