Mao History's Greatest Killer

It has long been suspected that China's Mao Zedong, aka Chairman Mao, was the greatest mass murderer in modern history. The mechanisms he used were the Great Leap Forward and Red Guard movements. Now it would appear that proof has been assembled.

Frank Dikotter, a historian who teaches at the University of Hong Kong has studied the period and reached these conclusions. The work appears in his new book entitled: Mao's Great Famine; The Story of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe.

My source is this article in The Independent, a U.K. newspaper. Speaking of the period from 1958 to 1962, the article summarizes Dikotter's findings:

At least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death in China over these four years.