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According to the author,what are the horrors of the Great Leap Forward often not as well-known to the western world?

According to the author,what are the horrors of the Great Leap Forward often not as well-known to the western world?

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Don’t understand the question (two-three sentences) According to the author,what are the horrors of the Great Leap Forward often not as well-known to the western world?
Date Name Mao Zedong Somin is a law professor at George Mason University. The Great Leap Forward was an economic and social campaign in China led by Mao Zedong and the Communist Party of China from 1958 to 1962. Its aim was to transform the country from an agrarian economy into a socialist society through rapid industrialization and collectivization. It is considered to have been a failure that caused widespread famine. Remembering the Biggest Mass Murder in History by llya Somin Glossary: Primary Source: Who was the biggest mass murderer in the history of the world? Most people probably assume that the answer is Adolf Hitler, architect of the Holocaust, Others might guess Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who may indeed have managed to kill even more innocent people than Hitler did, many of them as part of a terror famine that likely took more lives than the Holocaust. But both Hitler and Stalin were outdone by Mao Zedong, From 1958 to 1962, his Great Leap Forward policy led to the deaths of up to 45 million people-easily making it the biggest episode of mass Great Leap Forward: was an economic and social campaign by the Communist Party of murder ever recorded. Historian Frank Dikötter, author of the important book Mao's Great Famine recently published an article in History Today, summarizing what happened: "Mao thought that he could catapult his country past its competitors by herding villagers across the country into giant people's communes. In pursuit of a utopian paradise,everything was collectivized. People had their work, homes,land, belongings and livelihoods taken from them. In collective canteens, food, distributed by the spoonful according to merit, became a weapon used to force people to follow the party's every dictate. As incentives to work were removed, coercion and violence were used instead to compel famished farmers to perform labor on poorly planned irrigation projects while fields were neglected." China utopian: ideal collectivized: transferred privately owned property to ownership by the people or government A catastrophe of gargantuan proportions ensued. Extrapolating from published population statistics, historians have speculated that tens of millions of people died of starvation. But the true dimensions of what happened are only now coming to light thanks to the meticulous reports the party itself compiled during the famine.... gargantuan: huge extrapolating: extending the application of something What comes out of this massive and detailed dossier is a tale of horror in which Mao emerges as one of the greatest mass murderers in history, responsible for the deaths of at least 45 million people between 1958 and 1962. It is not merely the extent of the catastrophe that dwarfs earlier estimates, but also the manner in which many people died: between two and three million victims were tortured to death or summarily killed, often for the slightest infraction. When a boy stole a handful of grain in a Hunan village, local boss Xiong Dechang forced his father to bury him alive. The father died of grief a few days later. The case of Wang Ziyou was reported to the central leadership: one of his ears was chopped off, his legs were tied with iron wire, a ten kilogram stone was dropped on his back and then he was branded with a sizzling tool-punishment for digging up a potato. dossier: a collection of documents While the horrors of the Great Leap Forward are well known to experts on communism and Chinese history, they are rarely remembered by ordinary people outside China, and have had only a modest cultural impact. I. Why We So Rarely Look Back on the Great Leap Forward What accounts for this neglect? One possible answer is that most of the victims were Chinese peasants-people who are culturally and socially distant from the Western intellectuals and media figures who have the greatest influence over our historical consciousness and popular culture. As a general rule, it is easier to empatnize with victims who seem similar to ourselves. But an even bigger factor in our relative neglect of the Great Leap Forward is that it is part of the general tendency to downplay crimes committed by communist regimes, as opposed to right-wing authoritarians. Unlike in the days of Mao, today very few western intellectuals actually sympathize with communism. But many are reluctant to fully accept what a great evil it was, fearful-perhaps-that other left-wing causes might be tainted by association. In China, the regime has in recent years admitted that Mao made "mistakes" and allowed some degree of open discussion about this history. But the government is unwilling to admit that the mass murder was intentional and continues to occasionally suppress and persecute dissidents who point out the truth. authoritarians: people who support a form of government with strict laws and This reluctance is an obvious result of the fact that the Communist Party still rules China. Although they have repudiated many of Mao's specific policies, the regime still derives much of its legitimacy from his legacy. II. Why It Matters. For both Chinese and westerners, failure to acknowledge the true nature of the Great Leap Forward carries serious costs. Some survivors of the Great Leap Forward are still alive today. They deserve far greater recognition of the horrible injustice they suffered. They also deserve compensation for their losses, and the infliction of appropriate punishment on the remaining perpetrators. few, if any, citizens' rights
