Cameron Maynard "Mao's Great Leap Forward Killed 45 Million in Four Years" Article Critique

As of right now, all i know about this specific genocide is that a Chinese ruler killed hundreds of thousands to millions of fellow Chinese people. This genocidal act was acted out by the infamous Chinese ruler Mao Zedong. Between the years 1958 and 1962, a war broke out between the peasants and the state. This also took place when a third of all the homes in China were destroyed to help in producing fertilizer all while the nation was facing famine and starvation. All of this took place from 1958 and 1962 in the “great” nation of China. All of the death and devastation that occurred in this time happened due to there being a horrible famine and Mao Zedong doing nothing to fix it. If anything, he made it worse. If someone were to steal a simple potato no matter their age, the law said that they were to be tied up and thrown into a river for a certain amount of time. Then, whether they were alive or not, their family had to bury them or be “doused in excrement and urine.” Plus, 80% of the people were banned from the local canteens because they were “too old or ill to be effective workers, so were deliberately starved to death.” To answer the question of how this happened is easy. Mao Zedong was just a horrible leader and ruler that didn’t care for any of his people so he just let them all die. This had a great impact on the nation of China. It has left a horrible dark spot in their history. The lives and families of just over 45 million people, and that’s just the ones that were worked, starved, or beaten to death. Thankfully, this is not an ongoing thing and it stopped about 62 years ago.One good thing about this is that since it was mainly caused by China’s leader, it didn’t have much of an affect on other countries. However, the famine ending is what helped get the Chinese involved in the second world war. This article was written by Arifa Akbar on the INDEPENDENT news website. The main source is a Chinese man who wrote a book over this genocide in this time period. His name is Frank Dikötter. He is a history professor at a college in Hong Kong. The perspective of the author of this article is just an outsider that did some research on this topic so that they would be able to write this article. I honestly have respect for the peasants that rose up and stood against Mao Zedong. Mao Zedong is easily one of the worst leaders. He is almost as bad as Stalin in Russia.Mao Zedong should have at least tried to help his people or even borrow food and other supplies from their allies and friend countries. sadly , this article does not give any ideas on how to help fix this problem so it is of no real use if this event is to ever occur again.