Hey, there you go again with your holocaust trivialization via Double Genocide Theory! You even directly mentioned gulags, which saw the overwhelming majority of their deaths during World War II, due to starvation from the Nazi invasion. You're really committed to trivializing the Holocaust and demonizing communism, to the point that you copy and paste the same mantra over and over again as though it's a magic spell.

You also seem to imply that European colonialism was the "greater answer," considering you didn't at all contest that European wealth was built off of the global south and that this is the reason for their heightened life expectancy before China managed to do so. I understand that this is what your ideology inevitably leads to, but it's interesting to admit it so nakedly, intentionally or not.

As for Frank Dikötter, he is far from reliable. He essentially multiplied a baseline number of 30-32.5 million by 1.5 to get 45 million deaths, overgeneralized from anecdotes, pinned all of the famine on Mao in particular as though Mao was supernaturally influential over the weather and how every person in China acted, and collaborates with Radio Free Asia, a fascist US-regime backed news outlet designed to propagandize against China. It's also worth noting that "opposition to the regime" is all that is listed, when we know of massacres committed by the opposition, such as the White Terror. Dikötter relies on selectively presenting evidence in order to paint a picture that appears full, but in reality is full of holes (a characteristic you share with him).