View source for Great Leap Forward

{{Short description|1958–1962 Chinese socioeconomic campaign}}
{{Other uses}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=November 2024}}
{{Use American English|date=November 2024}}
{{Infobox disaster
| title = Great Leap Forward
| image = 
| caption = 
| native_name = {{lang|zh-Hans|大跃进}}
| date = 1958–1962
| Location = [[China]]
| type = Famine, economic mismanagement
| cause = Central planning, collectivization policies
| motive = Economic collectivization of agriculture, realisation of [[socialism]]
| organizers = [[Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party|CCP Chairman]] [[Mao Zedong]]
| reported deaths = 15~55 million
}}
{{Infobox Chinese
| pic = Great Leap Forward (Chinese characters).svg
| piccap = "Great Leap Forward" in simplified (top) and traditional (bottom) Chinese characters
| picupright = 0.45
| s = 大跃进
| t = 大躍進
| order = st
| p = Dà yuè jìn
| j = Daai6 joek3 zeon3
| y = Daaih yeuk jeun
| ci = {{IPAc-yue|d|aai|6|-|j|oek|3|-|z|eon|3}}
| tl = Tuā io̍k tsìn
| mi = {{IPAc-cmn|d|a|4|-|yue|4|-|j|in|4}}
| tp = Dà yuè jìn
| w = {{tonesup|Ta4 yüeh4 chin4}}
| bpmf = {{bpmfsp|ㄉㄚˋ|ㄩㄝˋ|ㄐㄧㄣˋ}}
}}
{{Mao Zedong series}}
{{History of the People's Republic of China}}
The '''Great Leap Forward''' was an [[industrialization]] campaign within [[China]] from 1958 to 1962, led by the [[Chinese Communist Party]] (CCP). [[Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party|CCP Chairman]] [[Mao Zedong]] launched the campaign to transform the country from an [[agrarian society]] into an [[industrialized society]] through the formation of [[people's commune]]s.  The Great Leap Forward is estimated to have led to between 15 and 55 million deaths in mainland China during the 1959–1961 [[Great Chinese Famine]] it caused, making it the [[List of famines|largest or second-largest famine]]<ref>{{Citation |last=Kte'pi |first=Bill |title=Chinese Famine (1907) |pages=70–71 |year=2011 |url=https://sk.sagepub.com/reference/disasterrelief/n31.xml |place=Thousand Oaks |publisher=Sage |doi=10.4135/9781412994064 |isbn=978-1412971010 |quote=The Chinese Famine of 1907 is the second-worst famine in recorded history, with an estimated death toll of around 25 million people; this exceeds the lowest estimates for the death toll of the later Great Chinese Famine, meaning that the 1907 famine could actually be the worst in history. |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Disaster Relief |access-date=25 December 2021 |archive-date=1 December 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201201022144/http://sk.sagepub.com/Reference/disasterrelief/n31.xml |url-status=live |url-access=subscription }}</ref> in human history.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Smil |first=Vaclav |date=18 December 1999 |title=China's great famine: 40 years later |journal=British Medical Journal |volume=319 |issue=7225 |pages=1619–1621 |doi=10.1136/bmj.319.7225.1619 |pmc=1127087 |pmid=10600969}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Meng |first1=Xin |last2=Qian |first2=Nancy |last3=Yared |first3=Pierre |year=2015 |title=The Institutional Causes of China's Great Famine, 1959–1961 |url=https://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/pyared/papers/famines.pdf |url-status=live |journal=Review of Economic Studies |volume=82 |issue=4 |pages=1568–1611 |doi=10.1093/restud/rdv016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200305165942/https://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/pyared/papers/famines.pdf |archive-date=5 March 2020 |access-date=22 April 2020}}</ref><ref name="Hasell2013">{{Cite journal |last1=Hasell |first1=Joe |last2=Roser |first2=Max |date=10 October 2013 |title=Famines |url=https://ourworldindata.org/famines |url-status=live |journal=Our World in Data |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200418002509/https://ourworldindata.org/famines |archive-date=18 April 2020 |access-date=22 April 2020}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Chen |first=Yixin |date=January 2015 |title=The Study of China's Great Leap Forward Famine in the West |url=http://ww2.usc.cuhk.edu.hk/PaperCollection/webmanager/wkfiles/2012/201503_38_paper.pdf |url-status=dead |journal=Journal of Jiangsu University (Social Science Edition) |language=zh |volume=17 |issue=1 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210517052743/http://ww2.usc.cuhk.edu.hk/PaperCollection/webmanager/wkfiles/2012/201503_38_paper.pdf |archive-date=17 May 2021 |access-date=29 July 2020 |via=[[Chinese University of Hong Kong]]}}</ref>

