My wife’s grandma is in her 90s, and she remembers the famines before and after the revolution. She’s not a party member, but she’ll slap your shit if you trash the Party in her presence. She said she remembers being sent to forage for food and finding dead people with their fingers missing because finger meat stays when you starve to death. She remembers how a neighbor would die and then they’d smell meat cooking and everyone knew but nobody said anything.

She also remembers when the Party brought the Revolution to her town and requisitioned all the grain to distribute it and end the famine. The Party saved her life, and she is an avid supporter of it. There’s a reason that so many of the generation of Chinese people born to the ones who experienced the famines have super patriotic names.

In summary, yes, there have been horrible famines in China, and yes, the Party’s decisions exacerbated one of the worst famines, but the Party still ended famine in a famine-ridden country and that’s why the Chinese people support the Chinese government.