A serious topic...your comments please?

[Raesha]

Wow, I haven't been here in a long time. sweatdrop I forgot all about this guild. whee ;; Anywaz...I'm writting a research paper for a history class and thought it might be interesting to get your opinions/thought on the subject. In my paper, I'm trying to access the roll Chairman Mao played in the great famine of 1959-61. I don't think anyone in this guild is old enough to remember it--or was even alive at the time--but perhaps your parents have told you stories? For those of you who live in China, what are you tought in school about the famine?

I hope nobody minds that I bring up such a serious topic...I really would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.... sweatdrop  

[tamcharles]

First of all, I'll give you some background on the whole subject... pretty much the Great Leap Forward. And then we'll get into the nitty-gritty. smile

We know that Mao Zedong didn't mean to turn out so bad. He didn't set out to be the world's most lethal dictator and I'm sure it was never his goal to kill more than 80 million of his own people.

The Great Leap Forward was a revolutionary policy initiative intended to kickstart China's fledgling economy and establish it as the world's largest steel and grain exporter. Announced in 1959, Mao's brainchild involved three challenging goals:

1. Double the country's annual food production using only half the manpower.
2. Reallocate most of the surplus labour to steelmaking.
3. Followed by migrating the rest to national infrastructure projects.

The genius of this plan was in its details. So with this Great Leap Forward, Mao hoped to establish himself as one of the greatest outside-the-box thinkers of all time.

Seriously, the theory on paper was sound. But then...

No one had ever suggested to farmers that they could double or triple their crop yields by simply packing their seeds two or three times closer together. I mean, of all people wouldn't farmer know how to grow things? Anyways, in practice, however, this new technique failed miserably: the seedlings crowded each other and prevented any of them from receiving adequate sunlight and soil nutrients. But everyone was afraid of Mao's temper, and so no one told him that his idea was worthless. Instead, his underlings reported bumper crops, although the opposite was actually the case.

Another of Mao's agricultural tips fared almost as poorly. He decreed that farmers make a concerted effort to hunt down and kill each and every sparrow. The birds were seen as pests, which ate the farmers' crops. In actuality, the sparrows were eating insects which lived on the crops. So the farmers were in fact slaughtering one of their few allies in the battle for pest control. But then no one dared to bug Mao to tell him about it.

And then there was the steel. Whereas you or I might have taken a hundred thousand idle farmhands and assigned them to work in a few steelmills, Mao's plan was something else entirely. He directed the farmers to stay home and wait for those bumper harvests to arrive (everyone can win the lottery right -- at the same time?). So in the interim, they were to construct and operate backyard furnaces for smelting steel -- with weight quotas.

See now things are getting heated up.

In order to meet the quotas, the ignorant peasants resorted to melting down whatever metalstuffs they had lying around: hinges, doorknobs, utensils, tools. It was all converted into useless slag and dutifully turned over to the government. This Chatterbox steel found its way into public infrastructure, like bridges and dams. Not surprisingly, many of these poorly-engineered structures collapsed dramatically or were abandoned due to stress failures. A crushing situation indeed.

So that's where your question comes in... the Great Famine.

So the Great Leap Forward was an unqualified failure. But nobody wanted to tell Mao that. He believed himself to be infallible, and had a history of making life uncomfortable for anyone who dared question his policies. Which is why his lackeys waited months before telling him about the famine.

That's right, famine. Not like the French Revolution famine but more along the lines of...

43 million dead.

Over a period of three years, beginning in 1958, the bottom of the barrel fell out of China's agricultural production. The combination of the economic policies of the Great Leap Forward along with an unprecedented drought (this is actually not his fault) resulted in disaster for domestic food production.

The entire population suffered. People all over China were starving but it was a two-hit-combo for those in the rural Henan province (was it Hunan?). When the farmers could not meet their production quotas in 1959, the local government declared that the farmers were hiding their harvests. They declared the citizenry as enemies of the people and sent the military in to beat families who failed to cough up the food they were assumed to have hidden. But they really didn't have anything... nothing.

But things didn't heat up anymore, they got cold... very cold...

Then winter arrived, the peasants had nothing to eat but tree bark, grass, old boot leather (basically the stuff you can fish for in Barton Lake would've been like filet mignon to them). In a turn of even more cruelty and human rights abuse, the officials even saw to it that the families' cooking pots were smashed. That of which, prevented them from even cooking grass soup (you know how much we chinese like to have soup). Finally, as a final insult to injury, the peasants were tortured and some even murdered by the local government. They shutdown the train stations and roads to block escape.

The people had nothing to eat.

They filled their stomachs with whatever they could find: leaves, weeds, leather, straw, feathers, dirt. (Doesn't a Barton Lake Guppy sound really good now?) They were so hungry that they could eat a horse, but they had run out of everything, not just horses but absolutely everything. So they finally resorted to cannibalism. People dug up freshly buried corpses. When somebody died, it was common for family members to hide the fact and keep the body for themselves.

By 1961, Mao had no choice but to relent. He swallowed his pride (must've been rather filling if you asked me) and bought grain on the world market. He was forced to disband the agricultural communes and return to proven farming methods and the backyard steel efforts were abandoned. Generally agreed in political terms, the Great Leap Forward was more of a Great Fall Backward.  

[Niphredil Ithilmir]

I don't really know much about it.. sorry. sweatdrop Usually I'm ok with Chinese history but not on this.. -_-" My parents were born after that..

I have no doubt that western sources are gonna tell you that Mao was somehow corrupt and caused the famine on purpose to strengthen his authority or something.. they always say things like that, and no one knows whether it's actually true..  

