5. Mao’s Brainstorms Did Not Cause All of China’s Twentieth Century Suffering, But They Were Responsible for a Big Chunk of It
By the 1970s, Maoism had dealt China setback after setback. As seen above, Mao thought that revolutionary zeal could substitute for proper planning, and even rational thinking. The result was a series of debacles such as the poorly named Great Leap Forward, which actually ended up setting China back, and killed tens of millions. Then came Mao’s Cultural Revolution, which again assumed that revolutionary zeal and people power – in this case, the power of young fanatical people – could propel China into modernity and prosperity.
It was another bad Maoist idea, and like the rest of the Chairman’s bad ideas, it inflicted even more chaos and suffering upon the Chinese. By 1976, Mao, who by then accurately reflected his regime and brand of communism, was a debilitated and dying old man. However, he and his hardcore followers still believed that Maoist revolutionary zeal – Mao Zedong Thought – could work miracles. Maoist revolutionary zeal extended to a Chinese system of earthquake prediction that was touted as infallible. As seen below, it was not.
