The Great Leap Forward, the People’s Commune, and the Great Famine: Mao Zedong’s Fantasy with Disastrous Results

Abstract

The Great Leap Forward movement, which began in 1958, involved the entire nation. This chapter will focus on the following points: Why such a policy was launched, how it developed—what was the background of the worst famine in history? Furthermore, how many people died and what Mao’s role was in bringing about such a catastrophe? I will consider these questions, basically using the memoirs of Li Rui, one of Mao’s secretaries, as well as supplementing with other sources. Finally, I will present my own views on the meaning of this movement.

The two major social upheavals of the pre-reform and opening-up era of Mao’s China are the Great Leap Forward (GLF), which began in 1958, and the Cultural Revolution (CR), which lasted for 10 years from 1966. Both were initiated by Mao Zedong himself; both involved the entire nation, brought the state, society, and economy to the brink of destruction, and ended in indescribable misery. Focusing on the GLF movement, this chapter examines why this policy was implemented, how it unfolded, how it finally led to the greatest famine in history, how many people were sacrificed as a result of this famine, and how Mao perceived and what role he played in bringing about such a catastrophe. I will consider these questions drawing from published sources, especially the two memoirs written by Li Rui, one of Mao’s secretaries at the time.¹ This chapter will cover the GLF policy from its birth to its tragic end. The well-known “Peng Dehuai incident” at the Party’s Lushan Conference during the GLF process, will be discussed independently in the next chapter.

The main texts used in this and next chapters are the following three memoirs written by Li Rui. Dayuejin Qinliji Vol. 1 (Personal Experiences of the Great Leap Forward Vol. 1 (Li 1999c, hereinafter, Li’s Notes (1))), Dayuejin Qinliji Vol. 2 (Personal Experiences of the Great Leap Forward (2)) (Li 1999b, hereinafter, Li’s Notes (2)), and Lushan Huiyi Zhenmianmu (The True Features of Lushan Conference) (Li 1999a, hereinafter, Li’s Notes (3)).

1 The Birth of the Great Leap Forward Policy

We may trace the starting point of Mao Zedong’s GLF policy to the “success” of the three major ownership reforms of 1955, which brought agricultural collectivization, and the socialization, i.e., public ownership and management, of commerce, industry, and handicrafts. Mao’s dream was captured in these developments.

Undoubtedly, his radical inclinations had long existed, and the roots of this policy could be traced back further, perhaps even to the “General Line for the Transitional Period” proposed in 1953 (refer to Chap. 2). However, the main catalyst was indeed the “socialist transformation” that unfolded from 1955 to 1956.

The unexpected “success”, in particular, of agricultural collectivization had a great impact on Mao Zedong’s decisions regarding this policy. As discussed in the previous chapter, he sharply criticized the gradualist approach to agricultural collectivization promoted by Deng Zihui, then director of the Party’s Rural Work Department, and called for rapid collectivization in 1955, which, in effect, exceeded even Mao’s expectations and swept across the country. Initially, Mao had planned to complete the spread of “elementary cooperatives,” a moderate form of collectivization in which only land was used jointly, but by 1967 this had been surpassed by the drive of “advanced cooperatives or collectives,” which collectivized not only land but also all agricultural capital, including horses, cattle, and large farm equipment, and on a large scale. In just a little over a year, nearly 90% of the nation’s farmers participated in advanced cooperatives. Mao Zedong, who was overjoyed at the “socialist aggressiveness” of the peasant masses and key cadres, took it up in his January 1956 “Preface to Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside.” He notes how this “rise of socialism” has had a great impact on production, investment and growth rate in agriculture, industry and the economy as a whole. He states:

“The problem today is that what can be done by a measure of exertion is considered by many to be impossible. It is therefore entirely necessary to continue the criticism of right conservative ideas, which do in fact exist.” (Mao Selected Works Vol. 5, p. 240)²

Evident here is his view that even moderate gradualism is a right-leaning conservative idea, and that it is necessary to criticize it and develop a path toward radicalism. In particular, as we saw in the previous chapter, the Anti-Rightist Struggle from June 1957 onward did much to give political meaning to such a movement. Moderate arguments could easily be labeled “rightist” = anti-Mao = anti-Party, anti-revolution, and anti-people. Thus, society as a whole moved more and more toward radicalism and the left-wing drive. With the publication of Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside the radical ideology that Mao fostered was transmitted at Party meetings, and a radical mood quickly arose and spread throughout the country.

In the following section, I will look at the movements that brought about the creation and implementation of the GLF policy, for the most part using Li Rui’s Notes (1), as well as referring to Shen Zhihua’s research (Shen 2008) for a detailed analysis of the developments leading up to the Anti-Rightist Struggle of mid-1957.

First, in the summer of 1955, when the State Council under the leadership of Zhou Enlai formulated the Long-Term Outlook Plan for 1953–1967, it set a target of producing 600 billion jins (300 million tons) of grains in 1967, 56 million dans (2.8 million tons) of cotton, 18 million tons of steel, and a 15-year average growth rate of 9.5% in total industrial and agricultural production value. In the People’s Daily on New Year’s Day 1956, the editorial called for the completion of the Five-Year Plan to “achieve greater, faster, better and more economical results” (duo, kuai, hao, sheng), but Mao stressed “greater and faster” (duo, kuai), while Zhou, the chief executive of economic practice, emphasized “better and more economical” (hao, sheng). At a meeting of the State Council presided over by Zhou Enlai in February, the planning indexes and the annual investment plan were reduced several times, then he said the following:

“The leader is totally crazy about the plans. If you cool him down with cold water, he might wake up a little. When each department draws up a plan, whether it is a 12-year perspective plan or an annual plan for this and next year, it must all be seeking the truth from facts.” (Li’s Notes (1), pp. 38–39)

It goes without saying whom the “leader” here refers to. Zhou Enlai was not alone. Chen Yun, Li Xiannian,³ and others with an economic background, wrote in a report by the State Council for the National People’s Congress that “impatience and rash advance” (maojin) were especially important problems to be addressed in economic construction.

Vice President of the State Liu Shaoqi responded similarly. He instructed the Party’s Central Propaganda Department to write an article in the People’s Daily titled “We must oppose conservatism and the mood of impatience.” Thus, the voice of an “anti-rash-advance” sentiment echoed throughout the country. The Second Five-Year Plan (1958–1962) also reflected these ideas, and the policy of being “active, moderate, and reliable” became commonly accepted by the Central Government as well as the various departments of the State Council.

“At the time, Mao Zedong did not object to such index compression or opposition to rash advance, and he never expressed a different opinion at Party meetings or in talks with officials.” (ibid., p. 40, my emphasis)

It should be noted that although Mao “showed no objection” and “never expressed a different opinion,” he was by no means in favor of the mainstream view. In his usual fashion, he may have been cautiously exploring opportunities to fight back, or he may not yet have made up his mind to switch to a policy of rash advance.

In September 1956, the Party’s Eighth National Congress was held, at which it was stated that the emphasis of the Party’s work would shift from class struggle to socialist construction. As a guiding policy for economic construction, it was decided to maintain the policy of the anti-rash-advance movement of 1956 and to oppose conservatism as well as rash advance. In addition, under the influence of criticism of Stalin at the 20th Congress of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party, it was decided to oppose the personality cult and to oppose individual prominence. After this Congress, in the process of formulating the economic plan for 1957, the State Planning Commission and the State Economic Commission stated, under the leadership of Zhou Enlai, that they would continue to pursue the policy of anti-rash-advance. At a national meeting of the Secretaries of the Party Committees held in January 1957, Chen Yun strongly insisted that the scale of economic construction should be commensurate with national strength, and stressed that a balance should be achieved among fiscal balance, bank loans, and the supply of commodities. As a top planning official himself, his assertion was quite appropriate because economic planning is, after all, just a balancing act.