Transcribed Image Text:Date Name Mao Zedong Somin is a law professor at George Mason University. The Great Leap Forward was an economic and social campaign in China led by Mao Zedong and the Communist Party of China from 1958 to 1962. Its aim was to transform the country from an agrarian economy into a socialist society through rapid industrialization and collectivization. It is considered to have been a failure that caused widespread famine. Remembering the Biggest Mass Murder in History by llya Somin Glossary: Primary Source: Who was the biggest mass murderer in the history of the world? Most people probably assume that the answer is Adolf Hitler, architect of the Holocaust, Others might guess Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who may indeed have managed to kill even more innocent people than Hitler did, many of them as part of a terror famine that likely took more lives than the Holocaust. But both Hitler and Stalin were outdone by Mao Zedong, From 1958 to 1962, his Great Leap Forward policy led to the deaths of up to 45 million people-easily making it the biggest episode of mass Great Leap Forward: was an economic and social campaign by the Communist Party of murder ever recorded. Historian Frank Dikötter, author of the important book Mao's Great Famine recently published an article in History Today, summarizing what happened: "Mao thought that he could catapult his country past its competitors by herding villagers across the country into giant people's communes. In pursuit of a utopian paradise,everything was collectivized. People had their work, homes,land, belongings and livelihoods taken from them. In collective canteens, food, distributed by the spoonful according to merit, became a weapon used to force people to follow the party's every dictate. As incentives to work were removed, coercion and violence were used instead to compel famished farmers to perform labor on poorly planned irrigation projects while fields were neglected." China utopian: ideal collectivized: transferred privately owned property to ownership by the people or government A catastrophe of gargantuan proportions ensued. Extrapolating from published population statistics, historians have speculated that tens of millions of people died of starvation. But the true dimensions of what happened are only now coming to light thanks to the meticulous reports the party itself compiled during the famine.... gargantuan: huge extrapolating: extending the application of something What comes out of this massive and detailed dossier is a tale of horror in which Mao emerges as one of the greatest mass murderers in history, responsible for the deaths of at least 45 million people between 1958 and 1962. It is not merely the extent of the catastrophe that dwarfs earlier estimates, but also the manner in which many people died: between two and three million victims were tortured to death or summarily killed, often for the slightest infraction. When a boy stole a handful of grain in a Hunan village, local boss Xiong Dechang forced his father to bury him alive. The father died of grief a few days later. The case of Wang Ziyou was reported to the central leadership: one of his ears was chopped off, his legs were tied with iron wire, a ten kilogram stone was dropped on his back and then he was branded with a sizzling tool-punishment for digging up a potato. dossier: a collection of documents While the horrors of the Great Leap Forward are well known to experts on communism and Chinese history, they are rarely remembered by ordinary people outside China, and have had only a modest cultural impact. I. Why We So Rarely Look Back on the Great Leap Forward What accounts for this neglect? One possible answer is that most of the victims were Chinese peasants-people who are culturally and socially distant from the Western intellectuals and media figures who have the greatest influence over our historical consciousness and popular culture. As a general rule, it is easier to empatnize with victims who seem similar to ourselves. But an even bigger factor in our relative neglect of the Great Leap Forward is that it is part of the general tendency to downplay crimes committed by communist regimes, as opposed to right-wing authoritarians. Unlike in the days of Mao, today very few western intellectuals actually sympathize with communism. But many are reluctant to fully accept what a great evil it was, fearful-perhaps-that other left-wing causes might be tainted by association. In China, the regime has in recent years admitted that Mao made "mistakes" and allowed some degree of open discussion about this history. But the government is unwilling to admit that the mass murder was intentional and continues to occasionally suppress and persecute dissidents who point out the truth. authoritarians: people who support a form of government with strict laws and This reluctance is an obvious result of the fact that the Communist Party still rules China. Although they have repudiated many of Mao's specific policies, the regime still derives much of its legitimacy from his legacy. II. Why It Matters. For both Chinese and westerners, failure to acknowledge the true nature of the Great Leap Forward carries serious costs. Some survivors of the Great Leap Forward are still alive today. They deserve far greater recognition of the horrible injustice they suffered. They also deserve compensation for their losses, and the infliction of appropriate punishment on the remaining perpetrators. few, if any, citizens' rights
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