Opinions vary on the actual numbers, because obviously the Chinese government is uncooperative. But yes, nowadays most of what I see says 25-30 million. It didn't help that those were really awful years weather-wise, too...
As for not knowing what they were doing...who knows, but they modeled it on Stalin's Five Year Plans, which quite explicitly were designed to starve and kill off ethnic groups he thought were troublemakers. (Chechens, for example.)
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2006-01-27 02:31 pm (UTC)As for not knowing what they were doing...who knows, but they modeled it on Stalin's Five Year Plans, which quite explicitly were designed to starve and kill off ethnic groups he thought were troublemakers. (Chechens, for example.)