By June 1957, however, the situation had changed abruptly, with the beginning of the Anti-Rightist Struggle and the revival of class struggle theory paving the way for the rash advance policy. Why was this? As Li Rui pointed out, in the discourse of some right-wing debates, there were criticisms of the rash advance policy for “seeking quick success and instant benefits” (jigong jinli), and so Mao Zedong equated such views with “rightist aggression.” It can be said that an economic issue about developmental speed suddenly became a political issue.

Another, even more important point is that, as emphasized in the previous chapter, no one had been able to criticize Mao as a result of the Anti-Rightist Struggle, either inside or outside the Party. In doing so one would be labeled a rightist, condemned as a rightist, and possibly lose not only one’s political life but even one’s physical life. Therefore, his criticism of anti-rash-advance and his attack on right-leaning conservatism made it impossible for anyone to oppose his policy of rash advance. As Li Rui says, “As history has long shown, the ‘left’ is like a safe and secure stance for Communists, they are not afraid of the ‘left,’ they are not afraid of ‘running to extremes’ and they are not afraid of ‘advancing rashly,’ they are only afraid of being considered ‘right-leaning’ or ‘conservative’” (Li’s Notes (1), p. 82).

Mao Zedong, empowered by the Anti-Rightist Struggle, urged a major policy shift in the Party and the government, that is, from an anti-rash-advance to rash advance. This was the Great Leap Forward. The starting point for this policy shift was the Nanning Conference in January 1958, but Mao had already launched the policy before that Conference. The editorial to the People’s Daily of November 13, 1957, which was written according to Mao’s intention, criticized the anti-rash-advance errors of 1956 and said:

“Some persons have made the mistake of leaning to the right, walking too slowly like snails, not realizing the conditions for and need for a major breakthrough on the production front after the agricultural collectivization.”

This editorial marked the first time that the term “Great Leap Forward” appeared in a newspaper.

At the Nanning Conference, Mao Zedong appealed as follows:

“Don’t take up this noun ‘anti-rash-advance.’ OK? This is a political issue. [If you go against rash advance] you will lose momentum. It would be terrible if 600 million people lost momentum. The issue of the ten fingers must be clarified. Stretch out your hand and see. How many fingers have boils? Isn’t it just one finger?”

This metaphor of nine fingers versus one finger is one of his favorite metaphors, in which he refers to the positive (achievements and results) with nine fingers and the negative (shortcomings and failures) with one finger. In other words, he was saying “don’t pick on the small faults and ignore the big achievements.”

The first to be singled out for criticism were Zhou Enlai and Chen Yun. They were criticized by Mao Zedong by name as the promoters of anti-rash-advance policies. Before the Eighth National Congress, when the final draft of the Second Five-Year Plan was being formulated, Zhou omitted some important words from the plan, namely, those expressing the spirit of “achieve greater, faster, better and more economical results.” “This made the situation at the Nanning Conference so tense that some comrades could not sleep at night” (ibid., p. 73). Not only did Zhou admit to the “mistake” of the anti-rash-advance policy at the meeting, but he also made a separate self-criticism (jiantao) to Mao, and at the Second Session of the Eighth National Congress in May 1958, Zhou, Chen, and others who had “made the mistake of the anti-rash-advance” formally criticized themselves in writing.

Zhou Enlai criticized himself at the meeting as follows:

“I am the main person responsible for the mistake of ‘anti-rash-advance’ and we should learn more lessons from this mistake.” He criticized himself further, saying that: “Those who made the mistake of the ‘anti-rash-advance’ were those who tried to build socialism by administrative order instead of through the active efforts of the cadres and the masses, which is clearly contrary to the guideline of building socialism, that is, to achieve greater, faster, better and more economical results, as expressed by Chairman Mao.”

And he said the following, completely expressing his submission to Mao Zedong:

“As the historical experience of decades of revolution and construction in China proves, Chairman Mao is the representative of truth. If we depart from or violate his guidance and instructions, we will always lose our orientation, make mistakes, and damage the interests of the Party as well as the people. The many mistakes I have made prove this point.” (ibid., p. 370, my emphasis)

Stirred by this spirit of criticizing the anti-rash-advance, the plan’s indicators were raised one after another. The indicators of the Second Five-Year Plan were originally decided by the Party Central Standing Committee and the Political Bureau, therefore Mao Zedong himself, as Chairman of the Party, would naturally have agreed with the decisions, but at the Nanning Conference, he “reprimanded the correct decisions that had originally been made collectively, without allowing for rebuttal, and criticized and rejected them as vehemently as he had done with the right-wingers” (ibid., pp. 81–82).

The Nanning Conference was nothing but the starting point for the formulation of the GLF policy. The policy was further “advanced” at the Chengdu Conference in March 1958, the Wuhan Conference in April 1958, and the Second Session of the Eighth National Congress in May 1958. The following is a brief account of this process.

At the Chengdu Conference, each locality and administrative department set its own breakthrough goals, which were praised by Mao Zedong, so that enthusiasm for breakthrough grew stronger and stronger. The Conference’s common phrase was “break through superstition,” and existing theories, expert knowledge, and the Soviet experiences to date were seen as “superstitions” that needed to be overcome. The target of industrial gross output for 1958 was to be raised by 33% while that of agricultural gross output was increased by 16.2%. The nominal target of steel production for 1958 was 6,248,000 tons, 19.2% up from the 5,244,000 tons in 1957, but the actual target was raised to 7,000,000 tons, an increase of 33.5%.

More importantly, the Chengdu Conference further enhanced Mao’s authority. He emphasized that there were two kinds of personality cults, “right” and “wrong”, and that a right personality cult is necessary. That is to say, Mao was saying that his personality cult is qualitatively different from that of Stalin, knowing well that the personality cult was indeed an effective means of strengthening and further establishing his power. Zhou Enlai’s self-criticism as I quoted above is a typical manifestation of “Mao worship.” Not only Zhou, but all the prominent central leaders, including Liu Shaoqi, Chen Yun, Li Xiannian and Bo Yibo, submitted to Mao Zedong after the Chengdu Conference.

China’s GLF policy was not born solely out of domestic political dynamics. The birth of this policy also has an international background. The Soviet Union successfully launched the world’s first artificial satellite in October 1957, and this confidence led Khrushchev to declare at the Supreme Soviet (Congress) in November of the same year that “within 15 years we will catch up with the United States in the production of important products.” Mao Zedong, who was attending the Moscow Conference in November, was soon to declare that “China will catch up with the United Kingdom in the production of steel and other important products in 15 years.”

Mao Zedong had long had a great ambition to catch up with the United States. In October 1955, at the “Roundtable on the Problem of Socialist Remolding of Capitalist Industry and Commerce,” Mao stated as follows:

“Our goal is to catch up with the U.S., and we must surpass it. The U.S. has a population of only 100 million, while we have a population of over 600 million. We must catch up with the U.S. … We will need decades to catch up with the U.S. In the end, it will depend on everyone’s efforts as to how many decades it will take. It will take at least 50 years, or 75 years, which is equivalent to 15 five-year plans. Some day we will catch up with the U.S., overtake the U.S., then we can release our pent-up frustration”. (Mao Zedong Collection, Vol. 6, p. 500, requoted from Shen (2008), p. 16)

It may have been a grand dream, or even a fantasy, for China to catch up with the world’s leading economic power at that time. However, Mao really thought, “China is rich not only in people but also in resources, and it is not a mere dream for China, through hard work, to catch up with the U.S. So how can we catch up with the U.S.?” His solution was “high rate of growth, that is, a great leap forward.”⁴

Mao Zedong also believed that China could develop faster than the Soviet Union, stating in early 1956 that:

“The speed of our industrial development should not be bound by the Soviet Union’s several previous five-year plans; our speed can exceed that of the Soviet Union,” citing as his reason the logic often quoted during the GLF period: “Poor and blank” (yiqiong erbai). (Shen 2008, p. 175)

This expresses the paradox that if we are poor, we will work hard to become rich, and if we have nothing, we can create what we want from the beginning, afresh, like drawing a new picture on a blank slate.

