In his landmark book “Mao’s Great Famine,” University of Hong Kong Professor Frank Dikötter exposes the world for the first time to official Chinese government archives documenting Chairman Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward. Until 2010 these archives were kept entirely secret. What happened between the years of 1958 and 1962 is almost indescribable in its horror. 600 million Chinese were turned into a giant army, collectivized into the largest and most complete experiment in pure communism the world has ever seen.

With the State controlling every part of production from the field to transport to storage, the economy became so inefficient and disorganized that between 45 and 55 million people were killed and/or died of starvation, and this is just within that four year period. The details are in the book for those who can handle it, but there is one line from Dikötter that needs to be understood for those still looking for a Macau bottom. The professor asks the crucial question, Why didn’t a credible threat to the ruling communist party ever materialize, especially in the midst of such carnage? He answers:

A common conviction in imperial times [in China] was that the emperor was benevolent, but his servants could be corrupt. Even more so in the People’s Republic, the population had to reconcile a vision of utopia trumpeted by the media with the everyday reality of catastrophe on the ground. The belief that cadres who were abusive failed to carry out the orders of a beneficent Chairman was widespread. A distant entity called ’the government’ and a semi-god called ‘Mao’ were on the side of good.  If only he knew, everything would be different.

At a news conference back in December, Las Vegas Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson was quoted as saying a 2016 turnaround for Macau was imminent. “We are at the beginning of the shift in the cycle from a recession-type economy to a bottoming out,” he said, and I think the economy and Macau’s fortunes will turn around.”