Knowing that the Chinese government NEVER tells the truth....
My guesstimate is that there were over 1 million deaths in China, and more than 100 million infected.
That’s my low-ball estimates.
Adorno: You are right to never trust the Red Chinese or any other communist/Marxist/socialist government or entity.
The No. Vietnamese had a great “disinformation program” ongoing from the 50’s re the deaths caused by their “Mini-Great Leap Forward” - “Land Reform Programs” (aided by American leftist scholars such as Prof. George McT. Kahin (Cornell Un) and his students, plus a handful of other communist academics and media pawns. However, Ho started his own “disinformation” program about who he really was and what he wanted for Vietnam and all of Southeast Asia (as in complete conquest and control).
Lenin, Trotsky, Beria and Stalin covered up their genocide and mass murder (of White Russians, Kulaks, Ukrainians, Jews, Christians, Tatars, Katyn Forest Massacre of Polish Reserve Officers during WW2, South Korea massacres, etc.). They used foreign correspondents to spread this around (i.e. the NY Times Walter Duranty),identified KGB agent I.F. Stone, and Australian Communist Party member and KGB agent (and possibly Red Chinese agent) Wilfred Burchett whose writings graced the Op-Ed page of the New York Times) among a few other leftist American publications (this might have included the longtime CPUSA-dominated “The Nation”).
The Iranians have their own vast “disinformation” covering not only that country, but also in Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, possibly Hamas’ Gaza and the Palestinian Authority’s territories, plus Syria and in the US among pro-Iran/Khomeini fronts and associations (aided in the past by the Hanoi Lobby of Don Luce, Ramsay Clark, etc).
As the late Dr. Fred Schwarz said in his speeches and his book, “You Can Trust The Communists to Be Communists”.
You can never “trust” them, nor can you adequately “verify” what the Communists claims. Psychopaths “lie” naturally so you naturally shouldn’t believe anything they say, most of what they show, and nothing their supporters promote.