The phrase “East wind overwhelms West wind,” which he used at the same Moscow Conference, typifies the exuberant optimism Mao Zedong and other Chinese leaders had about the socialist system at the time—that socialism (the East wind) would finally overwhelm capitalism (the West wind). As we will see later, this Khrushchev-like illusion must have been in the minds of the Maoists when they saw the People’s Commune (PC) system as “the best road to communism.” Mao began to dream like a visionary, “If the Soviet Union is going to enter a communist society, then we will also go to communism in our own way.”

At the Second Session of the Eighth National Congress, the GLF policy was officially adopted, with Liu Shaoqi delivering a keynote report that sounded exactly like Mao’s critique of anti-rash-advance, while departmental heads launched spectacular production targets, turning the meeting, so to speak, into a chorus for the Great Leap Forward. Liu proclaimed that “1958 is not only the first year of the Second Five-Year Plan, but also the first year to catch up with and overtake the United Kingdom in 15 years,” but in his own speech Mao proposed the task of catching up with and overtaking the U.K. in seven years and then catching up with and overtaking the United States in eight or ten years. Since the Supreme Leader set such unrealistic goals for high-speed development, their subordinates followed suit and began to develop empty theories on super-speed development.

For example, Wang Heshou, Minister of Metallurgical Industry, set an ambitious goal that a breakthrough in steel production was entirely possible, which would catch up with and surpass the United Kingdom within five years and catch up with the United States within 15 years. Li Fuchun, the head of economic planning, stressed that the country would catch up with or overtake the U.K. in the production of steel and other major industrial products within 7–8 years, and catch up with or overtake the U.S. in 15 years or a little longer. According to him, by 1962, the final year of the Second Five-Year Plan, gross industrial output should be two to three times that of 1957, with an average annual growth rate of 26–32%. Thus, the GLF policy itself “leapt forward greatly.” In particular, Mao was obsessed with the plan to double steel production in one year, which was to fuel the metallurgical sector.⁵

With regard to agricultural production, too, the signal flare of the Great Leap was launched to celebrate the goals and achievements. The “Outline of National Agricultural Development for 1956–1967 (revised draft)”, commonly known as the “Forty Articles on Agriculture”, adopted at the Third Session of the Party’s Eighth National Congress held in September–October 1957, divided the country into three regions and set the following goals for 12 years: Foodgrain production was planned to be increased from 150 jins per mu (1.125 t/ha) to 400 jins per mu (3 t/ha) in the North, from 208 jins per mu (1.56 t/ha) to 500 jins per mu (3.75 t/ha) in the Central, and from 400 to 800 jins per mu (6.75 t/ha) in the South.⁶ The “production results” of foodgrains announced from around the end of 1957 were still mild compared to the exaggerated reports that followed, such as one district in the South having already exceeded 1200 jins per mu and another in the North having exceeded 1000 jins per mu. After the summer harvest of 1958, one report after the other inflated positive results. In the words of the People’s Daily, “Since May, the happy news of a good harvest has been flying around the country’s sky like spring swallows” (Li’s Notes (2), p. 47). One agricultural collective reported that it had achieved 2100 jins, then another reported 3000 jins, followed by a different collective reporting 4000 jins, and then a case appeared which reported 5000 jins (i.e., 37.5 t/ha).⁷

In August 1958, when the news was reported that the rice output of Maocheng County, Hubei Province, was 36,956 jins per mu, or about 277 tons per hectare, the People’s Daily even published a photo of four children standing on the densely planted ears of rice with a comment below the photo that “the children look like they are standing on a sofa” (Ding 1991, p. 84) (Photo 5.1).⁸

Photo 5.1

Exaggerated report of rice production. The children stand on thick rice stalks, but in fact, the stalks beneath their feet are a fabrication, bringing together crops from many fields into one. Source http://www.chinafotobank.com/picture.do?method=getpicture1&id=266544&ivk_sa=1024320u

It goes without saying that these unscientific “miracles” were staged and manipulated. One People’s Commune in Sichuan Province interviewed by Stephen Endicott gathered rice from several rice fields in one place and claimed to have produced 2000 jins per mu, while in another place rice straw was brought from a warehouse and covered with rice to make it look like there was a mountainous harvest (Endicott 1988, p. 58). It can be said that a large-scale comedic competition was performed throughout China.

Scientists played a role as the directors of this comedy. Qian Xuesen, well-known as the father of rocket development in China, told to the China Youth Daily in June 1957:

“The final limit of agricultural production is determined by the amount of solar energy per unit area each year, and if this light and energy is converted into crops, the current abundant production will increase even more … the production of rice and wheat will not stop at the level of just over 2000 jins, but will be more than 20 times that amount.” (Li’s Notes (2), pp. 49–50)

In addition, the Academy of Agricultural Sciences in the capital along with other agricultural scientists and experts held a round-table discussion with more than 30 grain production masters from all over the country, and they manipulated one another’s harvest targets upward. When the scholars proposed 60,000 jins per mu of wheat (461 t/ha) and 65,000 jins per mu of paddy rice (488 t/ha) for a good harvest, two agricultural collectives in Henan and Shaanxi Provinces announced a figure of wheat 100,000 jins per mu (750 t/ha), and one agricultural collective in Jiangsu Province gave a tremendously exaggerated figure of 70,000 jins per mu (525 t/ha) of paddy rice (ibid., p. 51). It was a competition among liars and boasters.

Because scientists were spreading these figures, political leaders like Mao Zedong, who were laymen in science, also believed in these numbers and became elated. When Li Rui asked Mao later why he believed these figures, Mao replied, “I believed them because I had read Qian Xuesen’s writings” (ibid., p. 50).

But why did this crazy “GLF fever” among scientists occur in the first place? “Breaking through superstition” was a popular slogan at the time, but why were scientific theories treated as “superstitions,” and why were theoretically unfounded claims and experiments transformed into “rational knowledge”? Understanding this abnormal mechanism is undoubtedly a powerful key to comprehending the society of Mao’s era in China.

Both agricultural collectivization (see previous chapter), as well as the GLF and the PC movements which I will discuss next, were fueled by competition among regions as well as among leaders. Let me take a closer look at the mechanism whereby target figures were inflated during the GLF period.

2 Development of the People’s Commune Policy

The Great Leap Forward and the People’s Commune which emerged in the wake of the policy wreaked havoc on the Chinese economy and society as a whole. According to Kojima Reiitsu, it was the “explosive collective investment” in water conservancy construction and fertilizer production in the fall of 1957 that gave rise to the GLF policy and the birth of the People’s Commune system. He says, the latter were led by poor and lower middle peasants. They broke away naturally from the framework of existing agricultural production collectives, since they found such organizations were too small in scale to implement these projects (Kojima 1975, p. 108). We have an impression from his findings that the PC systems, were formed by merging several collectives, born as a natural result from below.

However, this somewhat idealized version, based on official information at the time such as the People’s Daily, fails to capture the reality which was not so simple and magical. As was the case with the rise of agricultural collectivization in 1955, it was the power of Mao Zedong and the local cadres inspired by him—their guidance, orders, and often threats—that fueled the seemingly spontaneous, voluntary movements seen in areas throughout the region and even the whole country, and which were then held up as “typical examples.” Otherwise, it would have been impossible for them to pull off such an acrobatic feat as the transformation of the entire country’s rural areas into People’s Communes in just two months. There was also a strong sense of competition among the cadres, as they did not want to lose to other regions, and if they did not act quickly, they would fall behind.

