Population Growth Rate and Mao

[PHANTASM]

I was studying an article about global population growth when I came across the chart below:

 

 

Notice the sudden sharp drop in human population growth rates around 1959?

 

That was due to the Great Leap Forward in Red China, when Mao killed about 50-70 million of his own people due to rapid industrialization. That was how he transformed China into the global superpower it is today.

 

I was shocked that one person could have such a huge impact.

 

The human cost of creating modern industrial China was incomprehensible.

 

It's just stunning to me to see it displayed like that.

[NoGooD]

What was the giant rebound attributed to?

[Crasher]

It's funny how the last line is in red.

[Fb!N!nJa]

Hitler and Mao and one thing in common, they caused genocide but Mao was more sucessful they had different point of views on genocide.. ffs compared to mao, hitler is just a baby sitter, keeping millions of jews locked up. Mao tortured people to an extent, he cut peoples breasts open and burned their prvates, this didnt take place 4 hitler...

[PHANTASM]

What was the giant rebound attributed to?

 

Not sure. Mao settled down I guess, and only killed a few million of his own people every year through starvation and overwork, instead of 50 million.

 

Maybe all the weaker people died in the first couple years of Maoism.

[JoeDirt]

I shall from this day forward ignore all the threads started by Phantasm, sorry dude I could diss you every time you post stuff like this but I have better things to do. Reading a wiki on something doesn't really compare to the hours and sometime days some of us spent doing actual research and papers. I will leave you with this thought. There are people in the world that know something, then there are people like you that think they know something about everything but in fact don't know jack shit. Don't get offended by this, this is also the opinion of others that read your posts. I just have no problems in expressing it.

[Amu]

WoW I ever thought our population ist too high. I thought we have too mach humans.

 

But why is the red line going to go down? Many people will get many babys isn't it?

[PHANTASM]

I shall from this day forward ignore all the threads started by Phantasm, sorry dude I could diss you every time you post stuff like this but I have better things to do. Reading a wiki on something doesn't really compare to the hours and sometime days some of us spent doing actual research and papers. I will leave you with this thought. There are people in the world that know something, then there are people like you that think they know something about everything but in fact don't know jack shit. Don't get offended by this, this is also the opinion of others that read your posts. I just have no problems in expressing it.

 

OK, thanks for the feedback. I don't take your feelings personally.

[PHANTASM]

WoW I ever thought our population ist too high. I thought we have too mach humans.

 

But why is the red line going to go down? Many people will get many babys isn't it?

 

The red line is a projection. It is red because it is not known yet.

 

I want to remind everyone, in case you didn't look closely, that the line is the growth rate, not total population. So the line going down does not mean that the population will go down. Just that the rate at which it increases will go down, do to running out of resources, and people not having as many babies as they get more educated (in general).

 

Eventually we will have so many people we won't be able to add more. At least that's the prediction.

 

Here is the original link I found the graph at (sorry Joe yes it is wikipedia):

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe

[TheDuck]

I disagree phantasm. It may take awhile, but we'll find a way to increase production again. The same thing was said at the beginning of the 20th century before modern agriculture. We are about to see a new revolution in 'cloning' animals and plants. When they clone the animals, they won't have to clone the whole thing. Just a part. We will eventually get around limited resources, but first government has to get out of the way and let the private industry into space. Once the first set of resources from the moon, asteroids, and comets start coming in, a new resource revolution will begin. China I believe is preparing to set up a lunar colony to start mining h3 for the energy needs they will need. Something though I have always wondered, what happens if we bring to earth a shit lot of tonnage? What happens if they earth gets heavyier? Stronger gravity? Granted it would take a long time, but eventually I would imagine it would happen.

[PHANTASM]

I disagree phantasm. It may take awhile, but we'll find a way to increase production again. The same thing was said at the beginning of the 20th century before modern agriculture. We are about to see a new revolution in 'cloning' animals and plants. When they clone the animals, they won't have to clone the whole thing. Just a part. We will eventually get around limited resources, but first government has to get out of the way and let the private industry into space. Once the first set of resources from the moon, asteroids, and comets start coming in, a new resource revolution will begin. China I believe is preparing to set up a lunar colony to start mining h3 for the energy needs they will need. Something though I have always wondered, what happens if we bring to earth a shit lot of tonnage? What happens if they earth gets heavyier? Stronger gravity? Granted it would take a long time, but eventually I would imagine it would happen.

 

Hey I don't know. I just throw out what I think are interesting ideas. Everybody reacts to them differently. But it gets people thinking.

 

Aniaml cloning has an enormous acceptance hurdle to overcome. Consumers don't want it, so the big biotech companies (Mon$anto, DuPont, BA$F) have abondonded the research. Mon$anto used to have a huge animal ag program here in Missouri.

 

Plant biotech is still huge and is the future of farming. Mon$anto has made enormous gains in this field. Just last year, their latest high-yield corn had a 5-10 bushel-per-acre yield increase over conventional corn. So farmers can get more corn, with less pesticide. without crop tilling, with the lastest GMO corn.

 

The big problem now for Mon$anto is the emergence of glyphosate resistant weeds. Now they are looking at other herbicides that can be used the same way as glyphosate, where a gene can be inserted into the crop to make it immune to that chemical.

 

Space exploration is too expensive at the moment, if we have a huge breakthrough though perhaps we can begin pillaging other worlds. China has been talking about getting into space for thirty years, they never put much money into it though. They just copy what the US and Russia have done, in general.

[darkfang77]

I'm sorry phantasm, but you haven't done enough research.

A smaller growth in China is not b/c of increased education, etc.

It is because of the "One child policy", around 1970s where parents in urban areas could only have one child, rural areas may be allowed up to two as children are expected to support parents and family.

