I know this isn’t the story you hear in history class
Right...and the reason is because when it comes to History of China we only covered the general ideas since it isnt history of our country.
When you study something, you always need to read it with a critical mind. Without a critical mind, you will end up getting brainwashed. You also need to learn many different languages, so that you can get your sources from many different viewpoints. If you only read English books, then you will just get an Anglo centric viewpoint of the world. Cuantos lenguajes puede hablar? 1? 2?
I hate to be going off topic here as I am more interested in the covid discussion but since you brought it up, remember, in the cold war and even up till today, the Capitalist nations are in a propaganda war against nations that has a potential to rise up and challenge them.
The ideological war of the cold war era is really a disguise for a war for supremacy. It continues to this day. Russia is still very much hated as in the cold war era even though the cold war is over and it is no longer communist. No it was no ideological war. They just didn't like the Russians because Russia was a threat.
Famines happened often in China even during the time of Imperial China and later when China was under the rule of the government in Taiwan. The famine that you mentioned had mistakes that were made, part of this was an experiment in communism. This was one of the early days of communism. There wasn't good enough resources then shelter any mishaps. Per capita income according to my source which I just googled says that it was $90 (GDP/capita) in China vs $3000 in USA at the time of the famine. Today it is at $12000 vs $70000. The average american was 33 times richer in 1960 and today is 6 times richer.
The question is is the book written as propaganda or was it written to help? Did these countries send food aid during the famine, or did they just hastily pulled out their typewriters to start discrediting communism and laugh at the situation?
Some of the goods of the legacy of that era that we should celebrate are:
1. State attempt to eliminate religion and superstition. I personally wished this had gone further. Religion is the root of a lot of evils.
2. It discarded such communal attempts. Now, it is going back to true Marx which is to embrace capitalism.
Since you didn't' learn this in your history class, Marx in his first chapter of his book Capital wrote that Capitalism is the best system to generate wealth in the form of an equation. Yes, you find that surprising huh that Marx said that?
In fact, in the long run, a nation needs to progress from Agrarian -> Industrialization -> Capitalism -> Socialism -> Communism.