RT Handre van Heerden (@Handrev)In 1958, Mao decreed that peasants should abandon farming to make steel in backyard furnaces. Village committees, terrified of appearing counter-revolutionary, reported wildly inflated grain harvests while actual crops rotted unharvested. The "steel" produced was worthless scrap, but admitting failure meant death.When reality inevitably struck, 45 million starved. The tragedy wasn't just bad weather or primitive technology—it was the lethal combination of central planning and ...