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Yes, disasters can happen during the Christmas Season. Google "Christmas Day disasters" and you will find that Christmas isn't immune to disasters. One of the worst Christmas season disasters aside from the December 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami would be the birth of Mao Zedong on December 26, 1893. Yes, he was born during the Christmas Season. He wasn't there to spread Christmas cheer. Instead, he was born to cause disaster even beyond the Christmas Season!
The Christmas season disaster that heralded a series of disasters
His Controversial Rule
After solidifying his grasp on power, and winning over the people by taking land from the wealthy and giving it to workers, Mao aimed to pull China forward into the 20th century with two notable plans. Both were disasters.The Great Leap Forward aimed to use peasants in rural areas to jump-start an economic revolution through increased grain production. At the same time, the CPC urged peasants in newly formed communes and in city neighborhoods to take the first steps toward industrialization, forging steel through the building and use of backyard blast furnaces.Many farmers moved into steel production, which didn't prove economically sound. And due to several other factors, grain production fell and was not nearly enough for a growing population. The result was a famine of unconscionable severity; the Great Leap Forward was responsible for tens of millions of Chinese deaths — maybe as many as 45 million — from the time it started in 1958 through the early 1960s. Several million of those numbers were executed for various crimes against the party."It is better to let half of the people die," Mao said during a secret meeting in Shanghai in March 1959, "so that the other half can eat their fill."The failure of the Great Leap Forward enabled some other powerful people in the CPC to wrest control of some aspects of the government from Mao, at least for a short time. But in 1966, Mao launched another deadly program destined for failure.The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, or simply the Cultural Revolution, was designed to shrug off the effects of the Great Leap Forward, rid the CPC and the country of those people who didn't agree with his vision, and move forward toward a stronger China. Mao had a simple plan: He called for rebellion against the party as a way of purging the elements that bucked his way of thinking.Millions were driven from their homes, beaten, tortured or thrown into prison. Many millions were massacred across the country. Many thousands more committed suicide.Armed students — the Red Guard — fought each other and killed others they deemed to be enemies of Mao and communism. They destroyed historic artifacts that symbolized the "old" China. Libraries were closed. Books were burned."Mao was above the law. In that sense, he was like a dictator," Lu says. "He was also seeking control of methods of controlling people's minds, brainwashing them through fear, through intimidation, through force. He [saw] himself as a savior of the nation and its people."The Cultural Revolution threw the entire country into economic and social chaos. By its end, in 1969, at least 500,000 Chinese, maybe as many as 8 million, died in the uprising.The Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward, remain inerasable stains on Mao's rule. Tens of millions were murdered and starved to death in the name of communism.
Some people may have moved forward from whatever Christmas disasters hit. Some Communist hippies try to exonerate Mao from the blame. However, history has proven, including Chinese survivors of the Great Leap Forward, that Mao was also to blame. Mao was like the irresponsible chairman of a corporation that mismanaged the company. One may Google "Liu Shaoqi" and find out about his sad fate, resulting from a kangaroo court. The Great Leap Forward's unrealistic aim of self-industrialization fueled the disasters that were to follow.
The Investopedia (a material hated by commie hippies) also cites this unbearable truth of the Great Leap Forward:
Understanding the Great Leap Forward
In 1958, Mao announced his plan for the Great Leap Forward, which he laid out as a five-year plan to improve the economic prosperity of the People’s Republic of China. He devised the plan after touring China and concluding that he felt the Chinese people were capable of anything.
Overall, the plan was centered around two primary goals, collectivizing agriculture, and widespread industrialization, with two main targets, increasing grain and steel production.
Agriculture
Private plot farming was abolished and rural farmers were forced to work on collective farms where all production, resource allocation, and food distribution was centrally controlled by the Communist Party. Large-scale irrigation projects, with little input from trained engineers, were initiated, and experimental, unproven new agricultural techniques were quickly introduced around the country.
These innovations resulted in declining crop yields from failed experiments and improperly constructed water projects. A nationwide campaign to exterminate sparrows, which Mao believed incorrectly were a major pest on grain crops, resulted in massive locust swarms in the absence of natural predation by the sparrows. Grain production fell sharply, and hundreds of thousands died from forced labor and exposure to the elements on irrigation construction projects and communal farming.
Famine quickly set in across the countryside, resulting in millions more deaths.
People resorted to eating tree bark and dirt, and in some areas to cannibalism. Farmers who failed to meet grain quotas, tried to get more food, or attempted to escape were tortured and killed along with their family members via beating, public mutilation, being buried alive, scalding with boiling water, and other methods.
Industrialization
Large-scale state projects to increase industrial production were introduced in urban areas, and backyard steel furnaces were built on farms and in urban neighborhoods. Steel production was targeted to double in the first year of the Great Leap Forward, and Mao forecast that Chinese industrial output would exceed Britain’s within 15 years. The backyard steel industry produced largely useless, low-quality pig iron. Existing metal equipment, tools, and household goods were confiscated and melted down to fuel additional production.
Due to the failures in planning and coordination, and resulting materials shortages, which are common to central economic planning, the massive increase in industrial investment and reallocation of resources resulted in no corresponding increase in manufacturing output.
Millions of “surplus” laborers were moved from farms to steel making. Most were men, breaking up families and leaving the forced agricultural labor force for the collective farms consisting of mostly women, children, and older adults. The increase in urban populations placed additional strain on the food distribution system and demand on collective farms to increase grain production for urban consumption. Collective farm officials falsified harvest figures, resulting in much of what grain was produced being shipped to the cities as requisitions were based on the official figures.
Mao used faulty methods that destroyed families and workers. He believed that China could progress on its own. His pride only caused China to suffer insufferably for decades to come during his rule. The impact of his power-hungry behavior only caused severe criticism later. Amazingly, his body is still preserved in Tiananmen Square--the site where the infamous massacre happened during Deng Xiaoping's tenure as chairman. He shouldn't even be an icon. China still suffers from the effects of Mao's ideology of the use of totalitarian methods, proves Communism is just 100% ideology and 0% application.