The Great Leap Forward stemmed from multiple factors, including "the purge of [[intellectuals]], the surge of less-educated radicals, the need to find new ways to generate domestic capital, rising enthusiasm about the potential results mass mobilization might produce, and reaction against the sociopolitical results of the [[Soviet Union]]'s development strategy."{{sfnp|Lieberthal|2003|p={{page needed|date=June 2024}}}} Mao ambitiously sought an increase in rural grain production and an increase in industrial activity. Mao was dismissive of technical experts and basic economic principles, which meant that industrialization of the countryside would solely be dependent on the [[peasant]]s. Grain quotas were introduced with the idea of having peasants provide grains for themselves and support urban areas. Output from the industrial activities such as steel was also supposed to be used for urban growth.{{sfnp|Lieberthal|2003|p={{page needed|date=June 2024}}}} Local officials were fearful of the [[Anti-Right Deviation Struggle]] and they competed to fulfill or over-fulfill quotas which were based on Mao's exaggerated claims, collecting non-existent "surpluses" and leaving farmers to starve to death. Higher officials did not dare to report the economic disaster which was being caused by these policies, and national officials, blaming bad weather for the decline in food output, took little or no action.

The major changes which occurred in the lives of rural Chinese people included the incremental introduction of mandatory [[Collective farming|agricultural collectivization]]. Private farming was prohibited, and those people who engaged in it were persecuted and labeled [[Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries|counter-revolutionaries]]. Restrictions on rural people were enforced with public [[struggle session]]s and social pressure, and [[Forced labour|forced labor]] was also exacted on people.<ref name="Mirsky2009" /> Rural industrialization, while officially a priority of the campaign, saw "its development&nbsp;... aborted by the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward".{{sfnp|Perkins|1991|p={{page needed|date=June 2024}}}} Economist [[Dwight H. Perkins (economist)|Dwight Perkins]] argues that "enormous amounts of investment only produced modest increases in production or none at all.&nbsp;... In short, the Great Leap [Forward] was a very expensive disaster".{{sfnp|Perkins|1991|pp=483, 486}}

The CCP studied the damage that was done at various conferences from 1960 to 1962, especially at the [[Seven Thousand Cadres Conference]] in 1962, during which Mao Zedong ceded day-to-day leadership to pragmatic moderates like Chinese President [[Liu Shaoqi]] and Vice Premier [[Deng Xiaoping]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Timeline |url=https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/theme/chinese-foreign-policy-database/timeline?year=1962 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200622102243/https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/theme/chinese-foreign-policy-database/timeline?year=1962 |archive-date=22 June 2020 |access-date=21 June 2020 |website=Chinese Foreign Policy Database |publisher=Wilson Center}}</ref><ref name="Columbia University">{{Cite web |title=Three Chinese Leaders: Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Deng Xiaoping |url=http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/china_1950_leaders.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230517180540/http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/china_1950_leaders.htm |archive-date=17 May 2023 |access-date=22 June 2020 |publisher=[[Columbia University]]}}</ref><ref name="CNLaw&Govt1996">{{Cite journal |date=July 1996 |title=The Road to the Cultural Revolution |journal=Chinese Law & Government |volume=29 |issue=4 |pages=61–71 |doi=10.2753/CLG0009-4609290461 }}</ref> Acknowledging responsibilities for the Great Leap Forward, Mao did not retreat from his policies; instead, he blamed problems on bad implementation and "rightists" who opposed him.<ref name="CNLaw&Govt1996" />{{sfnp|Lieberthal|2003|p={{page needed|date=June 2024}}}} He initiated the [[Socialist Education Movement]] in 1963 and the [[Cultural Revolution]] in 1966 in order to remove opposition and re-consolidate his power.<ref name="CNLaw&Govt1996" /> In addition, dozens of dams constructed in [[Zhumadian|Zhumadian, Henan]], during the Great Leap Forward collapsed in 1975 (under the influence of [[Typhoon Nina (1975)|Typhoon Nina]]) and resulted in the [[1975 Banqiao Dam failure]], with estimates of its death toll ranging from tens of thousands to 240,000.<ref>{{Cite web |date=20 August 2012 |script-title=zh:1975年那个黑色八月（上） |trans-title=The dark August of 1975 (1) |url=http://paper.people.com.cn/zgnyb/html/2012-08/20/content_1099870.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200506134746/http://paper.people.com.cn/zgnyb/html/2012-08/20/content_1099870.htm |archive-date=6 May 2020 |access-date=25 March 2020 |website=[[People's Daily|People's Net]] |publisher=China Energy News |language=zh}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=8 August 2019 |title=Reflections on Banqiao |url=https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/features/reflections-on-banqiao/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240724024450/https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/features/reflections-on-banqiao |archive-date=24 July 2024 |access-date=25 March 2020 |publisher=Institution of Chemical Engineers}}</ref>

