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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3

User "volunteer marek" is breaking wiki's rules & essentially stalking people

This user has a history of accusing people who disagree with him of being alts of some banned guy, then deleting their edits. He even goes through their history undoing things, which he "justifies" purely by accusing people of being alts.

He has no proof of such, & it's a personal attack, which he continues to do no matter how many times he's told it's breaking rules.

While one day I lost my temper & used personal attacks, I was wrong to, & I promise not to in the future.

He's different- this is his regular behavior.

If anyone is watching this, please don't allow this guy to continue such behavior. Volunteer Eddy (talk) 07:56, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Look, the fact that you refer to my supposed "history of accusing people who disagree with him" is a pretty obvious give away that you are in fact an alt of "some banned guy". I.e. you're pretty much admitting that I reverted your other socks before.
Furthermore, the POV you're pushing, and the way in which you do it is pretty idiosyncratic and not that hard to miss.
Finally, there's the ... peculiar choice of your username. You can try and feed people the line that it's just "in support of volunteering" all you want. But it's not gonna fly.Volunteer Marek 16:00, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
> "history of accusing people who disagree with him" is a pretty obvious give away that you are in fact an alt of "some banned guy"
Actually, I just read the talk page on holodomor, where I saw others explaining you were breaking wiki's rules about personal attacks by calling them sockpuppets.
And you did the same thing to me.
> the POV you're pushin
Incorrect. I changed POV language to NPOV.
eg, instead of vaguespeak POV statements like saying "man made" (which I believe is weasel language to claim the holomodor was "purposeful") I said "advocates of the holodomor genocide theory believe it was purposeful."
Read this carefully: What I wrote explains how there are differing points of view, instead of pushing one.
You are the one advocating blatant POV.
> You can try and feed people the line that it's just "in support of volunteering" all you want. But it's not gonna fly.
Your subjective *unprovable* opinion is irrelevant. It's certainly no excuse to delete people's edits. Have you considered, that maybe before I realized you were a repeat rule-breaker who should be banned from wikipedia, that I was positively inspired by your username?
It's just another possibility that you haven't considered.
Volunteer Eddy (talk) 16:17, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Recent additions by user:Volunteer Eddy and the role of weather in the famine

No opinion on the sock puppet accusation at this time. However, after Volunteer Eddy's edits the main famine section implies that weather was the main, if not sole, cause of the famine. At present, this is a minority viewpoint bordering on fringe. While some reliable sources state that the famine was exacerbated by the weather, most that have been published since about 1995 do not state that abnormal weather was the major cause, and instead attribute the famine to the policies and implementation of the Great Leap Forward. Several authors (Becker, Dikotter, Yang) go further and deny that weather during the GLF was abnormal. So although it is reasonable to discuss the role of floods, droughts, dam failures, etc. and the weather's role in causing them, please do so without implying that they were the main cause of the famine.--Wikimedes (talk) 17:10, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

It's not just that, his whole insertion is pure POV pushing WP:SYNTH and WP:OR:

  • "Many weather problems contributed to the low farming output. " - vague, unsourced. And how "low" is low?
  • "According to the Disaster Center,[1] the flood directly killed, either through starvation from crop failure or drowning, an estimated 2 million people, while other areas were affected in other ways as well." - true, the 1959 flood is listed at www.disastercenter.com (which is exactly... what?) but the words "Great Leap Forward" do not appear anywhere on that site. Hence, this is synthesis. The site does not either say that the flood killed people "directly", "through starvation", "from crop failure" or "drowning". That part is pure original research.
  • "It could be ranked as one of the deadliest natural disasters of the 20th century.[2]" - this one's my favorite. You know, "it could" be listed... but apparently isn't. The source given (again, what exactly is this source? They have lists like "10 Ten Evil Human Experiments" [3] - and btw, based on this [4] it seems listverse gets info from... Wikipedia)) just lists what they think were the "top 10 deadliest natural disasters", but the flood is not among them.
  • "Roderick MacFarquhar, citing a 1960 report in People’s Daily, writes that during that year ..." - I'm assuming this is the reference [5]. Still I doubt that a 1960 issue of People's Daily is a reliable source.
  • " The Encyclopædia Britannica yearbooks from 1958 to 1962 also reported abnormal weather, followed by droughts and floods.[verification needed][vague]" - the tags tell the story.
  • "As a result of these factors, year over year grain production dropped in China. The harvest was down by 15% in 1959. By 1960, it was at 70% of its 1958 level. There was no recovery until 1962, after the Great Leap Forward ended." - ref'ed to Lin and Yang's paper in the Economic Journal, 2000, a reliable source. But of course the synthesis is in the claim "as a result of these factors", i.e. bad weather. In fact the authors attribute the scale of the famine to both food availability and urban bias, but the decline in food availability is NOT attributed to bad weather.
  • "Some claim the amount of labour diverted ..." - this is basically the paragraph that was there before except the weasel word "some" was added.

