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Great Chinese Famine 三年大饑荒
Country	People's Republic of China
Location	Mainland China
Period	1958–1961
Total deaths	15 million excess deaths (government statistics) 20 and 43 million (scholarly estimates) at least 45 million (Dikötter)
Relief	Four Pests Campaign (worsened the famine). Increase in food export to other socialist states.
Consequences	Termination of the Great Leap Forward movement

The Three Years of Great Chinese Famine (simplified Chinese: 三年大饥荒; traditional Chinese: 三年大饑荒; pinyin: Sānnián dà jīhuāng), referred to by the Communist Party of China as the Three Years of Natural Disasters or Three Years of Difficult Period (simplified Chinese: 三年自然灾害; traditional Chinese: 三年自然災害; pinyin: Sānnián zìrán zāihài or simplified Chinese: 三年困难时期; traditional Chinese: 三年困難時期; pinyin: Sānnián kùnnán shíqī) by the government, was the period in the People's Republic of China between the years 1958 and 1961 characterized by widespread famine. Drought, poor weather conditions, and the policies of the Communist Party of China contributed to the famine, although the relative weights of the contributions are disputed due to the Great Leap Forward.

According to government statistics, there were 15 million excess deaths in this period. Unofficial estimates vary, but scholars have estimated the number of famine victims to be between 20 and 43 million. Historian Frank Dikötter, having been granted special access to Chinese archival materials, estimates that there were at least 45 million premature deaths from 1958 to 1962. The phrase "Three Bitter Years" is often used by Chinese peasants to describe this period.

Causes

Until the early 1980s, the Chinese government's stance, reflected by the name "Three Years of Natural Disasters", was that the famine was largely a result of a series of natural disasters compounded by several planning errors. Some researchers outside China argue that massive institutional and policy changes which accompanied the Great Leap Forward were the key factors in the famine, or at least worsened nature-induced disasters. Since the 1980s there has been greater official Chinese recognition of the importance of policy mistakes in causing the disaster, claiming that the disaster was 30% due to natural causes and 70% by mismanagement. There are parallels to the Soviet famine of 1932-1933, such as forced collectivization just before and during both famines.

During the Great Leap Forward, farming was organized into communes and the cultivation of private plots forbidden. Iron and steel production was identified as a key requirement for economic advancement. Millions of peasants were ordered away from agricultural work to join the iron and steel production workforce.

Yang Jisheng would summarize the effect of the focus on production targets in 2008:

In Xinyang, people starved at the doors of the grain warehouses. As they died, they shouted, "Communist Party, Chairman Mao, save us". If the granaries of Henan and Hebei had been opened, no one need have died. As people were dying in large numbers around them, officials did not think to save them. Their only concern was how to fulfill the delivery of grain.

Along with collectivisation, the central Government decreed several changes in agricultural techniques based on the ideas of Soviet pseudoscientist Trofim Lysenko. One of these ideas was close planting, whereby the density of seedlings was at first tripled and then doubled again. The theory was that plants of the same species would not compete with each other. In practice they did, which stunted growth and resulted in lower yields. Another policy was based on the ideas of Lysenko's colleague Teventy Maltsev, who encouraged peasants across China to plow deeply into the soil (up to 1 or 2 meters). They believed the most fertile soil was deep in the earth, allowing extra strong root growth. However, in shallow soil, useless rocks, soil, and sand were driven up instead, burying the topsoil.

These radical changes in farming organization coincided with adverse weather patterns, including droughts and floods. In July 1959, the Yellow River flooded in East China. According to the Disaster Center, the flood directly killed, either through starvation from crop failure or drowning, an estimated 2 million people, while other areas were affected in other ways as well. It could be ranked as one of the deadliest natural disasters of the 20th century.

In 1960, an estimated 60% of agricultural land in northern China received no rain at all. The Encyclopædia Britannica yearbooks from 1958 to 1962 also reported abnormal weather, followed by droughts and floods. This included 760 millimetres (30 in) of rain in Hong Kong across five days in June 1959, part of a pattern that hit all of Southern China.

As a result of these factors, year over year grain production dropped in China. The harvest was down by 15% in 1959. By 1960, it was at 70% of its 1958 level. There was no recovery until 1962, after the Great Leap Forward ended.

According to the work of Nobel prize winning economist and expert on famines Amartya Sen, most famines do not result just from lower food production, but also from an inappropriate or inefficient distribution of the food, often compounded by lack of information and indeed misinformation as to the extent of the problem. In the case of these Chinese famines, the urban population had protected legal rights for certain amounts of grain consumption. Local officials in the countryside competed to over-report the levels of production that their communes had achieved in response to the new economic organisation, and thus local peasants were left with a much reduced residue.

