Thanks to effective propaganda of western mass media, it is now common to quote that Mao Zedong caused the death of around 30-40 million Chinese people during the Great Leap. But I bet you don’t know Jiang Zemin caused the death of over 80 million Chinese people. I come to that conclusion by calculating the mortality rate of China. I will just use a textbook text to explain mortality rate “Mortality rate, or death rate, is a measure of the number of deaths (in general, or due to a specific cause) in a particular population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit of time. Mortality rate is typically expressed in units of deaths per 1,000 individuals per year; thus, a mortality rate of 9.5 (out of 1,000) in a population of 1,000 would mean 9.5 deaths per year in that entire population, or 0.95% out of the total.”

During Jiang’s presidency from 1989-2002, China’s death rate is around 6.5. Which mean that over 7 million Chinese died every year. The figure is huge simply due to the fact that in 1989, the population of China is 1118.7 million. Despite the number of death every year, China’s population grow to 1280.4 million in 2002.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/china/death-rate-crude-per-1-000-people-wb-data.html

And as China’s base population increases under Hu Jintao (president of China from 2002-2012), the number of death under Hu is close to 100 million. Currently, China’s population is still growing. So by the time Xi JinPing’s presidency ended in a decade, well over 100 million Chinese will die. China’s population stood at 1376 million in 2015. And with a median age of around 37, China’s death rate has actually increased to over 7.

A very useful information for China’s population research. Bear in mind that the figure is for mainland China only.

http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/china-population/

The most malicious argument I have seen used against Mao and the CPC is that they caused more Chinese death than the Japanese invasion, and thus inflicted even more harm to China than any foreign invaders. In pretty much every encounter with naysayers of China, it is a common theme that China would be better off without the CPC. And for them, to bring up GLF, CR, Tiananmen etc is pretty much a certainty. They would actually pull out the distorted death rate figure as an argument. So much so that they believe during the last 8 years (1937-1945) of the Japanese invasion of China the death toll is 20-25 million. However, they would in a moral high horse state that Mao and CPC caused the death around 40 million people in 3 short years, some would even increase the figure to 50 million or higher. Of course when dealing with Communist China, the larger the figure the merrier they seem to feel.

Allen’s previous systematic analysis of figures point to a serious distortion of fact. However, I doubt any one hell bent on demonizing the CPC would bother to think or discuss the matter logically. This is why I suggest simply make a mockery of their baseless accusation. For example simply quote the following:

Jiang Zemin 1989-2002 (90 million death)

Hu Jintao 2002-2012 (100 million death)

Xi Jinping 2012- (over 100 million death)

So the conclusion is that all Chinese leaders are mass murderers. In fact, one might even go one step further by stating that during Mao leadership of China from 1949-1976, he caused the death of over 100 million Chinese. Hmmm, it seems China’s leadership has become much worse. It takes 27 years under Mao for 150 million Chinese to die but only a decade for his successors since Jiang Zemin. The CPC is certainly the worse government on earth.

China’s life expectancy increased from around 35 years in 1949 to 77 years in 2015. Everything is meaningless without a proper comparison. Even in a much richer country like the US, the death rate is pretty high due to the fact that the median age is higher than China. China’s median age in 1955 is 22 years while in the US it is 30. The death rate for US is currently, over 8 and mostly hovers above China even from the 1960s to 1990s. So in every decade around 18-25 million American died. Wow, isn’t the figure just 1/4 that of China? Yes, the population of the US is only 1/4 that of China. However, as we see China’s life expectancy has caught up and is now 77 years compare to 79 years of the US.

To be honest, initially I want to compare China to other developing countries after WWII. As I feel that China belongs in the same development category with countries such as India, Indonesia, Brazil etc. However, after some comparison I feel it is more apt to compare China to the US as the latter annual death figure is 1/4 that of China from 1960s onward. So to take things into context, the death rate of China is not that extraordinary even compare to a country like the US. But when quote out of context with ill intent it becomes quite a propaganda tool.



