Now Brad, have you gone post-modernist on us? Why not just say perhaps 200 million? What's the fucking difference? They're all just Chinese anyway! And hey, we *know* what happened those first 30 yrs, as assuredly as we know the latest right now.
Do you read the Chinese sources, and have you critiqued the official figure of 17 million (dont worry, the Area Studies Hacks dont read too much of them either, but they at least point to this number). What do you make of those controversial -- rear projected, if you will -- census figures. I mean, I thought that 1953 census was a hoot, what with the inclusion of the population of Taiwan and all. And hey, what is really so wrong with inflating the estimated pop of the 50s by 30%, and then, in the late 60s and beyond, assuming they starved to death in 61-2? If they did exist in the interior countryside, many of them probably would have? And like me, I'm sure youve figured out the various factions and conflicts and competing "lines" and interests at work in the 50s, the 60s and beyond, and how these things do *not* effect *objective* scholars like you and me.
I hate to deprive anyone of the joys of anti-communism and triumphalist liberalism -- what with it being such a bleak period for you Clintonian, dynamic centrists -- but you might actually check the lit. in Area/China Studies. Dont worry, they share your same theoretical bent (nice epistemology: A fact is a fact!) and ethos (they are ardent liberals and anti-commies, keeping up the good fight). Try MacFarquhar or Dali Yang -- they at least have the merit of being scholarly academics and relatively sophisticated, and have done research, though it'd be a stretch to say they were much bothered by writing/historiography as such. They also, last time I checked, said 29; MacF's early volume on the GLF has the arguments I recall, and he doesnt sound as definitive or assured as one might assume (if I recall correctly). It might have moved, millenial fever is upon us. I have no idea what the real number is, I dont think anyone knows for sure, and its a morbid pursuit. Almost as morbid as casually upping the ante or blithely throwing around the figures. But not as paranoid as seeing the other -- i.e., Cambodian or Chinese or even Russian Communist History (about which we know relatively more) -- as totally transparent.
http://www.chinabulletin.com/grp/csg2.htm for a brief excerpt from a piece by W. Wertheimer, a Euro Sinologist (and no commie), and well-published. (If the link is gone, I can dig up the file) The article and WW's bks, and MacF's and Yang's and Jean Oi's bks can be had via uni. libraries, I aint followed the debate, but there are some real Twists out there who actually have complicated notions of truth, and history. But if you or anyone else are getting their info. from J Becker, a hack journalist from south china morning post, or from jung chang or others of that self-indulgent-purple-prose-memoir ilk, get real. Assuming youre actually serious, that is, which I gather you're not.
Despite the brute facts of the droughts and the USSR's pull-out (a de facto sabotage), no one denies there was famine, and that this was significantly, if not primarily "man-made." The questions are what happened exactly, why and how (even more important than "who" to blame) --- e.g., the grassroots party-township-village-cadre system had much to do with both the problems (over-reporting of yields, factional struggles within the CP), *and* with the fairly speedy recovery in the mid-60s. One could go on.
PS to Hep: I agree overall, I think, though can claim no competence in re Stalin era, let alone Cambodia. I'm just glad "we" dont suffer from "incompetence and disregard". Imho, from the bottom up and from the top down, they were all trying. This aside from getting the facts right, one way or the other. Kind of dumb to think otherwise, not to mention what the pomo E. P Thompson called "the enrormous condescension of history."
PPS to Sam: Thanks for this post, look forward to reading it. I think we are more or less on the same wavelength in re "postmodernism" and Lyotard. More later perhaps.... would just throw out the notion that what JFL means by "phrases" is prob. not what you (or virtually anyone but a post-structuralist philosopher) mean by phrase. Of course, this would require me reading The Differend.
-Dan
------------------------------------------------------ Daniel F. Vukovich Dept. of English; The Unit for Criticism University of Illinois Urbana, IL 61801 ------------------------------------------------------