Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62

Mao’s Great Famineby Frank Dikotter This book is an excellent account of the Great Famine of China from 1958-62. The causes for the disaster are many, and they primarily come from the top-Chairman Mao, the communist dictator from 1949-76. Dikotter catalogues the natural disasters created by Mao’s dictates, ruinous agricultural practices directed by cadre acting on production quotas from top Communist Party leadership, deadly working conditions both for both rural and urban workers, and the inevitable violence against a people when you take their property, food, clothes, and livestock, leaving them to starve to death. The book is broken into several sections. The cost of collectivization and forced communal living is covered in the beginning chapters. The peasant’s land was taken, their houses were often torn down and used for fertilizer, and cooking pots and pans confiscated for steel production leaving a homeless and starving people. Even essential farm tools and grain for replanting were taken. Agricultural practices dictated from top Communist leaders and enforced by militia’s or cadres led to disastrous overplanting and overfertilizing, despite the farmer’s warnings. The result was poor crop yields and even top soil destroyed leading to not enough food to eat.Crops were taken from the rural areas and given to the cities. At a time when millions were starving, grain was being exported to pay for Mao’s military buildup. Livestock was devastated due to stables torn down for fertilizer, neglect, and disease. A culture of waste is well documented, as is an interesting relationship between the communist dictators Stalin, Khrushchev, and Mao.Along the way there are the manufactured enemies, political prisoners, Communist Party purges, and GULAGS, where the number of imprisoned and murdered were far less than their SOVIET counterparts. However, while the SOVIETS killed roughly 5-7 million in Ukraine famine under Stalin, 30-45 million were killed in Mao’s Great Famine.The horror of the famine is given over several chapters. From people eating leather, bark, thatch from roofs, cotton seed, and even mud to digging up bodies to eat and cannibalism. The extreme violence by cadres against the people is also covered. Here is the clear danger of a government-controlled economy where insufficient food, shelter, and clothing leads to death, and enforcement of totalitarian policies are accomplished against a mostly unarmed populace.Where unmet unrealistic quotas from agricultural and industrial goods hold dire consequences to local officials, the result is inflated and inaccurate figures, corruption, stealing, and both natural and economic disasters leading to the deaths of millions and the destruction of morality. Families were likewise destroyed, as millions of men relocated to the cities for work, and women were left to care for the children. Elderly could often no longer be cared for by families now fragmented and in this climate of every person for themselves. Starvation destroyed rural communities. Sexual and physical abuse by cadets occurred often. Much space is given to the sources and the accompanying problems in determining the exact number of dead due to the famine. While the sources are well documented, the difficulties inherent in a closed society, where information is hidden and distorted for propaganda purposes, are quite apparent. Whether there were 45 million dead due to Mao’s famine, as the author and others propose or not, Dikotter makes a good case for there being more than the 30 million estimated using the Statistical Yearbook. He outlines three other sources not used in the yearbook in which one member places deaths at 43-46 million due to the underreporting of deaths in rural areas and the subsequent 1979 study produced but not published.Two similarities struck me between the communist dictatorships of the SOVIETS and Communist Chinese. The Russian communists had a common saying: “If you are not stealing from the government, you are stealing from your family.” I saw the humor in it, and now I see the truth in it. Dikotter demonstrates again and again how the same government who took everything from the people now forced them to “steal” from the government for mere survival. Many examples were given: whether through simply eating raw grain that they grew, forging figures of goods produced, robbery, or even saving enough grain to replant next year’s crops.The responsibility for the deaths caused by the communist dictators—Stalin and here Mao—was excused by the citizens. Granted, there was no free press and little information distributed that was not propaganda. Moreover, blaming either could have meant a membership in GULAGS or their Chinese equivalent. However, there was a widespread, prevalent view that Mao (or Stalin) did not know what was going on in the communities, and presumably if he knew he would not agree or allow it. Yet, these very same totalitarian and draconian policies that led to such disasters came from these same two dictators. While quotas created an environment rife with inflated figures, Mao was warned about this, yet he chose to discard it. After all he was responsible for the policies; he was the dictator in charge of the policies leading to the Great Famine.