==Background==
{{See also|Agriculture in China|History of the People's Republic of China (1949–1976)}}The core goal of the Great Leap Forward was to increase industrial and agricultural outputs by using [[mass mobilization]] to raise labor inputs and therefore overcome China's lack of material, technological and monetary inputs.<ref name=":02" />{{Rp|page=233}} The Great Leap Forward also sought to address imbalances between rural China and urban China existed in the prerevolutionary period and continued into the 1950s.<ref name=":Kindler2" />{{Reference page|page=97}}

[[Classical Marxism|Classical Marxist]] theory hypothesized a relatively linear progression of development and a worldwide revolution beginning with the most [[Developed country|developed countries]]. At the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the country was one of the poorest in the world. The Great Leap Forward attempted to defy the conventional understanding of the time required for economic development. Through rapid industrialization, it aimed to close the gap between China's developmental stage and its political aspirations.{{sfnp|Qian|2024|p=145–147}} In March 1955, at a national conference of the Party, Mao declared that China "would catch up with and surpass the most powerful capitalist countries in several dozen years", and in October, Mao announced that he would complete the building of a socialist state in 15 years.{{sfnp|Shen|Xia|2011|p=863}}

In the late 1950s, China's socio-political landscape experienced significant rural reforms and the aftermath of previous policies aimed at collectivization rather than individualism.<ref name="Makar1975">{{Cite journal |last1=Makar |first1=A. B. |last2=McMartin |first2=K. E. |last3=Palese |first3=M. |last4=Tephly |first4=T. R. |date=June 1975 |title=Formate assay in body fluids: application in methanol poisoning |journal=Biochemical Medicine |volume=13 |issue=2 |pages=117–126 |doi=10.1016/0006-2944(75)90147-7 |pmid=1 }}</ref> Before the Great Leap Forward, the Chinese government initiated land reforms that redistributed land from landlords to peasants, but these reforms still needed to attain the expected agricultural productivity.<ref name="Makar1975" /> The early 1950s saw the establishment of agricultural cooperatives, yet these changes brought mixed outcomes. However, the push towards rapid industrialization and the establishment of people's communes in rural areas were central to the Great Leap Forward, reflecting the government's belief that collectivization and large-scale projects would boost agricultural and industrial outputs. The communes were meant to centralize farming and labor, supposedly leading to increased efficiency and output; still, in reality, and practice, these measures often disrupted traditional farming practices and led to decreased productivity. [[Dali Yang]] stated, "The initial stages of collectivization brought chaos and inefficiency, with agricultural productivity often declining".{{sfnp|Yang|1996|pp=10-30}}

