What is the correct number?  Thirty-Two million?  Thirty-Seven million?  Forty million? The correct number of those who died during the period of 1958-1962 as Mao and the Communist Party of China instituted a command economy will never be known.  The exact number will never be known because so many people were dying, primarily of starvation but also because of beatings, executions, and torture that records could not be kept.  The millions did not die because they were some foreign enemies or, as is the case with the Holocaust because of some racial theory; they died because of government incompetence, bureaucratic lying and ignorance of the basic laws of nature.

What exactly is a “command economy”?  The “phrase comes from the German Befehlswirtschaft. It was originally applied to the Nazi economy but was later used to describe the Soviet Union.  Instead of allowing dispersed buyers and sellers to determine their own economic activities according to the laws of supply and demand, a higher authority would issue commands determining the overall direction of the economy following a master plan.  The command principle entailed that all economic decisions were centralized for the greater good, as the state determined what should be produced, how much should be produced, who produced what and where, how resources should be allocated and what prices should be charged for material, goods, and services.  A central plan replaced the market. (Mao’s Great Famine, pp 127).

A “command economy”  then is a top-down system by which the leaders provide objectives and quotas for the amount of grain to be produced, how many tons of steel will be produced, what type and how many shoes, socks, shoelaces, etc. will be produced in what time period, etc.  Operating in a totalitarian system like Communism, each layer below that top simply takes the quota they are given and adds a little more to please the powers that be.  By the time the quotas reach those who produce any given item, the numbers are so large that they are totally unrealistic.  Rather than argue against the numbers (and labeled a right-wing reactionary), the producers “fudge” the numbers to meet the quota.  And an example is the production of rice, a staple of the economy.  If the actual quota is not met, the rice crop is soaked in water to increase the weight as the rice absorbs the water.  Amazing, the quota is met!  The problem with that technique however is that the rice quickly rots and as the price of rice goes up (inflation), the consumers literally have to sell the clothes off their backs to pay for rotting rice.