The Beijing Olympics: An achievement — and a great opportunity

DURING the lifetime of many of the hundreds of millions of people who will watch tomorrow night’s Olympic Games opening ceremony from Beijing the people of China endured the greatest famine in the history of humanity.

The painful journey from that modern apocalypse to creating a society, an economy, an infrastructure and a metropolis capable of hosting the world’s greatest sporting spectacle in less than 50 years is one of the great achievements of modern humanity. Indeed, it is difficult to identify many that surpassed it in the past century other than Europe’s rejuvenation post-1945. (And one could argue with regard to the latter that two great Americans — President Truman, and secretary of state George Marshall — played an important part in bringing about that rejuvenation.)

Between the spring of 1959 and the end of 1961 about 30 million Chinese starved to death and about the same number of births were lost or postponed.