But in fact there are several ways in
which the lack of a free press in particular and
democracy more generally has held back China’s
development. In Mao’s ―Great Leap Forward,‖ at
least 30 million people died due to poor government
decisions and incentives for bureaucrats to
send overly optimistic reports from the field. Democratic
India, by contrast, has not had a famine
since independence in 1947.