The havoc and economic losses wrought by the PC system throughout the country are typically exemplified by the “mess halls” and the “nationwide steel-making (quanmin liangang) movement.” These two events are closely interrelated, but let me first take a look at the latter, the steelmaking movement.

As I argued above, Mao’s obsession with steel was extremely strong, in fact, one of the criteria for catching up with and overtaking the United Kingdom was steel production. Although he was not Otto von Bismarck, he seemed to be bound by a notion similar to “iron is the state.” For Mao, heavy industry was a key for socialist industrialization, and steel was at the core of that industrialization.

Because of his dream or fantasy that even amateurs should be able to produce iron by “breaking through superstition,” and moreover, because of his illusion that a great breakthrough in agriculture had been achieved, he decided to transfer massive labor force from agriculture to industry and to mobilize that labor in a large-scale steel-making movement.⁹ As a result, a tremendous number of mini blast furnaces, called “indigenous blast furnaces” (tufa gaolu), were built all over the country, both in urban and rural areas, and people worked day and night, devoting themselves full-time to producing iron.¹⁰ At the end of September 1958, Mao published a discourse to newspaper reporters, stressing the significance of mobilizing the masses and launching a large-scale steel-making movement and criticized critics who contemptuously called it “abnormal,” “rural style,” or “guerrilla manner” (Li’s Notes (2), p. 220). At that time, small blast furnace fires were burning red-hot in the dark at night all over rural China without electricity. Such furnaces were built in places unrelated to production activities, such as schools, government offices, military units, and even neighborhood committees (jumin weiyuanhui), where even people unexperienced in physical labor worked hard, dripping in sweat, to produce iron (Photo 5.2).

Photo 5.2

Backyard furnaces. Mini-mini blast furnaces created by the farmers, which ultimately only produced unusable pig iron. Source https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA5NjMwNjc1NQ==&mid=2663486190&idx=4&sn=980aade11e01aef25e1c2b1931f437be&chksm=8b8721c2bcf0a8d42bba335467e3c8835e412101f1598a91d75d4ea0a9366c969e434d76e083&scene=27

Not only did this steel-making campaign produce huge amounts of unusable scrap iron, causing an enormous financial burden¹¹ but it also wasted a vast labor force estimated to be as many as 90 million people mobilized for the campaign. In order to shift everything to steel production, coal mining was rushed and transportation of iron ore as well as coal was prioritized, which resulted in the production and transportation of other commodities being sacrificed or falling short. During this period, the freight backlog became serious in many parts of the country. Even more serious damage was done to forests. With the lack of enough coal to make iron, nearby timber was cut down and used as fuel for blast furnaces. As a result, even scarce forests were cut down extensively, resulting in the appearance of bald hills in many areas.

An economy is an organic entity consisting of closely interconnected industries and regions. When one industry develops, other industries related to it will also grow in a market economy. However, in a planned economy, where the government controls resources, if one industry is allowed to develop at the expense of others, the overall balance will be upset and the entire economy may decline. However, Mao Zedong, who believed in the “economics of contradiction,” had no such sense of economic balance (see Chap. 7). A popular Chinese idiom says, “Only when the key link is grasped, will everything fall into place” (gangju muzhang). It can be said that not only Mao but many other leaders were caught up in the easy and optimistic thinking that if they can hold down the steel industry, the other industries will develop accordingly.

The PC system was a convenient organization for enabling, promoting, and fomenting the frenzied steel-making movement in rural areas. It was defined as a comprehensive organization engaging in industry and agriculture, as well as commerce, schools, and the militia, so that the peasants’ involvement in such industrial production as steel-making was in line with the Marxist commune’s ideal of abolishing the division of labor.

What reflected the Commune’s ideals even better were the mess halls¹² (gonggomg shitang). In some Chinese villages, there had long been communal canteens called “farmers’ canteens” that were open only during the busy farming season, but during the GLF period, these canteens spread under the name of “mess halls.” This system was promoted by Liu Shaoqi. Even before the establishment of the People’s Communes, Liu was a big proponent of the mess halls, saying the following:

“An agricultural collective in Henan Province has about 500 households, of which about 200 households are running a mess hall and they no longer cook meals at home. The labor input has thus increased by 1/3 since they organized this hall. About 200 people used to cook meals before, but now only 40 people cook, and they are getting plenty of good meals and saving grains.” (ibid., p. 165)

When the Beidaihe Conference of August 1958 decided to create People’s Communes, the mess halls, which provided free meals, spread rapidly as a truly communist way of “distribution according to need.” Mao Zedong, who was filled with excitement about the GLF movement, claimed:

“In about 10 years or so, products will become so abundant and morals so noble that we will be able to implement communism in terms of food, clothing, and shelter.” He excitedly exclaimed, then, “Free meals in the mess halls, that is communism.” (ibid., p. 168)

Such a utopian fantasy escalated finally into the illusory idea of abolishing the most fundamental human institution, i.e. the family. Mao’s close aide Kang Sheng is said to have told rural cadres as follows:

“Once we have communized the society, we don’t need family. The family is the biggest obstacle to the progress of the revolution … We should break up the affection between parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, etc., and uniformly organize men into male production units and women into female production units, and place children in nurseries and the elderly in nursing homes. If the family is dissolved and extinguished in this way, everyone will become more agile, so we can put more effort into the revolution, which will greatly liberate the productive forces.” (Ding 1991, p. 104)¹³

The mess halls also led to the liberation of the female labor force. Indeed, women no longer spent time cooking meals in each household. Since meals were not cooked in each house, there was no need for pots and kettles, and they were thrown into mini blast furnaces and transformed into “pig iron,” helping to accomplish a nominal production mission.

By the end of October 1958, as many as 26,576 People’s Communes had been established nationwide, and the nation’s rural areas were almost entirely communized, while according to “incomplete statistics” by the end of October, just after the PC system was established, 2.65 million mess halls had been created nationwide, and 70–90% of the rural population could eat there (Bo 1993, p. 749). On average, a single People’s Commune had as many as 100 mess halls. In some rural villages, anyone could eat there freely, even if they were not villagers. These mess halls were supposed to have the effect of producing more food by increasing the overall labor supply. However, “after only two months of eating a full meal, many rural areas had devoured half a year’s worth of food.” (Yun 2016)

It was only for a short time that people were able to immerse themselves in the illusion of “communism” that they could eat as much free food as they wanted. Not only was there a shortage of food. Once the mess halls were built, all the food that had been distributed to each home was supplied to the halls alone, and farmers had no choice but to eat in the halls. Moreover, because the food was free, it was distributed uniformly amongst those who worked and those who did not, and this excessive averageness caused severe conflicts among the people. And since “communism” was implemented in an impoverished society, the food was monotonous and disregarded individual tastes, so the dream of communism was replaced by disillusionment and the excitement of the period cooled off. And as food shortages worsened, it became impossible to provide the meals themselves. In some areas, the famine had already begun in 1958, but in many areas it spread and became more serious from 1959 on, finally leading to the greatest and worst famine and hunger in world history.

3 Famine and Starvation: Its Reality and Number of Victims

So, how much did people actually suffer from famine during and after the GLF movement, and how many people starved to death. The realities of the famine in rural China at that time, its severity and the tragedies that accompanied it, have attracted much attention. Numerous documents, records, research papers, and articles have been published on it, including those by Becker (1996), Tsuji (1990), Ding (1991), Yang (2012), and Zhou (2012). According to the records of Liang Zhiyuan, who surveyed six villages belonging to a production brigade in Anhui Province in 1960, “239 people, or 41.5% of the population, had died there, and 18 families had perished. … In mid-March of 1960, two students aged 12 or  13 died at the entrance of their classroom at the Li Yao Primary School of Gucheng Commune during a break between classes. On March 19, when they checked the main roads because it had rained, they found 19 people who had starved to death on the roadside. Based on such surveys, Liang Zhiyuan judged that the abnormal deaths¹⁴ of the rural population in the entire county were more than 200,000, and 30,000 households were wiped out” (Yang 2012, p. 380). In such circumstances, the horrifying phenomenon of cannibalism, where people ate people, was observed in various places. As mentioned earlier in Liang Zhiyuan’s account, in the outskirts of cities and at village stalls, human flesh was shockingly sold as “simmered pork” (ibid., p. 381).