Having said that, the original paragraph could use some inline citations. Looking quickly through it it looks like all the info is in Dikötter, it's just that page numbers should be added.Volunteer Marek 17:44, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

> Eddy's edits the main famine section implies that weather was the main, if not sole, cause of the famine.
Absolutely false. The key word (in bold) is "implies." (In other words, I didn't say such- you just made up that "interpretation.")
Volunteer Eddy (talk) 18:01, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
@Volunteer Eddy: You seem to be saying that my original post is just my opinion. The implication in your addition to the article that weather was the main cause of the famine seems obvious to me (and to Volunteer Marek), but I'll spell it out for you. The first paragraph begins with "Many weather problems contributed to the low farming output." The second paragraph is about abnormal weather. The third paragraph begins "As a result of these factors, year over year grain production dropped in China." The only factors listed so far in the section have been weather.
Furthermore, you removed the link to the Great Chinese Famine, and after your edit, famine (starvation) is not even mentioned until the end of paragraph 4 in the section on famine.
Volunteer Marek has done a pretty good job of critiquing your edits. (In case bullet point 3 is not clear, the 1959 Yellow River flood is not even mentioned in the cited source.) Since your only response to these and my content critiques is that I've "just made up that "interpretation"", I'm putting the section back to where it was before your changes. As I said before, it is reasonable for the article to discuss the role of weather, this is just not the way to do it. In case you are new to Wikipedia, please read wp:BRD and wp:edit war. Your initial Bold edit has been Reverted by Volunteer Marek, and now by me, and now is being Discussed by the three of us. Continuing reversions constitute and edit war (such as you and Volunteer Marek have been involved in over the past few days), and will most likely result in you being blocked (Volunteer Marek's actions are based on the intent to revert a sock puppet, and will probably be looked on more kindly). So let's reach some kind of consensus instead of edit warring.--Wikimedes (talk) 04:48, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I agree. Even Chinese government officially admitted that the famine resulted from wrong state policies (Great Leap Forward). My very best wishes (talk) 12:31, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
Oh,yes. This actually led to Sino-Soviet split. My very best wishes (talk) 06:25, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Can we find better sources for those quotations?

I have seen lots of quotations of words by Mao and other CPC leaders. However, they are almost all quoted from the book by Dikötter. Though unable to get that book myself, I guess it probably has a bibliography, in which we can find where these quotes come from. If someone has the book, please help adding the references used by Dikötter. That would be more reliable sources, than a historian who seems to especially hate the CPC.

Don't get me wrong. Dikötter's opinions are perfectly acceptable for me. I just think he might not be the best source for quotations of words. Ahyangyi (talk) 07:06, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

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Views of Great Leap Forward's supporters

I added a critic supporting the campaign at the introduction. Even for a event like this there would be an aftermath justification, which we should include in the article. Does anyone have any source?Lowerlowerhk (talk) 09:44, 26 September 2015 (UTC)


