Maoist China's 1949-1976 infrastructure and literacy expansion produced the human-capital base that enabled post-1978 reform growth; pre-1978 development was a precondition, not a failure.

This hypothesis is considered falsified if:

PRIMARY 1 (dispositive): CHN life expectancy at birth 1976 must be at least 1.30 times the CHN 1949 baseline level, i.e. a 30% rise from baseline (the "≥30% above 1949" leg of the spec's prose rule). PRIMARY 2 (dispositive): CHN life expectancy at birth 1976 must be at or above the LMIC peer-median 1976 (peer set: IND, IDN, PAK, BRA, MEX, EGY, NGA, TUR, THA, PHL, IRN). This is the "not below LMIC median" leg of the spec's prose rule, applied to the most-defensible Mao-era series rather than to all three indicators (literacy and primary-enrolment series have near-zero CHN coverage before 1980 and cannot dispositively grade the claim — they are kept as INFORMATIVE). SUPPORTED iff BOTH primaries hold. REFUTED iff BOTH fail. partial if exactly one holds. inconclusive if the LMIC peer panel has fewer than 6 countries with 1976 data, or if the CHN 1949 baseline is missing. INFORMATIVE: GDP-pc level 1976 vs LMIC peer median (Maddison MPD2020), primary-school gross enrolment near 1976 (WDI SE.PRM.ENRR), adult literacy rate near 1976 (WDI SE.ADT.LITR.ZS). METHOD_VALID: china_manual:life_expectancy_at_birth_years contains a CHN 1949 datum; un_wpp:life_expectancy_at_birth (or WDI fallback) covers at least 6 of the 11 LMIC peers in 1976.

test:      chn_life_expectancy_1949_1976_vs_lmic_peer_median
threshold: PRIMARY 1: le_chn_1976 / le_chn_1949 >= 1.30. PRIMARY 2: le_chn_1976 >= median(le_lmic_peers_1976).