Mao's economic record wasn't bad, actually.
I think it’s high time we moved on from cold war propaganda and had a genuine discussion about Mao’s true economic record.
Why? Because this is one of the biggest misunderstandings on China’s development, which I come across all the time (recent example below 👇): the belief that he made - or kept - China poor, and that it was only after liberalization gave Chinese people the freedom to engage in market activity that China experienced economic growth, essentially despite the Party rather than because of it. The Party only gets credit for stepping aside, if that. It’s a framework that treats “freedom” and “markets” as magic words that explain everything.
The only problem with this framework is that it’s completely false, and demonstrably so.
The truth is that Mao’s economic record was actually not bad at all. Furthermore, the growth that accelerated after Mao in the period of Reform and Opening would have been completely impossible without the transformation of China under his tenure.
One number for you: under Mao, China’s GDP PPP per capita (meaning per person) was multiplied by about 2.5x from just above $400 in the early 1950s to nearly $1,000 in 1978. These figures aren’t from a “communist source”, they’re taken straight from a report by the Congressional Research Service, the research arm of the U.S. Congress.
This is confirmed in another report by the extremely serious National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), one of the most prestigious economic research institutions in the U.S., who found in a report entitled “The Economy of People’s Republic of China from 1953” that “the Chinese economy in 1952-1978 grew rather rapidly” with an average annual growth rate of real GDP of 6%. This equates to the overall Chinese economy being multiplied by 5 over the Mao era, which is consistent with China’s GDP per capita nearly tripling since the Chinese population simultaneously increased by 75% during the period (5 divided by 1.75 equals 2.85).
All of this means that far from Mao making - or keeping - China poor as most people assume, the truth is that he made the average Chinese person nearly three times richer over his tenure - as we’ll see a more impressive economic record than that of any peer nation at the time (or, for that matter, any U.S. president). Mao didn’t make - or kept - China poor: he just started with a really low base.
It might not make me popular but these misperceptions are so commonplace that I’ve decided to write an entire article looking in depth into Mao’s economic record, which I hope will challenge some of the lazy assumptions that dominate discussions about China’s rise. My article doesn’t shy away from the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution - in fact, examining what actually happened during these periods, rather than relying on received wisdom, reveals a more complex and surprising economic story than either critics or defenders typically acknowledge.