Literal and ironic use in English

It is probably worth pointing out, for the benefit of younger readers, that the phrase "great leap forward", seems to have no historic use in English - it originated from chinese translations of their official propaganda in the era around 1960. Some of the modern usage derives directly from that, sometimes in the literal sense of a "great leap forward", and sometimes in an ironic sense of a forward move that is actually in some ways actually not an improvement, like, for example, "New Coke", which was a failure, or Windows Vista or Windows 8.0, which had "new, improved" features which were considered to be so unpopular that they were reversed in the next edition. I will try to find an academic source for this.Lathamibird (talk) 14:16, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Confusing sentence

The years of the Great Leap Forward actually saw economic regression, with 1958 through 1962 being the only period between 1953 and 1985 in which China's economy shrank

This does not seem to make sense. Should "shrank" be "grow"? - 151.237.238.126 10:11, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

No. "Regression" means go backwards, i.e. shrink. ··gracefool💬 23:26, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Merge with Great Chinese Famine

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
The result of this discussion was to not merge. MartinZ02 (talk) 17:27, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

It seems to me that this subject is essentially entirely overlapping with Great Chinese Famine, and so the two articles should be merged. This should also help improve article quality. ··gracefool💬 22:45, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

EVen though i support your views about this article overlapping with Great Chinese Famine, this article is a separate event all together for people who study chinese history. so i guess we could leave this as a single piece of document.122.163.109.65 (talk) 07:32, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Regardless, until Great Chinese Famine covers something this article doesn't - something better not included in this article - it should be merged. At the moment Great Chinese Famine is nothing but a briefer version of this. ··gracefool 💬 04:41, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Strongly oppose Although I am grateful to Gracefool for pointing out the overlap, the two topics are different and both are important, as indicated by the number of books devoted to the famine. The Great Famine article is differently structured, and it would take some time and energy to merge Great Famine into GLF. This energy would be better spent in developing the article rather than merging it.

In fact, the Famine section in the GLF article should be boiled down, since there is a Main Article link to the Great Famine article.ch (talk) 06:36, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
MartinZ02 I don't know how you think this discussion was finished when I didn't have a chance to respond... but whatever. ··gracefool 💬 08:46, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Verify source of "China's Birth and Death Rate" graph under the "Consequences" section

I noticed that the source cited by the "China's Birth and Death Rate" graph under the "Consequences" section does not actually have any data between 1950 and 1978 on birth/death rates in China. The closest table I could find in the provided citation (National Bureau of Statistics of China: China Statistical yearbook 2014, chapter 2 Population) was in Chapter 2-2: "Birth Rate, Death Rate, and Natural Growth Rate of Population", but the earliest data entry is 1978. Though I cannot confirm or refute the factual accuracy of the graph, I do certainly believe that this graph is not properly cited, and may contain false or potentially harmful information. Heinzeric (talk) 09:02, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

It was available before. Probably Chinese government censored the yearbook and erased the data. See these articles which are citing the yearbook. p.615, [6], p.69, and p.12 ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 08:12, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

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Government officials becoming countryside workers...?

"Sending government officials to work in the countryside, 1957"

This is the caption for an image in the article that otherwise has no apparent context. Is it an image of government officials being shipped off to become workers in the same harsh conditions as the rest of the Chinese citizens? If so, why were they being made to do this? Or are they being sent to carry out things like inspections and thus perform a different kind of "work" there? I think we need to explain this image's presence in the article. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist (Speak quickly) (Follow my trail) 07:41, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

The context is the government at that time had been malfunction and takeover by Mao's loyalist, Mao's loyalist sent existing government officials, teacher and people with "different" political background to the countryside for "re-education". including the current Chinese leader Xi Jinping. It pretty hard to explain the whole situation with one sentence for the image caption. Matthew hk (talk) 11:45, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Great Leap Forward = 2nd Five-Year Plan?

Could somebody please clarify what, if anything, was the difference between the GLF and the 2nd FYP. The article currently states: 'The Great Leap Forward campaign began during the period of the Second Five Year Plan which was scheduled to run from 1958 to 1963, though the campaign itself was discontinued by 1961'. What specifically is the relationship between both, and in what ways were they different? Thanks. 2A02:8084:6A22:4980:E155:1959:ED4B:DF34 (talk) 10:31, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Contradiction? How much did the state claim?