Outcome

According to China Statistical Yearbook (1984), crop production decreased from 200 million tons (1958) to 143.5 million tons (1960). Due to lack of food and incentive to marry at that point in time, the population was about 658,590,000 in 1961, about 13,480,000 less than the population of 1959. Birth rate decreased from 2.922% (1958) to 2.086% (1960) and death rate increased from 1.198% (1958) to 2.543% (1960), while the average numbers for 1962–1965 are about 4% and 1%, respectively.

The officially reported death rates show much more dramatic increases in a number of provinces and counties. In Sichuan province, the most populous province in China, for example, the government reported 11 million deaths out of the average population of about 70 million during 1958–1961, one death in every seven people. In Huaibin county, Henan province, the government reported 102 thousand deaths out of a population of 378 thousand in 1960. On the national level, the official statistics imply about 15 million so-called "excess deaths" or "abnormal deaths", most of them resulting from starvation.

Yu Dehong, the secretary of a party official in Xinyang in 1959 and 1960, stated,

I went to one village and saw 100 corpses, then another village and another 100 corpses. No one paid attention to them. People said that dogs were eating the bodies. Not true, I said. The dogs had long ago been eaten by the people.

It is widely believed that the government seriously under-reported death tolls: Lu Baoguo, a Xinhua reporter in Xinyang, told Yang Jisheng of why he never reported on his experience:

In the second half of 1959, I took a long-distance bus from Xinyang to Luoshan and Gushi. Out of the window, I saw one corpse after another in the ditches. On the bus, no one dared to mention the dead. In one county, Guangshan, one-third of the people had died. Although there were dead people everywhere, the local leaders enjoyed good meals and fine liquor. ... I had seen people who had told the truth being destroyed. Did I dare to write it?

Some Western analysts, such as Patricia Buckley Ebrey, estimate that about 20-40 million people had died of starvation caused by bad government policy and natural disasters. J. Banister estimates this number is about 23 million. Li Chengrui, a former minister of the National Bureau of Statistics of China, estimated 22 million (1998). His estimation was based on Ansley J. Coale and Jiang Zhenghua's estimation of 17 million. Cao Shuji estimated 32.5 million. The aforementioned Yang Jisheng (2008) estimated the death toll at 36 million.

Hong Kong based historian Frank Dikötter (2010) estimates that, at minimum, 45 million people died from starvation, overwork and state violence during the Great Leap, claiming his findings to be based on access to recently opened local and provincial party archives. However, his approach to the documents, as well has his claim to be the first author to use them, have been questioned by other scholars. Dikötter's study also stresses that state violence exacerbated the death toll. Dikötter claims that least 2.5 million of the victims were beaten or tortured to death. He provides a graphic example of what happened to a family after one member was caught stealing some food:

Liu Desheng, guilty of poaching a sweet potato, was covered in urine ... He, his wife, and his son were also forced into a heap of excrement. Then tongs were used to prise his mouth open after he refused to swallow excrement. He died three weeks later.

There are widespread oral reports, and some official documentation, of cannibalism being practiced in various forms, as a result of the famine. Due to the scale of the famine, the resulting cannibalism has been described as "on a scale unprecedented in the history of the 20th century".

Political Movement

The Great Leap Forward was initiated in 1958, after the First Five Year Plan had been declared successfully completed. One point of the Great Leap was starting to set up People's Communes in the countryside. However, the Party had optimistically over-estimated the country's productivity during the First Five Year Plan. In reality, farming activity had gone down due to the All-Canteen.

Some activists went against the Great Leap Forward movement, but they were seen as the opponents of Mao and were silenced in the purges of the following "Anti-Rightist Movement".

After the Famine, then-Chairman of the People's Republic of China Liu Shaoqi concluded that the reason for the calamity was "30% natural disaster, 70% policy". In the later Cultural Revolution, Liu was denounced as a traitor and an enemy agent going against the Three Red Banners.