[Raesha]

Niphredil Ithilmir

I have no doubt that western sources are gonna tell you that Mao was somehow corrupt and caused the famine on purpose to strengthen his authority or something.. they always say things like that, and no one knows whether it's actually true..

Actually, I don't think I've read anything yet that say's he did it on purpose...but there's deffinatly a variety of sources that lay varying degrees of blame. A large percentage of my sources are Chinese in origin too...mostly autobiographies of people who lived through it.



Anyone else have anything to say on the subject?  

[Minielf]

I think the Great Leap Forward really was a devastating blow to Mao's proud, and forced him to resign his position as president of China. Of course, that then lead to Mao's comback seven years later with the Cultural Revolution...another bungle of disastrous proportions.  

[Cat-Whiskers]

I would like to inquire as to where did you find the facts and figures, TamCharles, to accurately say that 80 million was killed by Mao. The last time I heard that figure was from a FLG group trying to preach to me about the evils of PRC...

First of all, the population of China during the Great Leap Forward was around 500 million. Therefore, IF, as you said, 43 million died, that means 1 out of 10 Chinese died. However then I must inquire this, does ANYONE in this guild know of anyone in their family that died during the Great Leap Forward? Seeing we have much more than 10 unique families, I must say statistically speaking it is highly unlikely that, if the figures TamCharles provided were true, no one here would not know of a person/relative that died during the Great Leap Forward.

I would also like to see sources considering this accusation of Mao killing 80 million Chinese. I'm sure the FLGs would be more than happy to get their hands on this source too.

Note: FLG stands for FaLun Gong.  

[tamcharles]

Cat-Whiskers

I would like to inquire as to where did you find the facts and figures, TamCharles, to accurately say that 80 million was killed by Mao. The last time I heard that figure was from a FLG group trying to preach to me about the evils of PRC...

First of all, the population of China during the Great Leap Forward was around 500 million. Therefore, IF, as you said, 43 million died, that means 1 out of 10 Chinese died. However then I must inquire this, does ANYONE in this guild know of anyone in their family that died during the Great Leap Forward? Seeing we have much more than 10 unique families, I must say statistically speaking it is highly unlikely that, if the figures TamCharles provided were true, no one here would not know of a person/relative that died during the Great Leap Forward.

I would also like to see sources considering this accusation of Mao killing 80 million Chinese. I'm sure the FLGs would be more than happy to get their hands on this source too.

Note: FLG stands for FaLun Gong.

*looks down at FLG brochure* Perhaps there is some bias I failed to filter out. Actually I don't have references for this particular one, it's based on recollection and hearsay. However to back up my statement, the 80M is cited as a cumulative total of alleged deaths during Mao's lifetime as Chairman/Leader/whatever. twisted

Btw, I did have family who suffered through it. neutral  

[Niphredil Ithilmir]

@Charlie - you're a FLG follower?  

[tamcharles]

Niphredil Ithilmir

@Charlie - you're a FLG follower?

Don't you remember my other post in this guild about how I was bashing FLG like you wouldn't believe?

Well.. to quote Triumph the Wonderdog, "I poop on FLG." rofl  

[Niphredil Ithilmir]

tamcharles

Niphredil Ithilmir

@Charlie - you're a FLG follower?

Don't you remember my other post in this guild about how I was bashing FLG like you wouldn't believe?

Well.. to quote Triumph the Wonderdog, "I poop on FLG." rofl

rofl

Short-term memory loss razz You had me worried for a moment there.. whee  

[Rebirth Project]

I'm not that good in history... So my help is useless... sweatdrop xp I think tamcharles' post is the most helpful one. 3nodding  

[kyoslove74]

moa was a leader and eyt he was dictator and he gave birth to the peoples republic he tried to control the life of other trying to make them think the wya that he did he was born a peasant  

[Raesha]

Thanks tamcharles. whee No new info there for me really...I'm quite well versed in the history--seeing as it's my major and all... >.> (International Studies w/ a Modern Chinese History focus) I really do appriciate you taking the time to type all that up though. I'm sure it's quite illuminating to many. 3nodding Your 80 million figure may be a bit high...though I have heard that number before, 50 million seems to be a more widely accepted figure--still quite harrowing.


Really, I was hopeing to get more of a personal account--stories people's parents/grandparents may have told them about thier personal experiance... It is deffinatly interesting to hear peoples' opinions in the 'facts' though. My paper isn't about the famine itself, but rather to determine the extent of Mao's personal responsibility for it.


Cat-Wiskers--30 million is the most widely accepted figure for GLF-famine deaths...though I have seen much higher figures. Really though, 1 in 10 is entirely possible--entire villiages were wiped out in places! In Wudian commune in Anhui, 26% of the popululation perished in the famine; in Qinghai province, at least 50% of the population died; in Zunyi, only 1 in 8 survived.



If anyone is interested in learning more about the famine, I reccomend Hungry Ghosts by Jasper Becker--he's personally a bit biased against Mao in his narative, but the facts are there and the account thorough. Another good book is R.J. Rummel's China's Bloody Century: Genocide and Mass Murder since 1900--tons of well sourced numbers here.



(and yes, it was Henan, not Hunan) >.>  

[Niphredil Ithilmir]

I wouldn't have thought it was Hunan either.. I come from there.. sweatdrop

Hmm.. I have stories and stuff from like the Cul. Revl. but that's later on..  

[Minielf]

I have no relations who suffered through the GLF I'm afraid. My grandparents were in China at that time but they didn't appear to suffer from it or else they would have been dead. xd sweatdrop I do have however, plenty of stories about the Cultural Revolution.