Frank Dikotter has written a masterpiece about history's greatest monster amd mass murderer ever to have lived. To be precise,he describes the massed and forcible collectivization of the Chinese peasants who paid a horrible price in the process: over 45 million of them died in addition to the many more tens of millions who perished as well because of one man's mad scheme to bring change to his country,no matter what the price ought to be. This was the so-called Great Leap Forward and it happened during 4 years,between 1958-1962. To quote Dikotter: "China descended into hell. Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy...(which was)an attempt to catch up with and overtake Britain in less than fifteen years. In pursuit of a utopian paradise,everything was collectivized and people in the countryside were robbed of their work,their homes,their land,their belongings and their livelihood."(See Introduction)To write this book,thousands of new documents hitherto classified were used. These came from many sources,mainly from the Office of Foreign Affairs and other provincial archives. These brutal acts caused the greatest demolition of real estate in history and one third of all housing was turned into rubble. "Homes were pulled down to make fertilizers,to build canteens,to relocate villagers,to straighten roads,to make place for a better future beckoning ahead or simply to punish thier owners".But not all the people died of hunger. Many would suffer from common illnesses such as diarrhoea,dysentery and typhus. "Suicide reached epidemic proportions and in Puning,Guangdong,suicides were described as 'ceaseless' ;some people ended their lives out of shame for having stolen from fellow villagers."(p.304) What's more,"human flesh was traded on the black market. "A farmer who bartered a pair of shoes for a kilo of meat at the Zhangye railway station found that the package contained a human nose and several ears."(p.321) "One elderly man quietly sobbed when he recounted how,as a young boy,he and the other villagers had been forced to beat a grandmother,tied up in the local temple for having taken wood from the forest. Others were intimidated by mock trials and mock burials. People were given yin and yang hair cuts,as one half of the head was shaved off,the other not"(p.296)Mao,albeit strong words of criticism,did not care at all about how history would judge him. To exemplify,one of his strongest critics,Liu Shaoqi,who had been totally shocked by what he had seen in his village,tried to stop the sheer madness of the Chairman. Mao had,at this point, decided to launch a reconstruction campaign also known as the Cultural Revolution,but he made sure to hound his opponent by using the Red Guards until Liu died in 1969,deprived of his medicines.This is a tale of madness,of horror and shows to what extent dictators can use their untrammelled power in order to wreak havoc not only on others but also on their own people without even flinching. It shows how some of the leaders have lost their reason completely and have used their super-megalomanic aspirations without thinking about the price that others would pay. The names of Stalin,Ceausescu,Hitler,Pol Pot,Idi Amin and the worst monster of them, Mao, will always reside in history's hall of infamy.This book is a stunning achievement and extremely important. It reads like a thriller and the narrative will keep you breathless! Hats off,Mr.Dikotter!

I am one of the relatively few people who has known about the subject of this book for years. I had a friend whose grandmother, living in a village in Shandong, starved during the famine, along with virtually every other person in her village. Later, as a student of ancient China, I was able to speak with an ethnologist from Beijing University who told me that the death toll was at least sixteen million people, "but nobody was really counting." Finally, someone counted.

un ottimo libro su uno dei più gravi crimini di Mao Tse-tung: l'aver provocato per motivi di politica interna relativi al suo ruolo all'interno del Partito Comunista Cinese, una delle peggiori carestie della storia cinese. Il folle "Balzo in avanti", provocò nel corso di tre anni tra i venti e i trenta milioni di morte per fame. Estremamente documentato il testo spiega molto bene cosa sia successo in Cina alla fine degli anni '50 dello scorso secolo. Lettura obbligata per tutti coloro interessati alla storia cinese moderna ma, soprattutto, per quanti ancora oggi si ostinano a incensare il "Grande Timoniere".

I was always curious to read about the time of Mao, and the controversial statements about him and his one party system. This book clarifies with precise documents the very dark age of "Great Leap Forward" . I managed to find perfect answers all my question about this period.This magnificent work of Professor Dikötter is an utterly must to read.

Very Informative

Premier volume publié de la trilogie du peuple ("People's Trilogy"), suivi par The Tragedy of Liberation" et avant le prochain livre consacré à la Révolution Culturelle, l'ouvrage de l'historien et sinologue Frank Dikötter a d'ores et déjà fait date tant parmi le grand public que dans la communauté des spécialistes. Il traite du "Grand Bond en avant" (1958-1962), immense famine et reprise en main du pouvoir par Mao, déstabilisé après le XXè Congrés du PCUS. Le regretté Simon Leys a enfin trouvé un héritier, excellent connaisseur de la culture chinoise - surtout contemporaine - et tout aussi courageux à dénoncer les mystifications de l'historiographie officielle chinoise. Ecrit dans un anglais précis et raffiné, l'ouvrage est à la fois une chronique de la famine au quotidien, dans les principales provinces chinoises ainsi qu'un traité d'histoire politique, économique et démographique centré sur le Grand Bond en avant et ses dizaines de millions de victimes. En termes strictement démographiques, probablement l'événement en temps de paix le plus meurtrier dans les annales de l'humanité (entre 30 et 60 millions de morts).L'historien néerlandais a puisé dans les archives du Parti en province (les archives du CC sont évidemment fermées aux chercheurs) et son ouvrage s'appuie donc sur des sources de première main, et non pas seulement sur des références existantes, ce qui fait tout le prix de l'ouvrage. Un section importante est d"ailleurs consacrée à sa collecte de sources, souvent inédites.Certains chapitres serrent le coeur et vous laissent au bord des larmes, car Dikötter en humaniste se soucie du sort des groupes les plus vulnérables à la folie maoïste : femmes, personnes âgées et enfants, souvent oubliés des traités d'histoire focalisés sur l'élite sociale ou politique. Il ménage également sa place à l'analyse minutieuse des stratagèmes de Mao pour s'assurer la mainmise absolue sur le Parti. C'est le point de vue d'un démocrate anti-totalitaire, attaché à faire rendre des comptes aux tyrans comme Mao qui ont mystifié leur histoire afin de maquiller leurs crimes de masse. Autant dire que le lecteur imbu de préjugés autocratiques (la chine "impériale") ou vaguement maolâtre sous l'influence post-soixantehuitarde sera fort surpris sinon indigné par les révélations insoutenables du livre.L'ouvrage accrédite l'idée, commune sans doute mais utile à rappeler, qu'un despote totalitaire n'est grand que dans l'étendue de ses crimes et que la grandeur de son règne, célèbrée ad nauseam par l'historiographie officielle n'est qu'un mensonge de propagande.J'ai profité d'une promotion d'Amazon qui soldait l'édition Kindle à moins de 4 Euro, tarif étonnamment modique compte tenu des pratiques tarifaires de l'édition électronique. Le prix semble avoir remonté depuis.