三年困难时期
Dikötter defended the estimate of 45 million dead, citing other Chinese authors who had spent time in the Party's archives, including Yang Jisheng (36 million), Chen Yizi (43 million), and Yu Xiguang (55 million). Dikötter dismissed comparisons between the Great Chinese Famine and those under Republican China, saying that the latter were wartime disasters, the former was a human-made disaster during times of peace: "There is a difference between starving to death and being starved to death".