Great Chinese Famine

**The Great Chinese Famine** was a terrible famine in China from 1958 to 1961. It killed between 15 million and 55 million people. It is the deadliest famine in known history.

The famine was mostly man-made. It resulted from Mao Zedong's policies, like the Great Leap Forward and the Four Pests campaign. A badly managed economy, social pressure, bad weather, and drought also played a role.

## Causes

_Also see: The Great Leap Forward and Collectivization_

The Great Chinese Famine has been called "the worst man-made catastrophe ever."

### Mao's policies

Mao Zedong was China's first president and the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. During the Great Leap Forward, he made many drastic changes to China's economy. Many of his policies caused or worsened the famine.

For example, Mao collectivized farms in China. He cancelled farmers' private property rights, took over their land, and formed large government farms called people's communes. It was illegal for a person to own a farm; everybody had to work on the communes. They often had to use poor agricultural techniques, which made crop harvests smaller.

Mao also ordered millions of farmers to become iron and steel workers. As a result, there were not enough farm workers left. Meanwhile, the Chinese government's Four Pests campaign killed so many sparrows that they disrupted the ecosystem. Without sparrows, crop-eating insects had no predators, and their populations grew quickly.

### Mao's response to famine

Food was not distributed fairly in China's new planned economy. Even during the famine, Mao insisted that China still had to export grain to other countries. He continued to send grain to other countries as Chinese people starved.

Government leaders knew about the famine as early as 1958, as proved by scholars like Yang Jisheng. In 1959, Mao told colleagues:> _To distribute resources evenly will only ruin the Great Leap Forward. When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death. It is better to let half the people die so that others can eat their fill._

### Official statements

In early 1962, Chinese president Liu Shaoqi said the famine was “three parts natural disaster and seven parts man-made disaster" (三分天灾, 七分人祸). Later that year, he told Mao: “History will record the role you and I played in the starvation of so many people, and the cannibalism will also be memorialized!”

In June 1981, the Chinese Communist Party admitted that the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward were the famine's main cause. They also said that natural disasters and the Sino-Soviet split played a role.

## Estimated deaths

Scholars disagree about how many people died in the Great Chinese Famine. Official Chinese government statistics say the famine killed 15 million people.

After studying Chinese archival materials, historian Frank Dikotter estimated that at least 45 million people died prematurely from 1958 to 1962 (although not all of these deaths resulted from starvation).

Chinese journalist Yang Jisheng concluded that China lost 76 million people in the famine: 36 million people who starved to death, and another 40 million births which were lost or postponed.

Some provinces were affected more severely than others. In Anhui province, the famine killed almost one in every five people (18%). In Chongqing, 15% of the population starved to death. Around 13% of people in Sichuan province and 11% of those in Guizhou died during the famine.

## Related pages

- Chinese famine of 1942–1943
- Mao Zedong
- Great Leap Forward
- Communist Party of China
- History of China
- Political problems of China