The Top Seven Secrets The Chinese Government Would Like To Keep

Seven Secrets That China Would Like To Keep -- Harper's Magazine

Writing at the New York Review of Books blog page, Princeton professor Perry Link enumerates the seven deadly secrets that China’s octogenarians want to keep from the public at all cost. It makes an excellent list of potential dissertation topics for students of Chinese history and politics:

1. The famine during the Great Leap Forward in 1959-62. Somewhere between 20 and 50 million people died because of bad policy, not “bad weather.” What exactly happened? What policies caused the famine and what policies suppressed information on it? How much grain was in state granaries while people starved? Is it true that Mao sold grain to the Soviet Union during those years in order to buy nuclear weapons?

Read more ....

My Comment: I encountered secret #7 (bank accounts of Communist Party officials) 20 years ago when we were hosting a visiting delegation of Chinese officials and managers in Montreal. After a week of showing them the city, the oldest official in the group invited us to the best Chinese Restaurant in Montreal (The Piment Rouge).

When it came to pay, the Chinese official who invited us for dinner pulled out a Bank of Macao Mastercard. I teased him that I hoped his credit limit would be enough to cover the bill (about $1500) .... he then confided in me that his limit on this card was $500,000 US.

That event happened in 1989 .... and China has gotten a lot richer since then.