Let's look at actuality. Was: Re: Comparing Mao to Hitler

[Brad De Long]

>Now, Chou En Lai may have been a liar (or my memory may be
>playing me false) but he claimed in an interview that one of the
>major sources of the famine was in the over-anxiousness of the
>local units to report success, and accordingly to submit their
>grain tax based on the production claimed rather than the actual
>production. As a result the central government really didn't know
>that shortages were developing until well after the fact.

This is the kind of thing that--as Sen points out--a free press and
bourgeois democracy are quite good at avoiding. It is very hard to tell
lies to your superiors if there are alternative public sources of
information out there...

Brad DeLong