This article says:'Together, taxation and compulsory purchases accounted for 30% of the harvest by 1957, leaving very little surplus.... Moderates within the Party, including Zhou Enlai, argued for a reversal of collectivization on the grounds that claiming the bulk of the harvest for the state had made the people's food-security dependent upon the constant, efficient, and transparent functioning of the government.' However, 30% of the harvest doesn't leave "very little surplus", surely? It leaves 70%? 30% is also surely not "the bulk of the harvest"? What is the exact figure here? 2A02:8084:6A22:4980:E155:1959:ED4B:DF34 (talk) 10:55, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Article neutrality disputed/Article split suggestion

This article is 99% about the great Chinese famine but the title clearly says something else. RomanK79 (talk) 06:37, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Well I disagree with your estimate that 99% of the article is about the famine, but rough coverage estimates are neither here nor there. Give Great Chinese Famine a read and see how you would redistribute the two articles' content. Keep in mind that it is widely accepted that the Great Leap Forward caused the famine, and the famine (the largest in recorded history) is very notable, so the GLF article should contain lots of coverage of the famine and vice versa.--Wikimedes (talk) 04:48, 4 July 2014 (UTC)


This article has gone downhill since I last looked a few years ago. The authors propagating the famine mythology are still overlooking the evidence from residents of China at the time. Where are the eye witness reports of millions of deaths from famine during this period? Are there first hand reports of any deaths from famine at the time of the Great Leap Forward? What happened to the tens of millions of bodies? etc. The Great Leap Forward was a transformational movement that introduced people in China to the role of direct action in improving their lives and had many positive outcomes. To ridicule the drive to make steel and denigrate the leaders of the communist party for their efforts to change life for the better for the majority of Chinese does not offer a balanced view of this period in Chinese history. There must be one person in China who has or had a positive thought about this period. Where are these reports/views? It is time this article was completely revised to give it a more factual basis. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.111.122.202 (talk) 17:52, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

This article has gone further downhill. Almost every sentence is either factually incorrect or misleading Who is authoring this nonsense?

An oral history based on interview of 200+ surviving farmers of the Great Chinese Famine has been published in Chinese: zh:尋找大饑荒倖存者. --Happyseeu (talk) 07:07, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

This is highly biased and needs far more sources. This is merely capitalist propaganda Taylorjayincsharp (talk) 06:36, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

The topic itself is highly politicised. The current wiki article seems to show word "drought" only twice and no mention of the basic fact that China was a rich superpower before euro colonisation.. And becamea poor war torn country, ravaged by war and opium addiction and had no developed infrastructure or system in place to counter a drought afterwards. The communist party had only ten years after coming to power, to fix all that. Not saying they were not responsible. Of course they were but other larger factors like westerm sanctions,euro gunboat plus forced opium polocies for over a century that had weakened the country economic development and society, are unfairly left out of the article. That is not right. When ccp took over, they hurt western capitalists ambitions, the western powers made it pretty clear they hated communism to the point of wars and bemoaned they "lost china". So there is a lot of one sided ideological bias in this wiki artcle and the bias is still here and in need of neutral improving. Ie. Alot of real backed info in this medium article - https://medium.com/@leohezhao/reassessing-the-great-leap-forward-4f21238ee6d is missing in the current wiki page. And feel they should be minimally considered to have some of that fair info plus quotes added in. 202.52.36.52 (talk) 06:02, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Four Pests Campaign should have been mentioned and highlighted

Four Pests Campaign was one of the first actions taken in the Great Leap Forward in China from 1958 to 1962. This should have been therefore highlighted in this article. However, this article seems not giving considerable importance to such a major event carried out under the Great Leap Forward. (There is only minor mention of Four Pests Campaign in this article under photo of Eurasian tree sparrow. However, the article nowhere mentions relation of it with the Great Leap Forward despite that it was major event carried out under Great Leap Forward) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2409:4042:200C:3B3C:DD7B:643D:58EA:9FD (talk) 15:53, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

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Expansion of falsification of data