By the time of the Great Leap Forward, increased [[Sino-Soviet split|Sino-Soviet tensions]] meant that China could not depend on Soviet technological assistance.<ref name=":02" />{{Rp|pages=232–233}} Mao emphasized China's self-reliance in [[Technological and industrial history of China|technology and industry]] and discouraged reliance on foreign technology.<ref name=":02" />{{Rp|page=233}}

===Agricultural collectives and other social changes===
{{Main|Land Reform Movement (China)}}

[[File:Sending officials to the countryside.jpg|thumb|Government officials being sent to work in the countryside, 1957]]

Before 1949, peasants had farmed their own small pockets of land and observed traditional practices—festivals, banquets, and paying homage to ancestors.<ref name="Mirsky2009" /> It was realized that Mao's policy of using a [[state monopoly]] on agriculture to finance industrialization would be unpopular with the peasants. Therefore, it was proposed that the peasants should be brought under Party control by the establishment of agricultural [[collective]]s which would also facilitate the sharing of tools and draft animals.<ref name="Mirsky2009" />

This policy was gradually pushed through between 1949 and 1958 in response to immediate policy needs, first by establishing "mutual aid teams" of 5–15 households, then in 1953 "elementary agricultural cooperatives" of 20–40 households, then from 1956 in "higher co-operatives" of 100–300 families. From 1954 onward peasants were encouraged to form and join collective-farming associations, which would supposedly increase their efficiency without robbing them of their own land or restricting their livelihoods.<ref name="Mirsky2009" />

By 1958, private ownership was abolished and all households were forced into state-operated communes. Mao demanded that the communes increase grain production to feed the cities and to earn foreign exchange through exports. China must follow a different path to socialism than the Soviet Union, Mao told delegates, by allowing its peasants to participate in economic modernisation and making more use of their labour.<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Llewellyn |first1=Jennifer  |last2=Kucha |first2=Glenn |date=2023-09-19 |orig-date=2018-03-18 |title=The Great Leap Forward |url=https://alphahistory.com/chineserevolution/great-leap-forward/#Collectivsation_and_communes |access-date=2025-02-23 |website=[[Alpha History]] |language=en-US}}</ref><ref name="Mirsky2009" />

Apart from [[progressive tax]]ation on each household's harvest, the state introduced a system of compulsory state purchases of grain at fixed prices to build up stockpiles for famine-relief and meet the terms of its trade agreements with the [[Soviet Union]]. Together, taxation and compulsory purchases accounted for 30% of the harvest by 1957, leaving very little surplus. [[Rationing]] was also introduced in the cities to curb 'wasteful consumption' and encourage savings (which were deposited in state-owned banks and thus became available for investment), and although food could be purchased from state-owned retailers the market price was higher than that for which it had been purchased. This too was done in the name of discouraging excessive consumption.{{citation needed|date=July 2024}}

Besides these economic changes, the CCP implemented major social changes in the countryside including the banishing of all religious and mystic institutions and ceremonies, replacing them with political meetings and propaganda sessions. Attempts were made to enhance rural education and the status of women (allowing them to initiate divorce if they desired) and ending [[foot-binding]], [[child marriage]] and [[opium]] addiction.<ref>{{Cite web |last1=McCarthy |first1=Rebecca |last2=Schneider |first2=Sarah |author-link2=Sarah Schneider |title=Yue Xiong's Great Leap |url=https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/yue-xiongs-great-leap/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241210072520/https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/yue-xiongs-great-leap/ |archive-date=2024-12-10 |access-date=2025-02-23 |website=[[Science History Institute]] |language=en-US |quote=After the Communist Revolution of 1949, Mao was determined to eliminate inequality. He paid special attention to the plight of Chinese women, banning the practice of foot binding and establishing women’s right to an education and to vote. He also reformed China’s marriage law, replacing a system in which brides were often bought and sold with one that required both parties’ consent and gave women the right to divorce.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last1=Hagedorn |first1=Linda Serra |last2=Zhang |first2=Yi (Leaf) |date=2010 |title=China's Progress Toward Gender Equity: From Bound Feet to BoundlessPossibilities |url=https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ913061.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250203035955/https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ913061.pdf |archive-date=2025-02-03 |access-date=2025-02-23 |website=The Forum on Public Policy |publisher=[[Education Resources Information Center]]}}</ref> The old system of internal passports (the ''[[Hukou#1949–1978: Maoist era|hukou]]'') was introduced in 1956, preventing inter-county travel without appropriate authorization. Highest priority was given to the urban [[proletariat]] for whom a [[welfare state]] was created.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Young |first=Jason |title=China's hukou system: markets, migrants and institutional change |date=2013 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=978-1-137-27730-5 |location=Basingstoke, Hampshire}}{{page needed|date=February 2025}}</ref>

