More Mao genius - the country isn't producing enough food to feed itself, but he's insistent on selling what little can be come up with to foreigners to raise money.
Mao stepped in and recommended vegetarianism as a solution: 'We should save on clothing and food to guarantee exports, otherwise if 650 million people start eating a little more our export surplus will all be eaten up. Horses, cows, sheep, chicken, dogs, pigs: six of the farm animals don't eat meat, and aren't they all alive? Some people don't eat meat either, old Xu didn't eat meat and he lived till he was eighty. (p.81)
This guy runs a nation of 650 million, and this is the quality of his thought. And if you disagree, you can very readily be beaten to death, or starved, or left naked and freezing in the winter.
Of course, stuff produced by socialists/communists tends to be shit quality, that's why no one wants it. All that corner cutting to comply with politically-set production quotas that respond to no actual need, but are figments of some tyrant's desire. Mao, for ego reasons, wants China to surpass Britain in various industrial measures within fifteen years. Why? No valid reason. He just thinks it should. Result: millions starve, contracts can't be upheld, shoddy products are delivered and sent back:
[A]s the pressure to deliver increased, another problem appeared. Local units started cutting corners in order to meet their targets, leading to falling standards in the quality of exports. The Soviet Union lodged repeated complaints about the quality of meat, which was often contaminated by bacteria. Up to a third of the porrk tins were rusty. [...] [P]aper exported to Hong Kong was unusable, batteries bought by Iraq were leaking, whle the Swiss found that a fifth of hte shipped coal consisted of stones. West Germany discovered Salmonella in 500 tonnes of eggs, and in Morocco a third of all pumpkin seeds bought from teh People's Republic were infested with insects. (p.82)
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