Great Chinese Famine
The Great Chinese Famine was a famine that occurred between 1959 and 1961 in the People's Republic of China. Some scholars have also included the years 1958 or 1962. It is widely regarded as the deadliest famine and one of the greatest man-made disasters in human history, with an estimated death toll due to starvation that ranges in the tens of millions. The most stricken provinces were Anhui, Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou and Hunan.
The major contributing factors in the famine were the policies of the Great Leap Forward and people's communes, launched by Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party Mao Zedong, such as inefficient distribution of food within the nation's planned economy; requiring the use of poor agricultural techniques; the Eliminate Sparrows campaign that reduced sparrow populations as part of the Four Pests campaign ; over-reporting of grain production; and ordering millions of farmers to switch to iron and steel production.
During the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference in early 1962, Liu Shaoqi, then President of China, formally attributed 30% of the famine to natural disasters and 70% to man-made errors. After the launch of Reform and opening up, the Chinese Communist Party officially stated in June 1981 that the famine was mainly due to the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward as well as the Anti-Right Deviation Struggle, in addition to some natural disasters and the Sino-Soviet split.
Terminology
Aside from the "Three Years of Great Famine", there are two names for the famine that have been used by the Chinese government. Initially, the usual name was "Three Years of Natural Disasters". In June 1981, this was changed to "Three Years of Difficulty", thus no longer blaming nature alone for the famine.Causes of the famine
The Great Chinese Famine was caused by a combination of radical agricultural policies, social pressure, economic mismanagement, and natural disasters such as droughts and floods in farming regions.Great Leap Forward
The Chinese Communist Party introduced drastic changes in farming policy during the Great Leap Forward.People's communes
During the Great Leap Forward, farming was organized into people's communes and the cultivation of individual plots was forbidden. Previously farmers cultivated plots of land given to them by the government. The Great Leap Forward led to the agricultural economy being increasingly centrally planned. Regional Party leaders were given production quotas for the communes under their control. Their output was then appropriated by the state and distributed at its discretion. In 2008, former deputy editor of Yanhuang Chunqiu and author Yang Jisheng would summarize his perspective of the effect of the production targets as an inability for supply to be redirected to where it was most demanded:The degree to which people's communes lessened or worsened the famine is controversial. Each region dealt with the famine differently, and timelines of the famine are not uniform across China. One argument is that excessive eating took place in the mess halls, and that this directly led to a worsening of the famine. If excessive eating had not taken place, one scholar argued, "the worst of the Great Leap Famine could still have been avoided in mid-1959". However, dire hunger did not set in to places like Da Fo village until 1960, and the public dining hall participation rate was found not to be a meaningful cause of famine in Anhui and Jiangxi. In Da Fo village, "food output did not decline in reality, but there was an astonishing loss of food availability associated with Maoist state appropriation".
Agricultural techniques
Along with collectivization, the central government decreed several changes in agricultural techniques that would be based on the ideas of later-discredited Soviet agronomist 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 natural cycles they did fully compete, which actually stunted growth and resulted in lower yields.Another policy known as "deep plowing" was based on the ideas of Lysenko's colleague Terentiy Maltsev, who encouraged peasants across China to eschew normal plowing depths of 15–20 centimeters and instead plow deeply into the soil. The deep plowing theory stated that the most fertile soil was deep in the earth, and plowing unusually deeply would allow extra-strong root growth. While deep plowing can increase yields in some contexts, the policy is generally considered to have hindered yields in China.
Eliminate Sparrows campaign
In the Four Pests campaign, citizens were called upon to destroy mosquitoes, rats, flies, and sparrows. The mass eradication of the sparrows as part of the associated Eliminate Sparrows campaign resulted in an increase of the population of crop-eating insects, which had no predators without the sparrows.Illusion of superabundance
Beginning in 1957, the Chinese Communist Party began to report excessive production of grain because of pressure from superiors. However, the actual production of grain throughout China was decreasing from 1957 to 1961. For example:- In Sichuan Province, even though the collected grain was decreasing from 1958 to 1961, the numbers reported to the central government kept increasing.