How many people, I wonder, starved to death in the entire country during this period? The scale of deaths by starvation, or more precisely abnormal deaths, has been the subject of intense debate within China. Some pro-regime advocates and Maoists insist that there was no famine or starvation at all, and that it is a hoax to say that a large number of people died of starvation. For example, Li Shenming, former Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, has gone so far as to claim that “the 30 million people who died of starvation during the so-called ‘Great Leap Forward’ launched by Mao … is fraudulent data that was deliberately created by some people”. (requoted from Hong 2014a)

Sun Jingxian represents those who have tried to reject the Great Famine/starvation view a little more “logically.” He argued that the decline in the population since 1959 or the increase in the number of deaths that appear in official statistics are fictitious figures resulting from confusion in household registration management given the mass departure and migration of peasants during a period of great turmoil; involving errors such as double reporting, cancellation, omission, and supplemental reporting, etc. He concludes that the actual number of “deaths due to malnutrition” was no more than 2.5 million (Sun 2014).

Stimulated by this argument, Yang Songlin developed his own population estimates in an attempt to extend Sun’s argument and “refute” the common view of “30 million deaths from starvation” (Yang 2013). He even denies the fact that the total population declined in 1960 and 1961, as published by the National Bureau of Statistics, claiming that the population continued to grow during that period.

The biggest problem with Sun Jingxian’s and Yang Songlin’s estimates, apart from the lack of demographic basis for their estimates, is that they ignore micro-data from many provinces that recorded various, but alarmingly large numbers of starvation deaths. Even Wu Zhipu, a loyal Maoist and then Henan Provincial Party Secretary, admitted in his self-criticism that more than 2 million people died due to starvation in the whole province from October 1959 to November 1960 (Yang 2012, p. 94).

The only official Chinese reference to the number of victims during the GLF period is a report made by Hu Yaobang, then General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, who, in his report at a meeting to discuss a draft “Historical Resolution” in June 1981 admitted that “during the period 1959–1962, 22 million people across the country suffered ‘abnormal deaths’ due to difficult circumstances caused by the failure of the Party’s overall activities” (Beihai Xianren 2005, p. 298). China has never officially released any details or specific estimation methods for the abnormal deaths. This is because it is a historical fact that the Party does not want it to be touched on and probably because the Party is afraid that if it were to reveal the specifics on abnormal deaths, its authority and legitimacy, and especially that of Mao Zedong, would be damaged. As such, pro-regime scholars and Maoist supporters inevitably try to turn a blind eye to or forcibly deny this horrifying historical fact. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, in particular, caused enormous loss of life, and the local archives are now closing their doors to researchers who want to know the true facts.

However, many researchers, both inside and outside China, have attempted to estimate the number of victims during the GLF period using various perspectives and methods, and they are largely in agreement that its scale was unprecedented in history. Nevertheless, when it comes to the specific number of victims, there is quite a variation in the estimates. Let me expand the list of major estimates compiled by Li (2012) and include estimates related to the number of abnormal deaths during the period that have been published since then (see Table 1).

Table 1 Major estimates of the number of abnormal deaths during the GLF period

There are two main estimation methods: (a) estimates are made based on micro and regional data, specifically collecting and compiling reports and statistics on the number of abnormal deaths in a household, village, People’s Commune, county, or higher regional level that were available in the archives (micro estimates); (b) estimates are made based on macro population data such as total population, mortality rates as well as fertility rates (macro estimates). The latter also differ depending on whether published or unpublished demographic statistics are used. Each of these methods has its pros and cons, and it is not easy to say which method is superior.

The problem lies in the reliability of macro and micro statistics, and moreover, the fact that definitive casualty figures are not available because China does not fully and adequately publish its statistics. For example, deaths and mortality rates may have been over-reported in order to receive aid from the State, or conversely, local leaders may have deliberately under-reported local human losses in order to save their own reputations. Furthermore, when famine becomes severe, as has been the case in China for a long time, peasants often flee their villages. In some cases, the number of farmers who fled but are still alive are treated as “deaths.” As noted above, even government statistics are not always consistent.

As an example, let me look at the differing government statistics on deaths in Sichuan Province in 1959. Hong Zhenkuai finds that Zhongguo Renkou: Sichuan Fence (Chinese Population: Fascicle Sichuan) published in 1988 gives the number of deaths as 3,282,000, whereas the Zhongguo Renkou Tongji Ziliao Huibian (1949–1985) (Compilation of China Demographic Data), published in the same year, gives it as 1,409,000. However, from the winter of 1961 to April of the following year, the Sichuan Provincial Public Security Bureau “conducted a full population registration survey (but not yet published) of each production team, each household, and each person, with the People’s Commune as the unit, and found that the number of deaths amounted to 3,304,000” (Hong 2014b). This micro-estimate perhaps appears to be closest to the actual situation. And it is quite close to the figures in the Chinese Population: Fascicle Sichuan referred to above.

Using these hidden statistics and archival materials, Becker (1996), Yang (2012), and Dikӧtter (2010) estimated the number of abnormal deaths during the GLF period. The basis for Becker’s estimates was a report by Chen Yizi, then Director of the Institute for Systemic Reform. After the reform and opening up, under the direction of Zhao Ziyang (Premier and later General Secretary of the Party until his downfall in the Tiananmen Square incident), a research team of 200 people was formed, including Chen Yizi, to visit various places, examine internal Party documents, records, and data stored in numerous archives, and create a report on rural areas in the Mao era. The number of victims of the famine listed in the report was astonishingly a total of 43–46 million (Becker 1996, p. 272). In addition, an internal meeting of high-level officials cited a death toll of 50–60 million. This report was never made public, but according to Becker, who interviewed Chen after he fled to the United States following the Tiananmen Square incident, Chen recalled that the number of deaths from starvation was 7.8 million in Henan, 8 million in Anhui, 7.5 million in Shandong, 9 million in Sichuan, and 900,000 in Qinghai. Dikӧtter combines such micro-estimates, concluding that “the death toll thus stands at a minimum of 45 million excess deaths”. (Dikӧtter 2010, p. 333)

How, then, can and should the actual number of victims during the period in question be estimated, bearing in mind the distortions in the published population statistics? The simplest approach is to compare the mortality rate for the period 1958–1962 in the published China Statistical Yearbook with the average death rate for a normal year, say 1956–1957, and regard the excess as the “abnormal death rate,” from which the number of abnormal deaths can be estimated. This method, however, is not considered to be accurate since it may omit infants who were dead shortly after birth due to starvation but are not recorded as deceased, as well as those who fled their villages and died thereafter.

This simplified method assumes that the population counts, fertility rates (number of births), and mortality rates (number of deaths) in published statistics for the period in question are all correct. If such statistics were influenced by over-reporting or under-reporting they should not qualify as real figures, so this method will obviously lead to inaccurate estimates. Therefore, it is necessary to use published statistics after carefully examining the situation at the time, adding qualitative analysis, and thoroughly assessing which years and which statistics are problematic and, even if problematic, relatively reliable.

A common method is to use population censuses conducted in China in 1953, 1964, and 1982, as well as a 1% sample fertility rate survey conducted in 1982. It is said that the Chinese statistical system had become more reliable by 1982, and the published statistical figures for 1982 were considered reliable, so Judith Banister and others used such a method. In China, Jiang Zhenghua used the 1953, 1964, and 1982 censuses to demographically estimate the number of abnormal deaths during the GLF period. Using the 1982 demographic census which is assumed to be particularly reliable as a basis, he estimated the number of abnormal deaths to be 17 million in the three years after the GLF started, based on the population by age group, mortality rates, and fertility rates (Jiang 1987).

