alt Hacker NewsBoth the Soviet and Chinese first few five year plans accomplished the following:
1. Mass starvation at a few points due to central planning errors
2. Horrifying purges and paranoia that cannot be excused as "errors"
3. Achieving mass literacy and a partially industrial economy in a single generation, from a medeival starting point.
Most good Americans who paid attention in civics class learned 1 and 2 very well without truly appreciating 3.
You have to understand that they were coming from a peasant economy where nobody could even read. It's an accomplishment despite Mao's shortcomings and awful deeds. And look at the scoreboard today. Highest GDP by purchasing power parity in the world. Xiaomi cars are nicer than Teslas, only non-American tech industry, high speed rail, etc etc.
Your 3 is really conflating two different things.
There’s a long list of countries that industrialized more quickly without suffering such internal economic issues. The USSR and China suffered because of poor governance not industrialization.
Second, Mass literacy occurs via teaching kids. It has little to do with what the wider economy as seen by both modern and historic literacy rates.
It’s been 65 years since the Chinese famine, what actually fixed the country was economic reforms. MAO’s death helped but the system simply didn’t work so they tried something else.