The first phase of collectivization resulted in modest improvements in output.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Brown |first=Clayton D. |date=Winter 2012 |title=China's Great Leap Forward |url=https://www.asianstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/chinas-great-leap-forward-1.pdf |journal=Education About Asia |volume=17 |issue=3 |pages=29–34 |quote=The first Five Year Plan yielded impressive results. China’s overall economy had expanded nearly 9 percent per year, with agricultural output rising almost 4 percent annually and industrial output exploding to just shy of 19 percent per year. More important, life expectancy was twenty years longer in 1957 than when the Communists took power in 1949. |archive-date=28 February 2024 |access-date=28 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240228202924/https://www.asianstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/chinas-great-leap-forward-1.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> Famine along the mid-Yangzi was averted in 1956 through the timely allocation of food-aid, but in 1957 the Party's response was to increase the proportion of the harvest collected by the state to insure against further disasters. Moderates within the Party, including [[Zhou Enlai]], argued for a reversal of collectivization on the grounds that claiming the bulk of the harvest for the state had made the people's food-security dependent upon the constant, efficient, and transparent functioning of the government.{{citation needed|date=February 2022}}

===Hundred Flowers Campaign and Anti-Rightist Campaign===
In 1957, Mao responded to the tensions which existed in the Party by launching the [[Hundred Flowers Campaign]] as a way to promote free speech and criticism. Some scholars have retroactively concluded that this campaign was a ploy designed to allow critics of the regime, primarily intellectuals but also low ranking members of the party who were critical of the agricultural policies, to identify themselves.{{sfnp|Chang |Halliday |2005|p=435}}

By the time of the completion of the first 5 Year Economic Plan in 1957, Mao had come to believe that the path to socialism that had been followed by the Soviet Union was not appropriate for China. He was critical of [[Nikita Khrushchev|Khrushchev's]] reversal of [[Stalinism|Stalinist]] policies and he was also alarmed by the uprisings that had taken place in [[Uprising of 1953 in East Germany|East Germany]], [[Poznań 1956 protests|Poland]] and [[Hungarian Revolution of 1956|Hungary]], and the perception that the USSR was seeking "[[peaceful coexistence]]" with the Western powers. Mao had become convinced that China should follow its own path to communism. According to [[Jonathan Mirsky]], a historian and a journalist who specialized in Chinese affairs, China's isolation from most of the rest of the world, along with the [[Korean War]], had accelerated Mao's attacks on his perceived domestic enemies. It led him to accelerate his designs to develop an economy where the regime would get maximum benefit from rural taxation.<ref name="Mirsky2009">{{Cite magazine |last=Mirsky |first=Jonathan |date=26 February 2009 |title=The China We Don't Know |url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/feb/26/the-china-we-dont-know/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151016120725/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/feb/26/the-china-we-dont-know/ |archive-date=16 October 2015 |magazine=New York Review of Books |volume=56 |number=3}}</ref>

The [[Anti-Rightist Campaign]] started on 8 June 1957. The main goal was to purge "rightists" from the CCP and China altogether. It was believed that approximately 5 percent of the population was still "rightists" (Political conservatives sabotaging the revolution).<ref>{{Cite web |last=Brown |first=Clayton D. |title=China's Great Leap Forward |url=https://www.asianstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/chinas-great-leap-forward-1.pdf |website=US, Asia, and the World: 1914–2012}}</ref>