Since then, however, numerous estimates of the number of victims during the GLF period have been attempted and refined.¹⁵ Next, as an example, let me introduce the relatively recent and influential estimate by Cao Shuji, which has been widely cited, and consider the issues related to this estimate of casualties (Cao 2005).

Specifically, Cao uses the following estimation method. First, based on the 1953 and 1964 population censuses, he adjusts the administrative divisions of the prefectures to create population statistics based on “prefectures” as units during the Qing Dynasty. Next, based on data from a large collection of local journals and population records, he uses the pre-disaster and post-disaster population growth acceleration for each prefecture to determine the abnormal death population for each prefecture. Subtracting the pre-disaster population from the post-disaster population yields the net population loss during the disaster period, which is then added to the (negative) natural increase in population in excess of the normal death population during the disaster period to obtain the total population loss, which is then added to the net out-migration (including out-migration from and to the cities) to obtain the number of abnormal deaths for each prefecture. The period covered differs by region because of the different timing of disasters in different regions, but all fall within the period 1958–1962. Although data from all local journals are not necessarily available, if we regard them as a kind of sampling survey data and inflate them to obtain data for the entire province, we obtain the results shown in Table 2. However, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Xizang, Ningxia, and the special cities of Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin are excluded from his samples.¹⁶

Table 2 Cao’s estimated abnormal deaths and death rates (1958–1962)

The following facts can be confirmed from this table. First, the differences by region are very large. Sichuan had the highest number of abnormal deaths, followed by Anhui, Henan, and Hunan. In terms of mortality rates, Anhui had the highest rate, followed by Sichuan and Guizhou, and these three provinces can be considered the regions with the highest rates of abnormal deaths or, more specifically, starvation deaths during the GLF period. Conversely, the situation was relatively mild in Shanxi, Zhejiang, Jilin, and Shaanxi. It is interesting to note that compared to the great famines of the period between 1851 and 1880, which intervened the Taiping Rebellion, the regions with severe famines 100 years prior did not necessarily have severe famines during the GLF period. This implies that natural disasters were not the primary cause of the Great Famine.

Cao’s estimate is unique in that it uses population data by region from local journals, but it is still not without question whether such data are truly reliable. It also seems one-sided in that it does not utilize the 1982 Population Census as Li (2012) does, that is, it does not cross-check with other macro population data. However, the resulting number of victims is in close agreement with Li Che’s estimate (see Table 1), suggesting reliability.

4 The Great Famine and Starvation: The Mechanism

During the Mao era, China officially attributed the tragedy of the Great Famine as described above to three causes: (1) a drought unprecedented in a century, (2) the cessation of Soviet aid, and (3) policy errors. It was said that natural disasters, namely, not man-made disasters, are the main cause of the Great Famine as well as its resulting starvation. However, as will be discussed in detail in Chap. 8, at the so-called “the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference” held in January–February 1962, Liu Shaoqi clearly pointed out that the cause of the Great Famine was “70% man-made disasters and 30% natural disaster,” admitting that policy failures and misguided leadership were the main causes of the famine and starvation concerned. However, even that assessment is too lenient to the political authorities, in my view. Even if there were some “unprecedented” weather events in some areas, the cause of the disaster was directly and entirely a failure of policy, in other words, it was a 100% man-made disasters. Furthermore, there is a view that the weather during the relevant period was not so bad, and even if there were some natural disasters, it was the government’s responsibility to deal with them properly, so the natural disaster view cannot stand in the first place.¹⁷ Let me examine the reasons why this was a 100% man-made disasters.

Based on the discussions at the aforementioned Seven Thousand Cadres Conference, Bo Yibo summarizes the leadership’s “fundamental causes of errors” during the GLF period as: (1) inexperience of cadres, (2) violation of the principle of “democratic centralism”, (3) decentralized decision-making, (4) ignoring the principle of “seeking the truth from facts,” and (5) the mistake of only opposing the right and not opposing the left. In particular, he found the main cause of the “man-made disasters” in the fact that the Party disregarded the opinions of the masses (Bo 1993, pp. 1029–1043). However, it was suggested that these were problems in the implementation of the policy, and not fundamental errors of the policy itself. Moreover, the question of who should ultimately bear the responsibility for this havoc became taboo in China. Let me first examine why the famines that intensively appeared in the 1959–61 period occurred, sort out the mechanisms that caused the famines and starvation, and look for the fundamental causes of these man-made disasters.

This Great Famine and starvation has become a target of international interest because it was so large-scale, and many researchers and critics at home and abroad have presented various views on its causes and mechanisms.¹⁸ Chen (2011) compared the various theories and found that, in addition to differences in agricultural geography, the following two factors were important in explaining why the level of hunger differed so much between Anhui and Jiangxi (see Table 1).¹⁹ These were: (a) factors related to grain procurement; the latter was excessive compared to production in Anhui Province. In fact, Anhui over-reported its grain procurement as three times more than its actual production; (b) factors related to the leadership: Partly due to differences in the leadership styles of provincial leaders; Zeng Xisheng, the Party secretary of Anhui Province, was autocratic in his leadership, whereas leaders represented by Yang Shangkui, the Party secretary of Jiangxi Province, were more cooperative with the people, so that they could realize the actual situation and were able to take measures to minimize the sacrifices of the people.

Mao Zedong, at one point, erroneously argued that the famine during the Great Leap Forward was a class issue, attributing it to “landlords and rich peasants holding power in the villages.”²⁰ This is a misguided argument not based on evidence. However, setting this aside, when summarizing the previous discussions from my perspective, numerous factors contributed to the Great Famine, and among them, it seems to me that the following six factors are considered important:

• (a) Disincentives and declined motivation under the PC system: As official statistics admit, food production fell far below the previous year’s level every year from 1959 to 1961. The main reason for this is said to be that the PC system was introduced during the GLF movement. As such the “equalitarianism and indiscriminate transfer of resources (yiping erdiao)” along with the elimination of self-distribution and rural free markets significantly reduced peasants’ motivation to produce foodgrains. Gao Wangling describes how certain villages were “communized” in Fengyang County, Anhui Province. The scope of “communization” was extremely wide, ranging from land, houses, food, labor, livestock, and farming tools to poultry, pots, pans, bowls, gourds, and ladles. The most serious was the forcible occupation of private homes, rounding up people and forcing them to move in, and if owners did not comply, throwing their belongings out of their homes. In some areas, “potential excavation teams” were assigned to search villages and homes, whispering, “What is yours is only your teeth.” (Gao 2013, p. 139). It was as if the village had been robbed.

  The “communist wind” was not the only thing that discouraged and tormented the peasants. In the early years of the PC system, the cost-accounting unit was often higher than the production brigade level, so the distribution tended to average out among brigades for both those who worked hard and those who did not. This would mean that those who did not work much would receive more than their fair due, which would be unfair for those who did work.²¹ In particular, the larger the size of the cost-accounting unit, the greater the sense of unfairness among the same unit members. After the post-Mao era arrived, when collective farming was eliminated and individual farming was revived, farmers’ motivation increased dramatically; accordingly, their production and income increased, suggesting how difficult it was for the collective farming system itself to motivate its members to work.

