"Great Leap Forward–style vanity metrics"?? The guy is a self-promoting ignoramus.
Here's what Mao wrote to every provincial and county party secretary in 1969:
“I want to address a problem with our agriculture. Please ignore top-down crop targets and stick to what is feasible. Thirty percent, even sixty percent higher yield than last year would be excellent, but what’s the point of boasting about four hundred percent when that’s merely impossible? As for dense planting, let old, middle-aged, and younger farmers discuss it and decide it within your production teams. Save your food! Preserve it well, build a reserve for future emergencies. We can’t afford boasting or empty talk for at least ten years. Make high yields in small fields your immediate goal because mechanization will take at least ten years, so we must simply farm more acreage for the next three years. Plant on a larger scale. Set up research institutes for farming tools. Fertilizer is essential. Many lies are caused by pressure from superiors who boast and pressure those below them, and they’re difficult to deal with. Speak the truth. Promise only the number you can deliver. Don’t pretend you can ‘do it with effort’ when you actually can’t. Just report how much the harvest really is. If the reality is not as low as I predict–if a real, high outcome makes me look like an out-of-touch conservative–I’ll thank heaven and earth”. – Mao Zedong, Chairman.
"Great Leap Forward–style vanity metrics"?? The guy is a self-promoting ignoramus.
Here's what Mao wrote to every provincial and county party secretary in 1969:
“I want to address a problem with our agriculture. Please ignore top-down crop targets and stick to what is feasible. Thirty percent, even sixty percent higher yield than last year would be excellent, but what’s the point of boasting about four hundred percent when that’s merely impossible? As for dense planting, let old, middle-aged, and younger farmers discuss it and decide it within your production teams. Save your food! Preserve it well, build a reserve for future emergencies. We can’t afford boasting or empty talk for at least ten years. Make high yields in small fields your immediate goal because mechanization will take at least ten years, so we must simply farm more acreage for the next three years. Plant on a larger scale. Set up research institutes for farming tools. Fertilizer is essential. Many lies are caused by pressure from superiors who boast and pressure those below them, and they’re difficult to deal with. Speak the truth. Promise only the number you can deliver. Don’t pretend you can ‘do it with effort’ when you actually can’t. Just report how much the harvest really is. If the reality is not as low as I predict–if a real, high outcome makes me look like an out-of-touch conservative–I’ll thank heaven and earth”. – Mao Zedong, Chairman.