=== Rash advance movement and anti-rash advance movement ===
{{See also|Beidaihe Conference (1958)}}
In the early years of the New China, due to the lack of experience in financial and economic work, it was a common practice to include the fiscal surplus of the previous year in the budget of the current year. Because of the low level of budgeting in the fiscal sector and inaccurate estimates of economic development, revenues and expenditures were underestimated. However, no problems arose because the government usually managed to end the fiscal year with a surplus. In 1953, when China entered the first five-year plan period, the Chinese economy had improved and the [[Ministry of Finance of the People's Republic of China|Ministry of Finance]] still decided to include the fiscal surplus of the previous fiscal year as credit funds in the 1953 budget revenue to cover the current year's expenditures. As a result, budget expenditures were expanded and so was the size of the budget. At that time, only the Soviet expert Kutuzov warned the Chinese fiscal authorities not to use the fiscal surplus of the previous year, however, it was not heeded by the Ministry of Finance. In that year, the gross industrial and agricultural output grew by 21.3%, while the capital construction budget increased by 50% compared to the previous year, which led to an imbalance between production and demand. Such was the "small rash advance" ({{lang|zh|小冒進}}) at the start of the first five-year plan period.{{sfnp|Chen|Guo|2016|pp=127–128}} The issue had caused widespread social controversy. This marked one of the first times people questioned Mao's authority.{{sfnp|Peng|1987}} The faction of [[Li Xiannian]], [[Chen Yun]] and others did not think it was appropriate to continue this practice, but they also had opponents. Li Xiannian finally decided to hold a collective meeting to discuss the issue, and after listening to the views of all parties, he decided to abolish the practice.{{sfnp|Chen|Guo|2016|p=129}}

Nevertheless, the controversy over the use of the fiscal surplus persisted, which brought another reckless "rash advance" to China's economic development in 1956. At that time, China lacked consideration in three areas: capital construction, employee wages, and agricultural loans. This made the central treasury "tight" again. This drew the attention of Zhou Enlai, Li Xiannian, and others. At a state meeting held on 5 June 1956, proposals were made to curb impetuousness and rash advances, revise the 1956 national economic plan, and cut capital construction investment. Such was the anti-"rash advance" movement.{{sfnp|Chen|Guo|2016|pp=130–131}}

The excess of the first five-year plan gave the nation great confidence, and at the Second Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee, "go all out, aim high, and build socialism with greater, faster, better, and more economical results" ({{lang-zh|s=鼓足干劲、力争上游、多快好省地建设社会主义|t=鼓足幹勁、力爭上游、多快好省地建設社會主義}}) was adopted as the "General Line for Socialist Construction" in China.{{sfnp|Chen|Guo|2017|p=2}} In 1955, Mao had already expressed his belief that socialist construction should achieve "greater, faster, better, and more economical" results. These led to the re-emergence of "rash advances", which further led to the reintroduction of policies and tendencies that had previously been overturned. Those who opposed Mao's policies were accused of not upholding the tenets of the "class struggle" under the people's [[cult of Mao]].{{sfnp|Chen|Guo|2017|pp=3–9, 20}}

== Initial phase and resistance ==

===Initial goals===
{{Main|Exceeding the UK, catching the USA|Launching satellites}}

Regarding agriculture, the Chinese government recognized the country's dilemma of feeding its rapidly growing population without the means to make significant capital improvements in agriculture.{{sfnp|Harrell|2023|p=82}} Viewing human labor as an underutilized [[Factors of production|factor of production]], the government intensified the mobilization of masses of people to increase labor inputs in agriculture.{{sfnp|Harrell|2023|p=82}}

In November 1957, party leaders of communist countries gathered in Moscow to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the [[October Revolution]]. [[General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Soviet Communist Party First Secretary]] [[Nikita Khrushchev]] proposed not only to catch up with but exceed the United States in industrial output in the next 15 years through peaceful competition. Mao Zedong was so inspired by the slogan that China put forward its own one: to catch up with and surpass the United Kingdom in 15 years. As with its approach to agriculture, the Chinese government attempted to compensate for its inability to invest in industry with mass mobilizations to increase human labor inputs.{{sfnp|Harrell|2023|p=82}}