The most significant aspect of the failure of the Great Leap Forward was the mass falsification of data undertaken by party cadres desperate to retain their current positions within the PRC, yet it is barely allocated a paragraph in the article as a whole. I suggest an entire separate section be created to cover the breadth of the topic, as a few passing comments is incapable of fully representing the importance of the response of the administrators responsible for worsening the Great Leap Forward, an integral part of understanding the topic as a whole, I firmly believe. At the very least the current section detailing the cause of the famine should be expanded to explain the importance of the over reporting executed by party officials 2A00:23C6:E705:C301:D5A0:7AC0:5C9C:8512 (talk) 17:33, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree generally (I would characterize false reporting as a "major" aspect although not the "most significant"). I encourage you to begin making these additions. JArthur1984 (talk) 17:45, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
After some thought, I would like to adjust my previous statement asserting it as the most significant factor, and have decided when I have some time to add such a section 2A00:23C6:E705:C301:D582:F683:E0F1:5ECE (talk) 12:08, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
Great, that's a worthwhile endeavor. I have been working on some other topics and likely will be for some time, but I will try to keep alert for some sources I can contribute to assist in the future. JArthur1984 (talk) 13:47, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Currently insufficient mention of the role of population growth

During the time of food shortage, China was experiencing a massive surge in population. 20th century improvements in life expectancy, health, and infant mortality combined to create a massive surge in demand for food.

Population growth was so rapid that the people who starved hardly had any effect on the total population. There is currently insufficient mention of the role of this population surge in the food shortage. GalantFan (talk) 18:37, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Too much emphasis on Frank Dikötter's perspective

Dikötter is cited and mentioned in the article 38 times despite the fact that he is a relatively controversial source and has been subject to many academics disputing a lot of his claims. Obviously, there are also those who agree and therefore he shouldn't be completely removed as a source but the reliance on his perspective is far to great in my opinion especially in trying to achieve a neutral stance on the issue. Dikötter has directly mistranslated Mao and made arguments that opium was generally benign in China. Miraivii (talk) 19:04, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree. Dikötter is a weak and controversial source in well-studied areas where we can cite more scholarly texts. Among the many more rigorous scholars who have pointed out his errors and the like are Short (Dikötter's books "set out to make the case for the prosecution, rather than providing balanced accounts of the periods they describe.") and DeMare ("Due to Dikötter's choice of phrasing, many readers believe that he is arguing that there were no landlords in China. His citation, however, refers to my UCLA dissertation, where I discuss how the term land lord (dizhu) was an alien word in the countryside [...] There were, to be sure, many landlords in China."). Meyskens is another excellent scholar who critiques Dikötter (regarding famine death tolls).
Why don't you trim some of the Dikötter material you refer to? It's a good idea. JArthur1984 (talk) 19:16, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
I also agree. I was trying to find any other source of his outlandish claim that "Approximately 30% to 40% of all houses were turned to rubble." Are we really expected to believe that China intentionally left 1/3 of the population homeless? Seems completely unreliable.GalantFan (talk) 19:24, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
"Approximately 30%" is something quite likely to be true, however they were more likely to be turned before and during, not just during, I doubt that maybe there is an editor misunderstands him. See this article from Modern China Studies in Chinese. ときさき くるみ not because they are easy, but because they are hard 11:14, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
See also Great Chinese Famine which has dozens of references to Dikötter and his wild claims such as "at least 2.5 million of the victims were beaten or tortured to death" which also has no credible second source.GalantFan (talk) 19:36, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
See also "Review of Frank Dikötter, Mao’s Great Famine"
by Aaron Leonard https://logosjournal.com/2011/fall_leonard/
Dikötter claims he has "meticulous reports compiled by the party itself" yet he has no citations of any of these reports, and proceeds to make inferences and rough approximations that 2.5 million were tortured.
"This declaration, if true, is damning and staggering. Yet a closer read reveals it as fallacious, as artful writing full of extrapolation and conjecture. .... What we have, in sum, are assertions based on tendentious guesswork." GalantFan (talk) 20:42, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
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