Jasper Becker joins our recent cavalcade of British Intellectuals! John & Frank warmly welcome him to the program for one of his lengthiest interviews to date! Frank has mentioned his now classic book, Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine, numerous times on TRP!
Jasper is one of the most renowned experts on China in the West. He runs the Legend Strategic Consultancy Ltd. He has a BA from Goldsmith's College in the University of London. He also studied at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich and later obtained a post-graduate Diploma in Modern Chinese from the University of London. In addition to Chinese, he speaks French and German. He has been writing on Asia for 25 years and is the author of seven books. He spent 18 years reporting from Beijing and worked as a correspondent in Brussels, Geneva, and Frankfurt. He wrote, Dragon Rising – An Inside Look at China Today and is currently writing a book, The Root of all Evils, about mankind's recent efforts to abolish money and why it can't be done!!
The insane asylum that was Mao's China is examined at length! Listen to the history of Mao's forced collectivization during his supposed Great Leap Forward that led to upwards of 50 million dead Chinese in the greatest famine the world has ever seen! What sets this famine apart from those in Ireland and India is that it was entirely man-made! China was at peace. No blight destroyed the harvest. There were no unusual floods or droughts. The granaries were full and other countries were ready to ship grain. But, a blind devotion to Marxist Leninist ideology and methodology led to one of the most vile and inhumane mass atrocities one could ever imagine. During his terror campaign, Mao and his cult of acolytes, intentionally spit in the face of reason and slavishly promoted some of the greatest scientific absurdities known to man! Reality meant nothing to them, they simply "had faith" that they could literally change nature and re-engineer the environment with "human will." They avowed to push a "pure communist spirit and attitude" that would overcome the overrated successes of "western science." Mao also initiated a great fervor to eradicate "capitalist" thinking. He considered the people "blank sheets of paper" to be molded and coerced. He called it "year zero" and would make the Chinese throw away their individuality, religion, and families. Loyalty to the "party" became paramount over all else and Mao's cadres terrified the people into submission. Because he completely militarized the country he was able to strictly control and propagandize the flow of information. Thus, the true extent of the famine was slow to get to out. But even as word spread, well known Leftists around the world defiantly continued to sing Mao's praises as a "new kind of leader." Famous men like François Mitterrand, now late ex-French president, and committed fellow traveler, called him a great "humanist" and insisted to the very end that he was not a dictator and that there was no famine! These lunatics truly believed he would lead a peasant rebellion from the countryside and drive the engineers into the fields where they would be better off. In a sad bit of irony the Chi-Com's party slogan was "No one shall starve!" When it is all said and done, after the Great Chinese Famine, Mao's Cultural Revolution, and his purges that followed, the Chinese death toll rose to a staggering and most alarming 80 million!
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