"Frank Dikötter estimates that at least 2.5 million people [who died as a result of the Great Leap Forward] were beaten or tortured to death and one million to three million committed suicide."

And regarding the famine:

"Yang Jisheng, a long-time communist party member and a reporter for the official Chinese news agency Xinhua, puts the blame squarely on Maoist policies and the political system of totalitarianism,[36] such as diverting agricultural workers to steel production instead of growing crops, and exporting grain at the same time.[82][83] During the course of his research, Yang uncovered that some 22 million tons of grain was held in public granaries at the height of the famine, reports of the starvation went up the bureaucracy only to be ignored by top officials, and the authorities ordered that statistics be destroyed in regions where population decline became evident.[84] "

(EDIT: even better: "Benjamin Valentino writes that like in the USSR during the famine of 1932–33, peasants were confined to their starving villages by a system of household registration,[95] and the worst effects of the famine were directed against enemies of the regime.[31] Those labeled as "black elements" (religious leaders, rightists, rich peasants, etc.) in any previous campaign were given the lowest priority in the allocation of food, and therefore died in the greatest numbers.[31] According to genocide scholar Adam Jones, "no group suffered more than the Tibetans", with perhaps one in five dying from 1959 to 1962.[96]")

Your posts are likely being downvoted because they're misleading to the point of intellectual dishonesty.

Yes that would indicate that the worst effects determined politically. That doesn't mean Mao created a famine, the thing that killed tens of millions of people, to punish those citizens that had the wrong politics and ideas like the claim said

> One of them killed tens of millions (!) of their own citizens for having the wrong politics and ideas[0]

For all your moralizing and posturing, you're have been amazing deceitful in your intellectual dishonesty. Stop bringing up points that distort the actual points being argued as if I can't tell that's what you're doing.

The cited sources literally state that Mao's regime was fully capable of feeding its own people and chose not to because grain exports were deemed a higher priority.

Are you refuting that? If so, then on what grounds? If not, then the claim that "Mao created a famine" and "the famine disproportionately targeted enemies of Mao's regime" are somehow entirely disconnected is an amazing feat of mental gymnastics.

> you're have been amazing deceitful in your intellectual dishonesty

Hello there, Pot. Nice to meet you! I'm Kettle.

> Stop bringing up points that distort the actual points being argued as if I can't tell that's what you're doing.

TIL presenting facts is "distort[ing] the actual points being argued".

Ah well, looks like I learned something new today.

"TIL presenting facts is "distort[ing] the actual points being argued". "

Nah, it's your use of strawman arguments.