During the Great Leap Forward, architectural projects were managed according to the strategy of the Three Simultaneities, a process that involved designing, preparing materials, and building at the same time.<ref name=":Zhu2">{{Cite book |last=Zhu |first=Tao |title=Red Legacies in China: Cultural Afterlives of the Communist Revolution |date=2016 |publisher=[[Harvard University Asia Center]] |isbn=978-0-674-73718-1 |editor-last=Li |editor-first=Jie |series=Harvard Contemporary China Series |volume= |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |chapter=Building Big With No Regret: From Beijing's "Ten Great Buildings" in the 1950s to China's Megaprojects Today |doi= |jstor= |editor-last2=Zhang |editor-first2=Enhua}}</ref>{{Rp|page=69}}

The initial projects of the Great Leap Forward were accelerating the construction of waterworks on the [[North China Plain]] during the 1957-1958 winter and next the development of people's communes and crude forms of rural industrialization.{{sfnp|Harrell|2023|p=82}} Some Great Leap Projects had lots of long-term value to China's economy and continued to benefit China after The Great Leap Forward ended. Some of the projects included bridges, railroads, canals and reservoirs. However, some of these projects were completed quickly, resulting in errors and delays that did more harm than good.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Ebrey |title=East Asia. A Cultural, Social, and Political History |last2=Walthall |date=January 2013 |publisher=Cengage |isbn=9781133606475 |edition=3rd |pages=481}}</ref>

The Great Leap Forward partially socialized reproductive labor though collective housework, childcare, and the collective canteens which included free or partially free food distribution.<ref name=":Kindler2">{{Cite book |last=Kindler |first=Benjamin |title=Writing to the Rhythm of Labor: Cultural Politics of the Chinese Revolution, 1942-1976 |date=2025 |publisher=[[Columbia University Press]] |isbn=978-0-231-21932-7 |location=New York City, NY}}</ref>{{Reference page|page=97}}

=== Lushan Conference and the Anti-Right Deviation Struggle ===
{{Main|Lushan Conference|Anti-Right Deviation Struggle}}

The initial impact of the Great Leap Forward was discussed at the [[Lushan Conference]] in July–August 1959. Although many of the more moderate leaders had reservations about the new policy, the only senior leader to speak out openly was Marshal [[Peng Dehuai]].<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Li |first=Rui |author-link=Li Rui |date=1999-09-27 |title=No Dissent |url=https://time.com/archive/6955457/no-dissent/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241228230821/https://time.com/archive/6955457/no-dissent/ |archive-date=2024-12-28 |access-date=2024-12-28 |magazine=[[TIME]] |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":2">{{Cite journal |last=Teiwes |first=Frederick C. |author-link=Frederick Teiwes |date=1986 |editor-last=Longpu |editor-first=Zheng |editor2-last=Domes |editor2-first=Jurgen |title=Peng Dehuai and Mao Zedong |journal=The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs |issue=16 |pages=81–98 |doi=10.2307/2158776 |jstor=2158776 }}</ref><ref name=":5">{{Cite journal |last=Kohlenberg |first=Paul Joscha |date=January 2017 |title=The Use of "Comrade" as a Political Instrument in the Chinese Communist Party, from Mao to Xi |journal=The China Journal |volume=77 |pages=72–92 |doi=10.1086/688519 }}</ref> Mao responded to Peng's criticism of the Great Leap by dismissing Peng from his post as the [[Minister of National Defense (China)|Minister of National Defense]], denouncing Peng (who came from a poor peasant family) and his supporters as "bourgeois",<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":5" /> subsequently launching a nationwide campaign against "rightist opportunism" known as the "[[Anti-Right Deviation Struggle]]".<ref name=":22">{{Cite journal |last=Teiwes |first=Frederick C. |author-link=Frederick Teiwes |date=1986 |editor-last=Longpu |editor-first=Zheng |editor2-last=Domes |editor2-first=Jurgen |title=Peng Dehuai and Mao Zedong |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2158776 |journal=The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs |issue=16 |pages=81–98 |doi=10.2307/2158776 |issn=0156-7365 |jstor=2158776 |archive-date=4 May 2019 |access-date=28 December 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190504043021/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2158776 |url-status=live |url-access=subscription }}</ref> Peng was replaced by [[Lin Biao]], who began a systematic purge of Peng's supporters from the military.<ref name=":4">{{Cite web |title=Peng Dehuai |url=http://en.people.cn/data/people/pengdehuai.shtml |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231209052658/http://en.people.cn/data/people/pengdehuai.shtml |archive-date=2023-12-09 |access-date=2024-12-28 |website=[[People's Daily]]}}</ref>{{Better source needed|reason=The current source is insufficiently reliable ([[WP:NOTRS]]).|date=March 2025}} In total, over 3 million CCP members were purged or penalized during the campaign.<ref name=":3">{{Cite web |last1=Wu |first1=Shihong |last2=Gao |first2=Qi |date=2017-08-09 |title=邓小平与共和国重大历史事件（17） |trans-title=Deng Xiaoping and the major historical events of the People's Republic of China (17) |url=http://cpc.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0809/c69113-29460152.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240606202826/http://cpc.people.com.cn/n1/2017/0809/c69113-29460152.html |archive-date=2024-06-06 |access-date=2024-12-28 |website=[[People's Daily|People's Net]] |publisher=Guangan Daily}}</ref>

