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This happened right before the cultural revolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine might have helped cut down the potential prison population...
Edit, digging this up from 5 threads deep:
...I understand what per-100,000 means, but I also understand that not all groups of 100,000 people are the same; removing a large sub-population of people that doesn’t exactly match the overall population’s average will result in a change to the overall population average.
If you have a total population (T), and you are measuring the rate of an event (E), then E / T gives your average event rate for the total population, which you can then normalize to a per-X number. For example: T = 1000 people E = 10 incarcerations. 10 / 1000 = .01, normalized to per 100 capita would be 1 per 100 people on average, from the total population.
If you have a sub-demographic in that population (Ts), and it has a different rate of an event (Es) then its rate is also Es / Ts. For example: Ts = 100 poor-people Es = 5 incarcerations. 5 / 100 = .05, normalized to a per 100 capita would be 5 people per 100 on average, for that sub-population.
If you suddenly remove that sub-population, what happens to the rate of the overall population? That’s easy to calculate: (E - Es) / (T - Ts) (10 - 5) / (1000 - 100) = 5 / 900 = .0055, normalized to a per 100 capita would be .55.
Suggesting that a sub-demographic doesn’t perfectly match the per-capita average of an entire population and that removing them would change the overall per-capita rate isn’t nonsense.
You can read the chart: incarceration rate per 100,000.
Yeah but everyone knows the US has more people per capita than anywhere else
My brain had to do a hard reset after reading that. Thanks, I hate it, lol
maybe they really mean it, where companies are people but not capita
More people per people
The trick is to call fertilized embryos people and use dead women as incubators
More people...per capita...🤯
Nicely done, I approve.
Let me address a few things. First, I didn't post my response because I think the incarceration rate in the U. S. is OK. It's not. Incarceration of non-violent criminals is especially aggregeous. Private for profit prisons are a horrible idea.
I responded because the OP posted an image comparing the incarceration rates of the CCP's cultural revolution to the current U.S. incarceratiom rate. The implication is that because the per-capita incarceration rate was lower in China during that time, it was a nicer place to live than current-day America. That ignores the part where the Chinese government starved to death 15,000,000 - 55,000,000 people, or put in Americanized terms: somewhere between the entire population of Pennsylvania to the entire populations of California AND Pennsylvania.
Claiming that a per-capita measurement normalizes all factors, makes a sampling error based on survivorship bias. It is highly unlikely that the overlap of people who starved to death during the CCP's famine had the same incarceration rate of those who did not. I'm guessing rich and party aligned individuals had a much lower rate of both starvation and incarceration.
This would certainly be true in the U.S; Incarceration rates are much higher for low-income individuals: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/income.html. Low income individuals are also more likely to starve to death in a famine* (*citation needed). Now imagine if the United States government starved to death the poorest 10,000,000 people in the U.S. and then started bragging about how much it's per-capita incarceration rates have improved!
The CPC did not starve to death millions of people. There was famine in China from natural causes, and the CPC did their best to alleviate that as best they could, even if millions ended up starving despite their best efforts. The PRC is still a developing country, and this was ever more true during the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution had its fair share of issues, the modern CPC doesn't look fondly upon it, but the famine would have happened even without Communists in charge, and in fact it did! Famine was common in China before it industrialized under the CPC.
There was famine in China from natural causes
From: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
It is widely regarded as the deadliest famine and one of the greatest man-made disasters in human history
(Emphasis mine.)
Also, regardless of the reason my other points stand: having millions of poor people starve to death will reduce you incarceration rate, and people might choose to live in a country with a higher incarceration rate if it means they don't starve to death.
The Great Chinese Famine was caused by a combination of radical agricultural policies, social pressure, economic mismanagement, and natural disasters such as droughts and floods in farming regions.
From Wikipedia. Western scholars exaggerate the human factors and minimize the environmental, which were the cause.
From Prolewiki:
It is true that agricultural production decreased in five years between 1949 and 1978 due to “natural calamities and mistakes in the work.” However, during 1949 and 1978, the per hectare yield of land sown with food crops increased by 145.9% and total food production rose 169.6%. During this period China’s population grew by 77.7%. On these figures, China’s per capita food production grew from 204 kilograms to 328 kilograms in the period in question.
China did not have a famine because of communism. China had a natural famine and while some policies strengthened it, others minimized it.
To be perfectly clear, I don't subscribe to the notion that communism is bad and capitalism is good. I think every socio-economic system has pros and cons and are prone different forms of degredation and usurption.
I think the people leading a country and the people that comprise its society have a larger impact on life than their system of government.
With that said, a government is ultimately responsible for the safety and well-being of its people.
It's the system that determines how its run, not the people at the top. Your analysis is teetering into Great Man Theory territory, which is derived from Idealism, not Materialism. The mode of production is primary.
Secondly, yes, the government is responsible. Is the government also responsible for drought, though? What should be judged is that, as I stated, food production was dramatically improved, and the government eliminated famine in a country where famine was common prior to Socialism.
For what it's worth, capitalism is progressive compared to feudalism, but regressive as compared to socialism.
It's the system that determines how its run, not the people at the top.
That is the catch. It only determines how it is run if the people at the top are following the system. The system is supposed to determine that, but if everyone in positions of power decide to disregard what the system is supposed to be, then suddenly the system that a government used to have or advertises as having, no longer represents the actual state of affairs.
Responsibility means owning an outcome. If I take responsibility for the safety of your children and a meteorite literally falls out of the sky and kills them, I am still responsible. I'm not going to try to make excuses and make sure you know it wasn't my fault and there wasn't anything I could have done. I was responsible. Your kids are dead. The buck stops with me. That's what actual leaders do, they own the outcome.
No, this is wrong. An economic system is a physical thing, it isn't a group of ideas everyone agrees to follow. People can break laws and whatnot, but fundamentally the system is a physical thing. Your analysis is Idealist, not Materialist.
The CPC does acknowledge problems with the Great Chinese Famine, but you trying to pin it entirely on the CPC is wrong, as well as the idea that the CPC didn't incarcerate as many people per capita is because of the famine. This is nonsense. Most countries do not imprison nearly as many people as the US does, and the PRC isn't different in that respect.
the idea that the CPC didn't incarcerate as many people per capita is because of the famine. This is nonsense.
How is that nonsense? What was the per-capita incarceration rate of the population who died in the famine? What was the per-capita incarceration rate of the population that didn't die in the famine?
There is probably no data for that, so we can't know for sure, but I showed that in the U.S. a large famine would result in a lower incarceration rate because poor people would starve at a disproportionate rate, and poor people are also incarerated at a disproportnate rate, so that would reduce the overall rate per capita. This doesn't necessarily apply to the situation in China, but I don't think it is nonsense with no foundation in logic.
First of all, I'll take the honour of using .world's favourite word: whataboutism much?
Second of all, wow, there was a hunger episode as a consequence of bad ecological policy on a preindustrial society?!
BTW, life expectancy in China at the beginning of the socialist revolution was 35 years, by the time Mao died it was above 55. Those are hundreds of millions of lives saved.