The Evil of Mao

The 20th century saw several horrible events, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, the Young Turks genocide in Armenia, and other smaller events under a million dead, but no one in the 20th century came as close to one man in terms of the total number of lives lost as a result of the action of Mao Zedong. Hitler killed up to 14 million people (including over 70% of all Jews) in the Holocaust, Stalin killed over 11 million people through famines in the USSR, Pol Pot killed a quarter of all Cambodians (over 2 million), and half of all Armenians were killed in the Turkish genocide by the Young Turks. Add up all these numbers (which is 30 million approximately) and you still don't come close to the total number of people killed as a result of one man, and that tyrant's name was Mao Zedong.

The 30 million people killed by Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and the Young Turks is about 2/3 of the total number of people killed by starvation by Mao Zedong during the Great Leap Forward. As information has been released, recent estimates have concluded at least 45 million people died as a result of the famine brought on by the decisions of Mao Zedong. For these 45 million deaths the economy actually shrunk, failing in every way.

45 million people dying (0.6% of the global population and 3% of China) should be enough for a man to be seen as a monster by anyone with a soul, but this is not all that Mao Zedong committed. China has supported the dictatorship in North Korea since its founding and if it weren't for China's support of Kim Jong Song it is likely that Korea would not have been divided for long. Because of Mao Zedong's actions, and the actions of the government which follows in his footsteps of supporting the world's largest prison has given the government of North Korea the support it needs to keep from tumbling under internal pressure. They continue to support North Korea to this day by returning refugees and allowing exports of weapons to the tyrant.

For all of these reasons, there is no other person in the history of the world I am aware of who comes close to Mao Zedong in terms of his absolute destruction of human rights and inhumanity. There are certainly people who have tried and are rightfully detested and hated around the world for it, such as Hitler and Stalin, but no one else has been able to succeed as well as he did for almost 70 years.