• (b) Mass mobilization of agricultural labor into the industrial sector: As mentioned above, a nationwide campaign to construct small blast furnaces and produce iron was launched in the fall of 1958 with the goal of making a breakthrough in steel production. As a result, a massive agricultural labor force with physical strength was mobilized for these activities, resulting in a shortage of labor for agricultural work in rural areas so that a large amount of foodgrains could not be harvested or stored adequately after harvesting. In addition, as the labor force moved to the industrial sector in large numbers, the urban population increased, which in turn increased the demand for staple foods. Furthermore, the mobilization of large numbers of rural labor for basic human-energy-intensive construction projects such as water conservancy is also said to have contributed to the intersectoral transfer of agricultural labor and increased food consumption, albeit within rural areas. By the same token, the urban-oriented distribution of food also discouraged farmers and contributed to the spread of hunger in rural areas (Lin and Yang 1998). In urban areas, where the government sector and state-owned enterprises play a central role, the state distributes a predetermined amount of grain, but in rural areas, the grain is collectively owned, and the farmers themselves must procure foodgrain for consumption.

• (c) Mess halls: As grain production declined and mess halls were found to have wasted foodgrains, this “communist style of dining” quickly ceased to operate efficiently, and with the elimination of eating at home this led to starvation. A hypothesis that mess halls were the main cause of the Great Hunger has also been put forward by a relatively large number of researchers. For example, Wen Guanzhong and Liu Yuan point out that “the mess hall system, symbolized by the deprivation of private plot, the abolition of family side jobs, and the forced collectivization of all peasants’ food allocations, was the primary cause of the GLF famine” (requoted from Jia and Zhu 2015). Liu et al. (2014) similarly conclude, from their econometric analysis, that mess halls were the main culprit in the GLF famine. In fact, the famine fluctuation patterns match quite well with the diffusion, promotion, adjustment, re-promotion, and abolition of mess halls.

• (d) Exaggerated production reports and excessive grain procurement: Exaggerated grain production reports were a major catalyst for the excessive procurement of grain. Grain procurement carried out by the government is done in two ways, that of agricultural tax and obligatory purchase at officially determined price, or requisition. While agricultural taxes are relatively fixed, the amount of grain requisition fluctuates according to annual production, and if farmers report that they produced more grain than they actually did, the amount procured increases accordingly. Then if the cadres of the county or People’s Commune, or the production team overstates grain production, the portion of grains that team members can obtain for self-consumption and seed will decrease. Thus, the innocent farmers become the victims of the false reports that their cadres made on production. Certainly, exaggerated reports were not the only cause of the increase in forced purchase, but they were certainly an important part in the share of procured grain in total production, which increased from 29.4% in 1958 to 39.4% in 1959 and 35.6% in 1960, notwithstanding drastic fall in total grain production.

  In the case of Henan Province, for example, the actual grain production in 1958 was only 14.5 million tons, but the Party Committee, the Secretary of which was Wu Zhipu, as I argued above, a typical Maoist along with Ke Qingshi of Shanghai City, reported that the production amounted to as much as 35.1 million tons, namely 2.4 times the amount actually produced. In order to complete the target of requisition, the officials in the field were engaged in the “detection of falsified production reports,” in other words, requisitioning foodstuffs that corresponded to the overstated production (Su et al. 1992, p. 450). Even though the cadres at the grass-roots honestly reported the amount of produced grains, it was forcibly requisitioned as they were suspected of concealing the amount to be procured. The more loyal localities were to Mao Zedong and the Party, the more they exaggerated their reports, and the more they strangled themselves.

• (e) Excess exports and insufficient imports of foodgrains: When a serious famine occurs and the domestic food supply is drastically reduced, domestic stocks are generally drawn down, and if that is not enough, the nation usually relies on imports or aid from abroad. Needless to say, imports require foreign currency, but China did not have sufficient foreign currency at the time. In such cases, a normal government would borrow money from abroad, even if it had to take on huge foreign debts, to import the necessary amount of food from overseas since the country is in a state of emergency. At the time, however, the Chinese government imported only a small portion of foodgrains, nor relied on foreign aids. On the contrary, it continued to export large quantities of grains to repay its loans from the Soviet Union as Sino-Soviet relations deteriorated.²²

• (f) Political attitudes of leaders: One aspect of this famine/starvation being man-made rather than a natural disaster is that the results of the same policies varied greatly depending on the political stance and attitudes of central as well as local leaders. This is the key political factor behind all of the above factors. Imagine, for example, if Mao Zedong and other central leaders had not carried out the fast and sloppy communization, if they had stopped foodgrain exports or asked for foreign aid, and if there had not been an unusual competition for results among provinces and regions, the situation might not have become so serious. While pointing out that there is a close correlation between the participation rate in mess halls and the degree of famine, political scientists Yang Dali and Su Fubing, draw the following conclusion, albeit paradoxical, that the areas with high participation rate in mess halls is associated with lower Party membership. That is to say, we can infer that in “politically backward” areas with lower party membership ratios, leaders pursued more radical policies to demonstrate their loyalty to the Party, specifically the establishment of mess halls and the policy of enforcing participation in them (Yang and Su 1998). Alternatively, Kung Kai-sing and Chen Shuo, believe that political radicalism was stronger in provinces where the leader was a candidate for the Party’s Central Committee, making the famine more severe a result of the leader’s career aspirations (Kung and Chen 2011). The same is true of the competition among provinces to report exaggerated comedic achievement. As Yang Jisheng said correctly, “loyalty to Mao created famine” (Yang 2012, p. 443), and while such loyalty competitions may bring about rapid social and economic changes, as was the case with agricultural collectivization, for example, they also produced irreversible consequences, as in the GLF movement.

What was fueling the competition among cadres was not only competition for performance and loyalty. As many reports have told us, perhaps due to the Anti-Rightist Struggle and the “criticism of right-leaningness,” local and grass-roots cadres, in order to avoid being perceived as “rightist” or “right-leaning” elements themselves, tended to involve excessive actions. Such actions as forcible, sometimes even violent, procurement of foodstuffs was a phenomenon seen in many regions.

By rearranging the above six causes, the mechanisms of famine and starvation that occurred immediately after the GLF movement can be depicted as shown in Fig. 1. No doubt, this figure is not a complete picture of the mechanisms. The actual structure is more complex, involving many more factors, and moreover may differ from region to region. For example, wastage of food by malicious cadres is often pointed out as a cause of hunger, but it is not depicted here.

Fig. 1

Mechanism that generates and develops the Great Famine and hunger in China after the Great Leap Forward: A hypothetical model

The following implications can be drawn from this Fig. 1. First, the famine and starvation would not have occurred if the government had not created the PC system and if it had not launched the GLF policy that created it. The reason why the GLF policy was initiated in the first place was Mao’s dream of rapid industrialization. The central policy was to give priority to heavy industry, and if only that policy had been modified or abandoned, horrific tragedies such as the cannibalism mentioned above would not have occurred.

Second, however, even if a famine had occurred and even if the PC system had existed, the tragedy could have been avoided or at least mitigated if only such institutions had existed and policies been employed that could have dealt with and corrected those crises immediately. Such policies may have included, for example, the abolition of mess halls, a drastic overhaul of rural cost-accounting plus distribution units, an end to unscientific steel-making campaigns and rural labor migration for the irrational industrialization, a revision of the foodgrain requisition system, and the rapid release of large-scale emergency grain imports and national grain reserves. Some of these policies were certainly adopted and implemented, but too late and/or too little.

However, no drastic measures to improve the collective farming system, such as increasing grain production by reviving individual farming to give a strong impetus to farmers, were ever officially adopted. Moreover, drastic reductions in the procurement of foodgrains were untimely, either due to the rigid bureaucracy, or due to saving the face of the Supreme Leader, or due to maintaining blind faith in him. Conversely, a simple instruction by Mao Zedong could have alleviated and relieved famine and hunger, since a strict system based on the law had not been established at that time.