- In Gansu, the grain yield declined by 4,273,000 tonnes from 1957 to 1961.
Iron and steel production
Iron and steel production was identified as a key requirement for economic advancement, and millions of peasants were ordered away from agricultural work to join the iron and steel production workforce. Much of the iron produced by the peasant population ended up being too weak to be used commercially, and agricultural laborers and production were lost.More policies from the central government
Economists Xin Meng, Nancy Qian and Pierre Yared showed that, much as Nobel laureate Amartya Sen had earlier claimed, aggregate production was sufficient for avoiding famine and that the famine was caused by over-procurement and poor distribution within the country. They show that unlike most other famines, there were surprisingly more deaths in places that produced more food per capita, explaining that the inflexibility in the centrally planned food procurement system explains at least half of the famine mortality. Economic historians James Kung and Shuo Chen show that there was more over-procurement in places where politicians faced more competition.In addition, policies from the Chinese Communist Party and the central government, particularly the Three Red Banners and the Socialist Education Movement, proved to be ideologically detrimental to the worsening famine. The Three Red Banners of the CCP "sparked the fanaticism of 1958". The implementation of the Mass line, one of the three banners which told people to "go all out, aim high, and build socialism with greater, better, and more economical results", is cited in connection to the pressures officials felt to report a superabundance of grain. The SEM, established in 1957, also led to the severity of the famine in various ways, including causing the "illusion of superabundance". Once the exaggerations of crop yields from the Mass Line were reported, "no one dared to 'dash cold water on further reports. The SEM also led to the establishment of conspiracy theories in which the peasants were believed to be pretending to be hungry in order to sabotage the state grain purchase.
Power relations in local governments
Local governments had just as much, if not more, influence on the famine as did higher rings of government. As the Great Leap Forward progressed, many provincial leaders began aligning themselves with Mao and higher Party leaders. Local leaders were forced to choose between doing what was best for their community and guarding their reputation politically. Landlords began "denouncing any opposition as 'conservative rightism, which is defined broadly as anything anti-communist. In an environment of conspiracy theories directed against peasants, saving extra grain for a family to eat, espousing the belief that the Great Leap Forward should not be implemented, or merely not working hard enough were all seen as forms of "conservative rightism". Peasants became unable to speak openly on collectivization and state grain purchase. With a culture of fear and recrimination at both a local and official level, speaking and acting against the famine became a seemingly impossible task.The influence of local government in the famine can be seen in the comparison between the provinces of Anhui and Jiangxi. Anhui, having a radical pro-Mao government, was led by Zeng Xisheng who was "dictatorial", with ties to Mao. Zeng firmly believed in the Great Leap Forward and tried to build relationships with higher officials rather than maintain local ties. Zeng proposed agricultural projects without consulting colleagues, which caused Anhui's agriculture to fail terribly. Zhang Kaifan, a party secretary and deputy-governor of the province, heard rumours of a famine breaking out in Anhui and disagreed with many of Zeng's policies. Zeng reported Zhang to Mao for such speculations. As a result, Mao labeled Zhang "a member of the 'Peng Dehuai anti-Party military clique and he was purged from the local party. Zeng was unable to report on the famine when it became an emergency situation, as this would prove his hypocrisy. For this he was described as a "blatant political radical who almost single-handedly damaged Anhui".
Jiangxi encountered a situation almost opposite to that of Anhui. The leaders of Jiangxi publicly opposed some of the Great Leap programs, quietly made themselves unavailable, and even appeared to take a passive attitude towards the Maoist economy. As the leaders worked collaboratively among themselves, they also worked with the local population. By creating an environment in which the Great Leap Forward did not become fully implemented, the Jiangxi government "did their best to minimize damage". From these findings, scholars Manning and Wemheuer concluded that much of the severity of the famine was due to provincial leaders and their responsibility for their regions.