Reminder: Income per person in China is about one-third that of the Taiwan. And about 1/4 that of the US. China is, to a first approximation, a scaled up, less successful, late-arriving Taiwan. If the other team had won the civil war, China today would likely be better off.
Weird to see anyone treating the China model as outright appealing. Aside from the impressive scale, China's total performance is weak by the standards of countries with high test scores, high ancestral experience with technology. A bias toward changes over levels I guess.
A gloss on this is that China has been catching up lately, but yes, the cult of Mao set them back decades.
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At the end of the day, if you've ever been to Taiwan--I have--or mainland China, well, talk about its economy all you want ... but the air pollution is on the order of something never seen in our country (the USA ... as much as I wish my country were Canada). Choking, visible, grimy air. People wearing bandanas around their faces (years before Covid) in public. And folks in cities in Taiwan buy their water at the 7-11. Don't drink from the taps.
Economic, shmeconomic. There are real-world consequences to fiscal policies. Of course, we're working on catching up to their air quality here ...
Well the air quality in mainland Chinese cities is just as bad if not worse. Living in Beijing is like smoking two packs a day.
Ever been to Shanghai, esteemed Cervantes? Southern China in general is a very different story.
I've always been fascinated by this Mao-bashing, Kumitang-fluffing tone in american media. How does one blithely ignore that China, like Cuba, had to develop in the teeth of western opposition, and often outsight economic sabotage, while places like Taiwan and Germany benefited from massive cold war aid and investment programs. The same pundits will tell you that Iran's government is failing to provide while pretending that the US isn't leading a program of economic warfare against the country.
Given the ongoing program of American deindustrialization set against China's continuing modernization, expect to see lots more of these reality denial hit pieces.
It is true that Taiwan benefited from a friendly West, but that is no excuse for the disastrous reign of Mao. After his death, the Chinese regime achieved rapid economic growth by utterly and radically repudiating Maoism. Thinking about the future of China in the world requires us to see China as it is today, which has nothing to do with Mao, although they do preserve his cult of personality as a museum relic.
I don't think that anyone who discusses CCP vs Kuomintang is trying to make any sort of a point about China today.
When pundits discuss PRC vs Taiwan economic growth over time they are, by definition, implicating CCP vs KMT policy sets. Neither of these countries got to where they are now from a zero point in the 80's. Within that fact matrix you cannot dismiss Mao's policies which set the groundwork for China's industrialization despite his agrarianism. The mass execution of the landlords and subsequent land redistribution, among other things, shook up society and made space for the current program to succeed.
Years ago I was asked in a job interview what I would do differently in my past. My answer was "Nothing. I've made plenty of mistakes, but I like who and where I am today, and those previous decisions are how I got to this point." The same holds true for the state as for the individual.
This is an opportunity for me to offer a clarification. Until I started this series of posts I hadn't read the most recent historical writing on Medieval Europe. Many historians have stopped using the term "feudal" because it incorporates two concepts that don't necessarily go together: manorial economy, and vassalage. Vassalage disappeared from China nearly 2,000 years ago;* and was disappearing from Europe by the 16th Century with the centralization of the nation state. Ranks of nobility continued to be used but they no longer represented the tributary, patron/client relationships of the Middle Ages. However, the manorial system continued in both Europe and China. That's the more precise term to describe Imperial China at the end, and as you say, that's the system that the Communists overthrew.
*There were actually exceptions. There were subject realms within the empire that were effectively fiefdoms, and the Emperor even had a department of feudal relationships. But this was not the basic structure of Han China.
My gratitude, esteemed Cervantes. I had not heard of this reclassification but it makes a great deal of sense. Many of the "communist" revolutions in 20th century colonial states were revolts against such manorial systems. The distinction, which I think is critical to understanding Maoist China, is that there the manor house had a form of wealth but very little political power. They were in fact land poor, much like the French and English gentry in the 19th century, which is why the powerful central governments of the era sent them and the displaced peasantry off to die in colonial wars.
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