In Reply to: just take a trip on the net posted by lydia on September 28, 2003 at 20:53:46:
Could you point me to the source of those statistics?
They are high where they should be lower, and low where they should be higher.
"China, over 1 billion people?"
Could China in the name of Communism be responsible for killing 1 billion people? I'm not convinced, after adding to the count WWII, civil war, famine, state sponsored abortions, exported satellite wars in Cambodia, Korea and Vietnam, and the Tibetan slow genocide.
I don't have time to fetch all the data, but I'll give a sampling, using the most accusing, negative numbers generally accepted as reliable by the harshest critics and detractors of the CCP:
The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) came into power about the time of WW II (total world population 2.5 billion, China and disputed territories 600 mil.)
and they were engaged in war to repel the Japanese (Japanese and civilian deaths 300,000),
and then against the nationalists who fled to the island of Taiwan (850,000 deaths).
Later, repression by the red guards (max 1,000,000 deaths)
(source Harry Harding of the Brookings Institution).
The "Great Leap Forward" of 1958 had caused devastating famine for almost 2 decades, total deaths are estimated to be 28,000,000
The Tibetan Government-in-Exile estimates that a total of 1.2 million Tibetans have died as a result of the Communist Chinese occupation. There is an overlap, as the figure of 1.2 million includes those that died from famine
The estimates and theories of analysts place state sponsored/enforced abortions peaking at 350,000 per year during the mid 80s (even taking the exaggerated number of 400,000 per year for 40 yrs, you get 16 million).
The war in Korea caused 136,935 US millitary casualties (source USCWC) of which are 33,629 KIA or MIA, plus 415,000 South Korean millitary deaths. Even if you blame the CCP for losses on their own side, you get 1.5 million Chinese and North Korean soldiers (Source: Korean War Museem),
Add to this a median estimate of 547,000 civilians killed or missing in South Korea (Sources: Rummel, Nahm88, Nahm93),
and a median estimate of 1,086,000 civilians killed or missing in North Korea (Sources: Nahm93, Rummel).
Sorry, this is where I run out of time to look up all the stats and facts for you.
If you add on some more for the satellite wars in Vietnam and Cambodia, and some more for the Sino-Vietnamese war, and blame every single death on the CCP, you get a few million. If you add famine and disease resulting from war and blame it all on the CCP you get a few million.
Still, blaming all the above deaths on the CCP, the total worst estimate does not even reach 50 million.
"Russia over 17 million"
The soviets lost 20 Million in WW II. I mention this in case you wish to account for the fact that Hitler tried to "liberate" the Ukraine from Stalinian starvation and repression. Stalin is said to be responsible for 6 million abortions, 30 million deaths through enforced starvation in Ukraine and other Soviet provinces. And that's only under Stalin. If you take a look at Russia alone without the Soviet Union, the numbers should be hgher than 17 million just from accounting for systematic repression and forced mass resettlements and migration.