• DarkCloud@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    52
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    It’s weird that Mao, Sun Yat Sen, and Chiang Kai Shek, were all part of the same pro-democracy party early on in China’s civil war.

    Mao won the war, Sun Yat Sen got out of there, Chiang Kai Shek was pushed out and became dictator of Taiwan.

    China is weird.

    Also weird is that one guy caused most of the deaths from famine in both the USSR and China: A conman named Trofim Lysenko, who was lying about having a new science of agriculture… He was bury seeds way further than they could handle then faking his results to keep his job… Killed like, 30 million people who were ordered to take up his techniques.

    • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      13
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      4 months ago

      About China, you know what they say, it’s easier to be the opposition than to actually govern. Many of those who govern end up being corrupt or incompetent or both.

      Who knows if mainland China under ROC would have been better. People say that will be the case when we look at Taiwan. But Taiwan suffered from thirty years of so-called White Terror and Taiwan eventually democratising is arguably pure luck due to a man whose name escapes me.

      The trajectory of history is never predictable. There are far too many factors to consider; factors which are themselves caused by chain reactions of previous factors and events, which themselves are influenced by other previous events.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      4 months ago

      If I remember it correctly, in China Mao ordered sparrow to be killed en masse because they supposedly ate the grain: turns out that what they ate were the pests that attacked the plants.

      • Cowbee [he/him]
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        9
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        4 months ago

        95% correct, the sparrows were also eating the grain, but removing the natural predator to the far worse pests resulted in far worse famine due to an explosion in population of pests. This was one of the factors that resulted in Mao losing influence in the party over time.

    • nonailsleft@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      4 months ago

      China is weird

      Is it? There are plenty of examples of smaller factions joining forces to overthrow a common enemy, who later battled it out amongst themselves.