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Kylian Mbappe loses Chinese sponsors for calling Mao ‘Chinese dictator’
(www.aljazeera.com)
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this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2026
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I trivialize nothing.
The topic here is Mao. And according to Chinese archives,
This comes, again, from Chinese sources. There is no chance of any 'Western bias' here.
Whatabouting such evidence and at the same time celebrating Mao, who was a mass murderer, is particularly repugnant.
If you go ahead with similar deflection, I won't respond anymore.
Frank Dikötter may have used records, yes, but as I already said, he generalized from minor anecdotes. That's why he multiplied a baseline number of 30 million into 45 million. The sources are Chinese, the presentation of the records is overwhelmingly western. This isn't simply "whataboutism," the selective presentation of information is the same tactic that Israelis use to portray Palestinians as terrorists.
Did millions die in famine? Yes.
Was it mismanaged? Yes.
Was it a deliberate campaign to starve the people of China? No.
And, taking that last point into account, we can contextualize that for all of Mao's missteps, he still freed the country from imperialism, still freed women from foot binding, still ended famine in a country where famine was rampant, doubled life expectancy, and secured a future where China could be proud of itself. It is for those reasons that, in accordance with official CPC evaluation putting Mao as 70% good, 30% bad, he is beloved by the people of China.
Meanwhile, you have not once acknowledged that your deliberate rhetorical tie of communists to Nazis is a core component of Double Genocide Theory, nor have you corrected yourself when stating that colonialism was the correct path for European development. Even if your goal is to espouse your perceived virtues of European liberalism, you shouldn't be undermining your own rhetoric through trivializing the Holocaust.
Was it a deliberate campaign to starve the people of China?
Yes, it was deliberate.
If you
then, of course, it is all done deliberately. You can't do such things by 'mistake' ... things like that are not simple mismanagement or something like that. They are deliberate crimes.
And, to make it all worse, Mao is even portrayed as a hero by official narratives. It's not that they don't condemn him, they literally celebrate him. He was a mass murderer as he stands in the line of history with the worst dictators like Hitler and Stalin.
I'm honestly curious now if your repetition of the same exact phrases equating communism to Nazism is truly organic, but I'll assume it is. In any case, you have repeated Double Genocide Theory, and have not acknowledged nor challenged that point.
We've already established that Frank Dikötter is friendly with the CIA as a propagandist through his work with Radio Free Asia. We know that he selectively presents evidence, while reporting a narrative in line with the right-wing. We also know that he manipulates numbers off of gut feelings, and extrapolates from local anecdotes unscientifically. He's also fringe in his opinions, and portrays local actions as though they were directly commanded by Mao, rather than autonomous decisions at a local level in the midst of the chaos of famine.
Felix Wemheuer in Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union argues that it was ambitious industrialization that led to famine, not a desire to kill millions of Chinese citizens. This is from a western, liberal scholar, who correctly points out that even if the administration has responsibility for mismanagement, it did not have intent. The cases you brought up, that Dikötter selectively shared to provoke an emotional response, do not prove widespread intent to punish Chinese citizens.
Your narrative relies on Chinese people being stupid and incapable of understanding their own historical conditions. Chinese people celebrate Mao not because they are stupid, not because they are evil, but because with Mao came an end to famine, an end to footbinding, an end to imperialism, and the beginning of rapid improvements in living conditions. Even if there were errors along the way, some more major than others, Chinese people understand that the modern prosperity of China today began with Mao.