Further perspectives

History of the People's Republic of China
1949–1976: Mao era Revolution Land Reform Movement Proclamation Korean War Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries Three-anti and Five-anti Campaigns First five-year plan Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence Bandung Conference Sufan movement Hundred Flowers Campaign Anti-Rightist Campaign Canton Fair Great Leap Forward Great Chinese Famine Two Bombs, One Satellite Seven Thousand Cadres Conference Socialist Education Movement Third Front Cultural Revolution UN representation Richard Nixon visit
1976–1989: Deng era Gang of Four Boluan Fanzheng 1978 Truth Criterion Controversy New Enlightenment Reforms and Opening Up Special economic zones China–United States relations Three Communiqués Four Modernizations Sino-Vietnamese War Beijing Spring Strike Hard Against Crime Campaign Sino-British Joint Declaration Campaign against spiritual pollution Bourgeois liberalization Opposition 863 Program 1986 Chinese student demonstrations Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre
1989–2002: Jiang era Shanghai Stock Exchange Pudong New District Deng's southern tour 1992 consensus One country, two systems Handover of Hong Kong Handover of Macau 1998 floods US bombing of the Belgrade embassy Persecution of Falun Gong China Western Development Hainan Island incident APEC China 2001 Accession to the WTO Forum on China–Africa Cooperation Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
2002–2012: Hu era 2002–2004 SARS outbreak Shenzhou 5 Visit of Lien Chan South–North Water Transfer Project Qinghai–Tibet railway 2008 Sichuan earthquake Three Links with Taiwan 2008 Summer Olympics Expo 2010 BRICS Three Gorges Dam West–East Gas Pipeline High-speed rail
2012–present: Xi era Anti-corruption campaign Belt and Road Initiative Chang'e 3 Supercomputing APEC China 2014 Meeting with Ma Ying-Jeou 2016 G20 Hangzhou summit Xiong'an 9th BRICS summit Persecution of Uyghurs Xinjiang internment camps China–United States trade war China International Import Expo Space program 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests 2020 Hong Kong national security law COVID-19 pandemic Zero-COVID 2020–2021 reform spree 2022 Winter Olympics
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The discussion includes other scholars who caution against taking a one-sided approach or see the issue in a wider context.

Former Chinese dissident and political prisoner, Minqi Li, a Professor of Economics at the University of Utah, has produced data showing that even the peak death rates during the Great Leap Forward were in fact quite typical in pre-Communist China. Li (2008) argues that based on the average death rate over the three years of the Great Leap Forward, there were several million fewer lives lost during this period than would have been the case under normal mortality conditions before 1949.

Nobel Prize winner economist Amartya Sen puts this famine in a global context. His book Development as Freedom argues that lack of democracy is the major culprit: "Indeed, no substantial famine has ever occurred in a democratic country—no matter how poor." He adds that it is "hard to imagine that anything like this could have happened in a country that goes to the polls regularly and that has an independent press. During that terrible calamity the government faced no pressure from newspapers, which were controlled, and none from opposition parties, which were absent." This claim has been disputed by other economists, including Prabhat Patnaik who has pointed out long-lasting starvation in India in spite of its democratic government.

See also

• Great Leap Forward (1958–1961)
• Four Pests Campaign
• Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62

Notes

1. Ó Gráda, Famine: A Short History, p.95
2. Peng Xizhe (彭希哲), "Demographic Consequences of the Great Leap Forward in China's Provinces," Population and Development Review 13, no. 4 (1987), 639-70.
   For a summary of other estimates, please refer to Necrometrics
3. Akbar, Arifa (17 September 2010). "Mao's Great Leap Forward 'killed 45 million in four years'". The Independent. London. Retrieved 20 September 2010.
4. ^ Dikötter, Frank. Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62. Walker & Company, 2010. p. 333. ISBN 0-8027-7768-6
5. "Different Life of Scientist Yuan Longping" (in Chinese). Guangming Daily. 22 May 2007. Retrieved 16 March 2012.
6. Sue Williams (director), Howard Sharp (editor), Will Lyman (narrator) (1997). China: A Century of Revolution. WinStar Home Entertainment.
7. Demeny, Paul; McNicoll, Geoffrey, eds. (2003), "Famine in China", Encyclopedia of Population, vol. 1, New York: Macmillan Reference USA, pp. 388–390
8. ^ Translation from "A hunger for the truth: A new book, banned on the mainland, is becoming the definitive account of the Great Famine.", chinaelections.org, 7 July 2008 of content from Yang Jisheng, 墓碑 －－中國六十年代大饑荒紀實 (Mu Bei - - Zhong Guo Liu Shi Nian Dai Da Ji Huang Ji Shi), Hong Kong: Cosmos Books (Tian Di Tu Shu), 2008, ISBN 9789882119093Template:Zh icon
9. Lynch, Michael (2008). The People's Republic of China 1949-76 (second ed.). London: Hodder Education. p. 57.
10. "The Most Deadly 100 Natural Disasters of the 20th Century".
11. "Top 10 Deadliest Natural Disasters". 7 September 2007.
12. Liu, Henry C K (1 April 2004). "Part 2: The Great Leap Forward not all bad". Asia Times online.
13. "WHAT CAUSED THE GREAT CHINESE FAMINE?" (PDF). 1 January 2000. Retrieved 14 May 2009.{{deadlink|date=September 2012
14. "A hunger for the truth: A new book, banned on the mainland, is becoming the definitive account of the Great Famine.", chinaelections.org, 7 July 2008
15. Dillon, Michael. "Collective Responsibility“ "The Times Literary Supplement" January 7 (2011), p. 13.
16. Dikötter, Frank. Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62. Walker & Company, 2010. p. 298. ISBN 0-8027-7768-6
17. Issac Stone Fish. Greeting Misery With Violence. Newsweek. 26 September 2010.
18. ^ Bernstein, Richard (5 February 1997). "Horror of a Hidden Chinese Famine". New York Times.
19. ^ Becker, Jasper (1997). Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine. Free Press. p. 352. ISBN 978-0-68483457-3, title is a reference to Hungry ghosts in Chinese religion{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
20. Dikötter, Frank (2010). "36. Cannibalism". Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–1962. pp. 320–323. ISBN 978-0-80277768-3.
21. Li. Minqi (2008). The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy. Monthly Review Press. ISBN 978-1-58367-182-5.
22. Amartya Kumar Sen (1999). Development as freedom. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-289330-7. Retrieved 14 April 2011.

