The Great Famine of China ( Chinese 三年 大 饑荒 ) - the period from 1959 to 1961, when about 15 million people died from mass starvation in the People’s Republic of China , according to government data alone. Unofficial sources estimate the number of victims of hunger in different ways, some of which number up to 36 million people [1] or more. In China, this tragedy is also often referred to as “ Three Years of Natural Disaster ” or “ Three Bitter Years .”
Researchers now agree that the development of hunger was facilitated more by socio-political changes in the country than by natural disasters. In the late 1950s, the PRC authorities embarked on a policy of a great leap forward , which was supposed to transform a predominantly agricultural country into an industrial state. Such methods as collectivization and Lysenkoism were taken into service. For example, due to ideas about the lack of competition between plants of the same species in the fields, the density of crops sharply increased (first three times, then two times). In fact, this led to poor growth and lower yields.
The miscalculations in the planned policy were supplemented by natural disasters that hit the PRC during this period of time. . So, in July 1959 in the East China, the Yellow River overflowed its banks, the flood killed up to two million people . In 1960, 55 percent of the country's cultivated land was affected by drought and other adverse weather conditions. . As a result, the 1960 wheat crop was only 70 percent of 1958. Recovery in the agricultural sector became possible only after the completion of the policy of the great leap in 1962. [2]
Content
Background
The Great Famine of China was the result of a combination of adverse factors caused by bad weather, social pressure, economic mismanagement and radical reforms carried out by the government in agriculture.
This, in turn, began to lead to popular unrest and led to political instability. According to estimates by Yang Jisheng , from 1958 to 1962, 36 million people died of starvation [3] .
In particular, Mao Zedong signed a decree prohibiting the residents of China from owning land property for farming. From now on, Chinese peasants had to work as part of “people's communes”, analogues of Soviet collective farms . Those who refused to follow the decree were repressed. In addition, the government set a course for the development of industry, for which millions of peasants engaged in agriculture were forcibly sent as workers to factories and plants under construction [4] [5] .
Chinese writer Yang Jisheng described the situation as followsː
In Xinyang County, peasants gathered at the door of the granary and died there, shouting "Communist Party, Chairman Mao, save us." If the granaries in the provinces of Henan and Hebei were opened and there no one was dying of hunger, then people were dying in huge numbers and none of the officers thought to help them. They cared only for additional replenishment of granaries.
- [6]
Along with collectivization, the central government approved a number of changes in agricultural machinery based on the ideas of the Soviet pseudo-scientist T.D. Lysenko , according to which the planting density of plants of one species can be tripled and then doubled, since they will not compete with each other. However, in practice this has led to poor yields. At the same time, deep plowing practice was introduced, also advanced by Lysenko, according to which, if you plow the soil up to 1-2 meters deep instead of 15-20 centimeters, as was customary in China, it promotes deeper root sprouting and penetration into more fertile soil and , respectively, will increase productivity. However, in practice, deep plowing led to leaching of the soil and also impaired productivity [7] .
The campaign to exterminate sparrows , then considered the main pests of agricultural good, also played a significant role. Chinese peasants threw stones at sparrows and other wild birds eating grains, as a result of which birds could not sit on the ground and fell from exhaustion. The campaign had a positive result, but its consequences led to an increase in the population of insect pests, which caused more repeated damage to agricultural fields than birds. Failed reforms in agriculture were combined with bad weather and natural disasters, such as droughts and floods, the largest of which occurred in 1959, when the level in the Yellow River critically increased, which led to flooding of all coastal villages, destroying their crops and According to rough estimates, the death of more than two million people [8] . Danish historian Frank Diketter believes that most of the crops that are considered to be destroyed by floods could in fact have been preserved if they had not been plowed by new technologies introduced by the government as part of a long jump [9] . In 1960, drought came and as a result, more than 60% of the plowed territories were not irrigated with water [10] .
As a result of the accumulation of adverse conditions in 1959, the country's productivity fell by 15%, and in 1960 - by 30%. The situation only began to improve after the cancellation of the long jump program after 1962 [11] .
Until the 1980s, the Chinese government called the humanitarian catastrophe “Three years of natural disasters” and attributed the famine mainly to natural disasters and partly to mistakes made in planned agricultural reforms. However, foreign researchers noted that political instability and the inept leadership of the new government, which was repressive, played an equally important role in mass hunger. Since the 80s, the Chinese government has officially admitted its guilt of causing hunger, saying that natural disasters only a third affected mass hunger, and the rest was the result of leadership mistakes [4] .
See also
- Big jump
- Sparrow extermination
Notes
- ↑ A hunger for the truth: A new book, banned on the mainland, is becoming the definitive account of the Great Famine. Archived February 10, 2012. (eng.)
- ↑ WHAT CAUSED THE GREAT CHINESE FAMINE? Archived March 31, 2010. (eng.)
- ↑ Jisheng, Yang "Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962." Book Review. New York Times . Dec, 2012. March 3, 2013. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/books/review/tombstone-the-great-chinese-famine-1958-1962-by-yang-jisheng.html
- ↑ 1 2 Sue Williams (director), Howard Sharp (editor), Will Lyman (narrator). China: A Century of Revolution . WinStar Home Entertainment.
- ↑ Demeny, Paul & McNicoll, Geoffrey, eds. (2003), "Famine in China", Encyclopedia of Population , vol. 1, New York: Macmillan Reference USA, p. 388-390
- ↑ Translation from "A hunger for the truth: A new book, banned on the mainland, is becoming the definitive account of the Great Famine." Archived February 10, 2012. , chinaelections.org, 7 July 2008 of content from Yang Jisheng , 墓碑 －－ 中國 六十 年代 大 饑荒 紀實 (Mu Bei - - Zhong Guo Liu Shi Nian Dai Da Ji Huang Ji Shi) , Hong Kong: Cosmos Books (Tian Di Tu Shu), 2008, ISBN 9789882119093 (Chinese) (link not available)
- ↑ Lynch, Michael. The People's Republic of China, 1949–76. - second. - London: Hodder Education, 2008 .-- P. 57.
- ↑ The Most Deadly 100 Natural Disasters of the 20th Century .
- ↑ Dikötter, Frank. Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62. Walker & Company, 2010. p. 333. ISBN 0-8027-7768-6
- ↑ Liu, Henry CK . Part 2: The Great Leap Forward not all bad , Asia Times online (April 1, 2004).
- ↑ Lin, Justin Yifu; Yang, Dennis Tao. Food Availability, Entitlements and the Chinese Famine of 1959–61 (Eng.) // The Economic Journal : journal. - Royal Economic Society , 2000. - Vol. 110 , no. 460 . - P. 143 . - DOI : 10.1111 / 1468-0297.00494 .
Links
- The Famine of Mao - Mirror of the Week , No. 48 (677)