The famine could easily have been arrested after the first year of the Great Leap Forward if enough senior leaders had dared to stand up to Mao. Yet even before the first communes were established, Mao warned in the People's Daily that dissent would not be tolerated. Some people think a Leap is too adventurous. It is new, it may not be perfect, but it is not an adventure. Then indeed are they growing poor.
Land is one's flesh and blood.
Other left-leaning provinces followed suit after.