Great Chinese Famine

This article is about the famine of 1959–1961. For other famines in Chinese history, see List of famines in China.

Great Chinese Famine
三年大饥荒
CountryChina
LocationHalf of the country. Death rate were highest in Anhui (18% dead), Chongqing (15%), Sichuan (13%), Guizhou (11%) and Hunan (8%).[1]
Period1959–1961
Total deaths15–55 million
TheoryResult of the Great Leap Forward, people's commune, Four Pests campaign and other factors.
ConsequencesTermination of the Great Leap Forward campaign
History of the People's Republic of China
National emblem of the People's Republic of China
1949–1976: Mao era
1976–1989: Deng era
1989–2002: Jiang era
2002–2012: Hu era
2012–present: Xi era
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The Great Chinese Famine (Chinese: 三年大饥荒; lit. 'three years of great famine') was a famine that occurred between 1959 and 1961 in the People's Republic of China (PRC).[2][3][4][5][6] Some scholars have also included the years 1958 or 1962.[7][8][9][10] 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 (15 to 55 million).[note 1] The most stricken provinces were Anhui (18% dead), Chongqing (15%), Sichuan (13%), Guizhou (11%) and Hunan (8%).[1]

The major contributing factors in the famine were the policies of the Great Leap Forward (1958 to 1962) 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 Four Pests campaign that reduced sparrow populations (which disrupted the ecosystem); over-reporting of grain production; and ordering millions of farmers to switch to iron and steel production.[4][6][8][15][17][18] 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 ("三分天灾, 七分人祸").[8][19][20] After the launch of Reforms and Opening Up, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officially stated in June 1981 that the famine was mainly due to the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward as well as the Anti-Rightist Campaign, in addition to some natural disasters and the Sino-Soviet split.[2][3]

  1. ^ a b 曹树基 (2005). 大饥荒：1959–1961年的中国人口. Hong Kong: 時代國際出版. pp. 46, 67, 117, 150, 196. ISBN 978-9889828233. An excerpt, which calculates death rate between 1958 and 1962, is published as: 曹树基 (2005). "1959–1961 年中国的人口死亡及其成因". 中国人口科学 (1).
  2. ^ a b "关于建国以来党的若干历史问题的决议". The Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China (in Chinese). Archived from the original on 22 October 2019. Retrieved 23 April 2020.
  3. ^ a b "Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People's Republic of China" (PDF). Wilson Center. 27 June 1981.
  4. ^ a b c Smil, Vaclav (18 December 1999). "China's great famine: 40 years later". BMJ: British Medical Journal. 319 (7225): 1619–1621. doi:10.1136/bmj.319.7225.1619. ISSN 0959-8138. PMC 1127087. PMID 10600969.
  5. ^ a b Gráda, Cormac Ó (2007). "Making Famine History". Journal of Economic Literature. 45 (1): 5–38. doi:10.1257/jel.45.1.5. hdl:10197/492. ISSN 0022-0515. JSTOR 27646746. S2CID 54763671.
  6. ^ a b c Meng, Xin; Qian, Nancy; Yared, Pierre (2015). "The Institutional Causes of China's Great Famine, 1959–1961" (PDF). Review of Economic Studies. 82 (4): 1568–1611. doi:10.1093/restud/rdv016. Archived (PDF) from the original on 5 March 2020. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
  7. ^ Kung, Kai-sing; Lin, Yifu (2003). "The Causes of China's Great Leap Famine, 1959–1961". Economic Development and Cultural Change. 52 (1): 51–73. doi:10.1086/380584. ISSN 0013-0079. JSTOR 10.1086/380584. S2CID 9454493.
  8. ^ a b c Cite error: The named reference :11 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Yang, Jisheng (2012). Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 126. ISBN 978-0-374-27793-2.
  10. ^ "45 million died in Mao's Great Leap Forward, Hong Kong historian says in new book". South China Morning Post. 5 September 2010. Archived from the original on 26 February 2020. Retrieved 23 April 2020.
  11. ^ Hasell, Joe; Roser, Max (10 October 2013). "Famines". Our World in Data. Archived from the original on 18 April 2020. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
  12. ^ Dikötter, Frank. "Mao's Great Famine: Ways of Living, Ways of Dying" (PDF). Dartmouth University. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 July 2020. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
  13. ^ Mirsky, Jonathan (7 December 2012). "Unnatural Disaster". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 24 January 2017. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
  14. ^ Branigan, Tania (1 January 2013). "China's Great Famine: the true story". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on 10 January 2016. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
  15. ^ a b "China's Great Famine: A mission to expose the truth". Al Jazeera. Archived from the original on 21 April 2020. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
  16. ^ Huang, Zheping (10 March 2016). "Charted: China's Great Famine, according to Yang Jisheng, a journalist who lived through it". Quartz. Archived from the original on 25 May 2020. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
  17. ^ Bowman, John S. (2000). Columbia Chronologies of Asian History and Culture. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-50004-3.
  18. ^ Kung, James Kai-sing (2022), Ma, Debin; von Glahn, Richard (eds.), "The Political Economy of China's Great Leap Famine", The Cambridge Economic History of China: 1800 to the Present, Cambridge University Press, pp. 642–684, doi:10.1017/9781108348485.019, ISBN 978-1-108-42553-7, S2CID 246670673
  19. ^ Sun, Zhonghua. "刘少奇"三分天灾，七分人祸"提法的由来". Renmin Wang (in Chinese). Archived from the original on 14 December 2012. Retrieved 8 January 2021.
  20. ^ Sun, Zhonghua. "刘少奇"三分天灾，七分人祸"提法的由来(2)". Renmin Wang (in Chinese). Archived from the original on 15 September 2019. Retrieved 22 April 2020.


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