Reply #84: China has been run by intelligent (if sometimes ruthless) people since Deng Xiaoping

[Lydia Leftcoast]

The original Maoists were prone to fits of ruinous fanaticism like the Hundred Flowers Campaign (declare freedom of speech and then punish anyone who actually exercises it), the Great Leap Forward (build steel mills on every farm commune, even if it means neglecting food crops), the Kill the Birds campaign (on the ground that they ate crops, forgetting that they eat a lot more insects than they eat crops), and of course, the Cultural Revolution, where everything stopped for several years while ideologically-based teen-age gangs rampaged through the country and terrorized everyone who didn't bow to their authority.