 

This move caused controversy because of the favourism that China has towards males (better income, etc) which then meant that back street clinics were constantly getting rid of unwanted females/extra children.

I think there's a pic somewhere on the net where a female child was lying on the road and nobody could care less.

 

Also, your Mathusian theorem is also wrong. It does not apply to anything post-Industrial revolution. The Black Death caused mayhem because of many factors, but the population doubled over a period of around 200-300 years prior to the Black Death, and the build up COULD be attributed to the theorem but not neccessary correct as y.pestis was already a unique bacteria.

 

The whole point of the Mathusian theorem is resources, China has no problem with resources and unlike to yet, in fact, the whole world is pretty much fine, if we started to genetically modify crops, and battery farm (KFC). Then we probably have enough to support ~30 billion at my estimate.

 

I agree with Joe.

If you want something to worry about, then worry about 2012.

[PHANTASM]

I'm sorry phantasm, but you haven't done enough research.

A smaller growth in China is not b/c of increased education, etc.

It is because of the "One child policy", around 1970s where parents in urban areas could only have one child, rural areas may be allowed up to two as children are expected to support parents and family.

 

This move caused controversy because of the favourism that China has towards males (better income, etc) which then meant that back street clinics were constantly getting rid of unwanted females/extra children.

I think there's a pic somewhere on the net where a female child was lying on the road and nobody could care less.

 

Also, your Mathusian theorem is also wrong. It does not apply to anything post-Industrial revolution. The Black Death caused mayhem because of many factors, but the population doubled over a period of around 200-300 years prior to the Black Death, and the build up COULD be attributed to the theorem but not neccessary correct as y.pestis was already a unique bacteria.

 

The whole point of the Mathusian theorem is resources, China has no problem with resources and unlike to yet, in fact, the whole world is pretty much fine, if we started to genetically modify crops, and battery farm (KFC). Then we probably have enough to support ~30 billion at my estimate.

 

I agree with Joe.

If you want something to worry about, then worry about 2012.

 

Yeah I know about the one-child policy. Everybody knows that. I was talking initially about the dip in the human growth rate that occurred under Mao. That's the only thing I found interesting. The rest is just statistics.

 

Malthus has been argued about for over two hundred years, he is still hotly debated. Every time the human race makes a technological breakthrough, people say "Malthus was wrong". Fifty years later we breed ourselves to a new level of misery, and people dust off Malthus' ideas and say "oh wait maybe this old guy from the 1700s was right."

 

China has big problems with resources, actually, they import a large portion of their food from the US.

 

And guys you don't have to apologize and act like this is a fight, I'm not defending a thesis here, just chatting with friends.

[darkfang77]

Yeah I know about the one-child policy. Everybody knows that. I was talking initially about the dip in the human growth rate that occurred under Mao. That's the only thing I found interesting. The rest is just statistics.

 

Malthus has been argued about for over two hundred years, he is still hotly debated. Every time the human race makes a technological breakthrough, people say "Malthus was wrong". Fifty years later we breed ourselves to a new level of misery, and people dust off Malthus' ideas and say "oh wait maybe this old guy from the 1700s was right."

 

China has big problems with resources, actually, they import a large portion of their food from the US.

 

And guys you don't have to apologize and act like this is a fight, I'm not defending a thesis here, just chatting with friends.

 

I'm not fighting, I'm just having a passionate debate.

China; big problem with resources? Can you please back this up?

China is a net importer, but it does not import a "large portion of food from the US"?

IMO, it wouldn't make sense, America has already placed extra trade taxes of Chinese imports, and China has placed trade taxes (or whatever they're called) on American exports.

 

Plus, it's far cheaper to import food resources from other Asian countries, i.e Vietnam. I just can't see any reason China would deliberately buy food from America.

 

As you say, what would you predict to be the next great "level of misery" we'll breed ourselves to?

 

Back to Mao, if everyone's criticizing the millions of deaths he caused to get China where it was.

What would you have done?

[PHANTASM]

I'm not fighting, I'm just having a passionate debate.

China; big problem with resources? Can you please back this up?

 

 

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/be204aa2-304f-11e0-8d80-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1EYZR0izV

 

 

As you say, what would you predict to be the next great "level of misery" we'll breed ourselves to?

 

Look at Egypt. 80 million people jammed into a tiny area demanding jobs, food, housing, and freedom. This is the next level of misery we can expect, duplicated in many parts of the world in the next few decades. It's going to get a lot worse.

 

 

Back to Mao, if everyone's criticizing the millions of deaths he caused to get China where it was.

What would you have done?

 

I would not have tried to catch up with the USSR or US in a "five year plan" that killed countless millions of my own people. But I don't think you get to be the ruler of China by being a nice guy.

 

Mao caused mass famine in China for decades. He worked the peasants to death to grow food, which he exported for weapons to the Russians. He gave food to North Korea and North Vietnam for influence. He even donated food to relatively wealthy East European countries just to show off (see Mao, The Unknown Story, pages 375-377).

 

Mao made everyone in China melt down all their doorknobs and hinges just to make useless pot metal that was later discarded (see Mao, The Unknown Story, page 423). Mao burned most of the books in China.

 

Mao invaded Russia in 1969 (see Mao, The Unknown Story, page 537.) The USSR sent a huge tank army into western China to punish them, and stopped helping them. Mao found himself in a state of war with both the US and the USSR at the same time. He lost his influence over the Communist world, that he had purchased with millions of peasant deaths.

 

He did not need to cause so much death, he did it just to make examples and keep everyone terrified. He never had an original idea that was worth anything, he was imitating Stalin through his whole evil dictator "career".

 

He probably could have accomplished the same industrialization goals without causing so much chaos. It's debatable.