References

• Ashton, Basil, Kenneth Hill, Alan Piazza, Robin Zeitz, "Famine in China, 1958-61", Population and Development Review, Vol. 10, No. 4. (Dec., 1984), pp. 613–645.
• Banister, J. "Analysis of recent data on the population of China", Population and Development, Vol.10, No.2, 1984.
• Becker, Jasper (1998). Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine. Holt Paperbacks. ISBN 0-8050-5668-8
• Cao Shuji, The deaths of China's population and its contributing factors during 1959-1961. China's Population Science (Jan.2005) (In Chinese)
• China Statistical Yearbook (1984), edited by State Statistical Bureau. China Statistical Publishing House, 1984.Page 83,141,190
• China Statistical Yearbook (1991), edited by State Statistical Bureau. China Statistical Publishing House, 1991.
• China Population Statistical Yearbook (1985), edited by State Statistical Bureau. China Statistical Bureau Publishing House, 1985.
• Coale, Ansley J., Rapid population change in China, 1952–1982, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 1984.
• Li Chengrui(李成瑞): Population Change Caused by The Great Leap Movement, Demographic Study, No.1, 1998 pp. 97–111
• Dikötter, Frank. Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62. Walker & Company, 2010. ISBN 0-8027-7768-6
• Jiang Zhenghua(蒋正华)，Method and Result of China Population Dynamic Estimation, Academic Report of Xi'a University, 1986(3). pp46,84
• Peng Xizhe, "Demographic Consequences of the Great Leap Forward in China's Provinces", Population and Development Review, Vol. 13, No.4. (Dec., 1987), pp. 639–670
• Thaxton. Ralph A. Jr (2008). Catastrophe and Contention in Rural China: Mao's Great Leap Forward Famine and the Origins of Righteous Resistance in Da Fo Village. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-72230-6
• Yang, Dali. Calamity and Reform in China: State, Rural Society and Institutional Change since the Great Leap Famine. Stanford University Press, 1996.
• Yang Jisheng. Tombstone (Mu Bei - Zhong Guo Liu Shi Nian Dai Da Ji Huang Ji Shi). Cosmos Books (Tian Di Tu Shu), Hong Kong 2008.
• Official Chinese statistics, shown as a graph.
• Death rates in several Asian nations, 1960 to 1994.
• Gao. Mobo (2007). Gao Village: Rural life in modern China. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-3792-9
• Gao. Mobo (2008). The Battle for China's Past. Pluto Press. ISBN 978-0-7453-2780-8
• Li. Minqi (2008). The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy. Monthly Review Press. ISBN 978-1-58367-182-5

• Use dmy dates from April 2011
• 1959 disasters
• 1960 disasters
• 1961 disasters
• Famines in China
• Incidents of cannibalism
• History of the People's Republic of China
• 1959 in China
• 1960 in China
• 1961 in China
• Disasters in the People's Republic of China