Eric MD-PhDing

The thing about Mao Zedong was that he was not just a dictator. He was actually a f***ing idiot to such an extent that it would make Trump’s ridiculous claims of himself being a “stable genius” almost credible. Mao forced farmers to make steel out of farm tools and in small village furnaces, which left farmers with no tools to work the fields. He forced farmers to chase away insect-eating sparrows, which led yo locust-infested fields. Millions starved to death as a result. He thought that turning the population on itself in endless struggle was the path to proletariat prosperity - all it had done was to make more starve to death, loss of Chinese know-how across the board and China left on the brink of bankruptcy. His views on dental hygiene were so off the planet that he eschewed both “modern” or more traditional Chinese modes of dental care, to the point that his doctors and others all mention the rotting stench that emanated from his mouth. Not all dictators are idiots - Deng Xiaoping was a dictator but not an idiot. But Mao excelled himself in his idiotmaxxing, more a buffoonish Idi Amin than a dangerously bright Emperor Kangxi.

Fancy a Cambridge professor who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. China’s path to global significance actually started when Deng Xiaoping DITCHED Maoist policy settings by gradually dismantling collectivisation, encouraging private enterprise, easing political repression (1989 aside), and adopting a more Western-friendly attitude (which culminated in China joining the WTO under Deng’s successors, and that in turn gave China Western market access which set it on the path to economic strength). And while not even Xi completely reverted to Maoism, his partial reversal of Deng’s pro-market, pro-Western settings coincided with China’s current “Japan on steroids” unceasing economic doldrums.