Starving peasants tried to survive by secretly stealing harvests from neighboring villages, cultivating hidden fields, and cheating on procured foodgrains to pay up.²³ The number of deaths from starvation varied from region to region, from village to village, and it is said that one of the reasons for this was the difference in “generosity” of the cadres at the grass-roots level who deliberately overlooked such actions of the peasants.²⁴

No doubt, Mao Zedong was primarily responsible for creating these “man-made disasters” as the ultimate decision-maker, but he was not the only one. Vice Premier Tan Zhenlin, who was in charge of agricultural policy, was aware that people were dying all over the country, but he still demanded that the local governments fulfill their mandate to requisition grains. Chen Zhengren, Minister of Food, the very implementing arm of food policy, was more concerned with piling up foodgrain stocks than with what was happening to food consumption in the country (Yang 2014).²⁵

Hunger does not necessarily occur because food production declines overwhelmingly or because a famine occurs. As Amartya Sen has asserted appropriately, it occurs when people are deprived of their entitlement to acquire food and other subsistence items in order to survive, in other words, when they are deprived of the right to life itself (Sen 2000). The Great Famine during the GLF period was caused by the deprivation of and disregard for the peasants’ right to life by many leaders at all levels, from Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and other Party and government leaders at the top to the leaders at various levels of the People’s Communes at the bottom. The essence, reality, and emptiness of the “mass line” that Mao and the Party leadership had so glibly trumpeted are typified in this event, too. Sen emphasizes that famine does not cause starvation in democracies, and he points to post-GLF China as a bad example, but this historic famine and starvation in China will forever be recorded as a classic example of how a country where “truth falls from the heavens” cannot prevent starvation from occurring and spreading.

By the way, what was Mao Zedong’s attitude to the grave and serious hunger situation at that time? At the Shanghai Conference in March 1959, he surprisingly stated:

“If resources are equally distributed, it will only destroy the Great Leap Forward. If there is not enough to eat, people will starve to death. [Then] it would be better to let half the people die and let the other half have enough to eat.” (Zhou 2012, p. 25)²⁶

One may differ in views as to whether this as an expression of his ruthlessness or merely an exaggeration, but in any case, he did not have a serious sense of crisis, that the nation would be unsustainable due to starvation if he did not do something about it.

In the first place, Mao Zedong was extremely insensitive to human life, as evident in his saying, “landlords must be killed.” He made a speech typifying his disregard for human life—at the Second Session of the Eighth National Congress of the CPC Central Committee in May 1958, he said:

“Nuclear war has not yet been experienced. We have never experienced nuclear war. I don’t know how many people will die due to this war, but the best thing is that half of us will survive, the second-best thing is that one-third will remain. Many hundreds of millions will survive out of the two billion or so (of the world’s population) and will be able to develop if we implement several five-year plans, while all capitalism will perish in return, then we will have permanent peace. This is not bad.”²⁷

At the Beidaihe Conference in August 1958, Mao claimed:

“We have fought so many battles for so many years, and so many people have died. No one can make amends for that loss. We are building now, but this is also a terrible battle, and we have risked our lives for years and will have to continue to risk our lives. This is generally less deadly than war.” (Yang 2014)

Thus, from his point of view, achieving the great goal of national and economic breakthrough came first, and the deaths from starvation came second. In fact, we never hear that he was horrified to learn of the devastation and tragedy in various parts of the country. At best, he refrained from eating meat for a while.²⁸ Does this Supreme Leader’s view of mankind not have something in common with his view of the “masses,” as shown in Chap. 3?

5 What Was the Great Leap Forward?: My Hypothetical View

In retrospect, the Great Leap Forward was as extraordinary as the Cultural Revolution. What was abnormal was not only the various phenomena and actions, such as the rash industrialization, exaggerated reports, the “communist style” in mess halls, and especially the tremendous scale of famine and starvation, which were unprecedented in history. It was during this period, and in many parts of the country, that an astonishingly comedic situation emerged, as if the entire society was in a state of acute mania, with everyone from Mao Zedong and other central leaders at the top to the peasants of the People’s Communes at the bottom telling tall tales and giving in to a buoyant mood as if “communist society” would arrive any day in the future. Li Rui refers to the experience of Gao Yang, a Vice Minister of the Industry, when in a mountain village in Shandong Province in September 1958:

“Old women and children (come from far away to assist the steel-making movement), each of them was carrying fans for cooking rice, or fans made of Japanese banana plants or chicken feathers used to cool off in the summer. The purpose of these fans is to blow air for steel-making. If I told you about it, you would probably laugh, but the kind of passion the masses displayed is truly moving.” (Li’s Notes (2), pp. 224–225)

The idea of using a fan for cooking or a fan for cooling in the summer to blow air through a blast furnace to produce iron is just cartoonish, but how did such “moving stories” actually come to be?

It may be not political science or sociology that can adequately describe and analyze this situation, but rather religious studies. Was everyone, from Mao Zedong, the guru, to the masses, the ordinary believers, not involved in a kind of religious excitement, or ecstasy, that is incomprehensible to reason? Peng Dehuai called it “petty bourgeois radicalism,” which provoked Mao’s anger (see the next chapter), but petty bourgeois people with a modicum of rationality, such as intellectuals, would not ordinarily have put themselves into this state of excitement. When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966 and hundreds of thousands of Red Guards had an audience with Mao in Tiananmen Square, they were so moved and excited that they shed tears just to “see” the Chairman’s face, which can be compared to the relationship between a guru and his followers. Probably the GLF movement was one such pseudo-religious ceremony. The Lushan Conference and the severe criticism of Peng Dehuai and others at the Conference, which will be discussed in the next chapter, remind us of the witch hunts of the Medieval and Early Modern periods in the Western Europe. In the Cultural Revolution witch hunts were carried out on an even larger scale.

Let me look at Li Rui’s evaluation of the Great Leap Forward and Mao Zedong’s promotion of it. In his view, with the slogan of “breaking through superstition and liberating ideas,” Mao ignored objective conditions, ignored economic laws, and rushed toward a utopia which was doomed to fail. What original method did Mao devise? “At best, he simply imposed the methods of the revolutionary struggle era onto the Soviet socialist system,” Li dismissively observed.

A certain kind of idealization of the GLF movement was once evident in the Western world regarding Mao Zedong’s literal invocation of the “mass line,” in which the masses rose voluntarily and passionately to challenge modern technologies and create an entirely new socialism, albeit one that was amateurish. For example, Nakaoka Tetsuro, a technology analyst who visited various parts of China in the mid-1970s, found that the spirit of the GLF movement was still alive in an automobile factory in Shanghai, which produced only 2200 trucks a year. Nakaoka was sharply critical of the capitalist mode of production and management that put efficiency first and prioritized mass production. Thus, he was deeply impressed to see workers making trucks as if they were handmade with “their own power” (Nakaoka 1976). He discovered workers in socialist China running production that was the complete opposite of the capitalist style. However, at the time he was already worried that what moved him might amount to “unrequited love.” His fears were realized when he visited post-reform China again, and was disappointed to see Chinese workers stuck in the same gears of high productivity demanded by enterprises in capitalist countries. Many intellectuals who criticized modernization in the Western industrialized world praised China’s GLF or CR movements as well as Mao Zedong. Nakaoka, who admits that he had “projected his awareness of issues and aspirations in Japan onto China,” was honest enough to realize that traveling to post-Mao China would require him to “free himself from the view of things that put his own aspirations onto other countries” (Nakaoka 1983, p. 123).

The passion shown by the old women and children of the village, as experienced by Gao Yang in a mountain village in Shandong Province at the height of the indigenous blast furnace movement, was not a “funny story,” but was certainly a moving one. But being moved by such cannot be authentic if it was born by being stirred up from above. As Nakaoka admits, the labor of amateurs “pooling all their wisdom” to create something may be beautiful, but I am not sure whether we can or should be easily moved by such a phenomenon without looking at why it was initiated, who decided on it, what were the aims of such decision and what were its results.