==Organizational and operational factors==
The Great Leap Forward campaign began during the period of the Second [[Five-year plans of China|Five Year Plan]] which was scheduled to run from 1958 to 1963, though the campaign itself was discontinued by 1961.<ref>Li, Kwok-sing (1995). ''A glossary of political terms of the People's Republic of China''. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Translated by Mary Lok. pp.&nbsp;47–48.</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Chan |first=Alfred L. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9pPxwn6EvR4C&pg=PA13 |title=Mao's crusade: politics and policy implementation in China's great leap forward |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-19-924406-5 |series=Studies on contemporary China |page=13 |access-date=20 October 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190612142616/https://books.google.com/books?id=9pPxwn6EvR4C&pg=PA13 |archive-date=12 June 2019 |url-status=live}}</ref> Mao unveiled the Great Leap Forward at a meeting in January 1958 in [[Nanjing]].

The Great Leap Forward was grounded in a logical theory of economic development and represented an unambiguous social invention.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Gabriel |first=Satya J. |year=1998 |title=Political Economy of the Great Leap Forward: Permanent Revolution and State Feudal Communes |url=https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/sgabriel/economics/china-essays/4.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210727092936/https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/sgabriel/economics/china-essays/4.html |archive-date=27 July 2021 |access-date=15 December 2021 |website=[[Mount Holyoke College]]}}</ref> The central idea behind the Great Leap was that China should "walk on two legs", by rapidly developing both heavy and light industry, urban and rural areas, and large and small scale labor.{{sfnp|Hou|2021|p=44}} The hope was to industrialize by making use of the massive supply of cheap labor and avoid having to import heavy machinery. The government also sought to avoid both social stratification and technical bottlenecks involved in the Soviet model of development, but sought political rather than technical solutions to do so. Distrusting technical experts,{{sfnp|Lieberthal|1987|p=301|loc="Thus, the [1957] Anti-Rightist Campaign in both urban and rural areas bolstered the position of those who believed that proper mobilization of the populace could accomplish tasks that the 'bourgeois experts' dismissed as impossible."}} Mao and the party sought to replicate the strategies used in its 1930s regrouping in [[Yan'an]] following the [[Long March]]: "mass mobilization, social leveling, attacks on bureaucratism, [and] disdain for material obstacles".{{sfnp|Lieberthal|1987|p=304}} In the absence of material development inputs, Mao sought to increase development through [[Voluntarism (philosophy)#Marxist context|voluntarism]] and organizational advantages brought about by socialism.{{sfnp|Qian|2024|p=148}} Mao advocated that a further round of collectivization modeled on the USSR's [[Third Period]] was necessary in the countryside where the existing collectives would be merged into huge people's communes.{{citation needed|date=July 2024}}, Since the country side was significantly poorer than the cities and the people were hands on workers. (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/430804).

===People's communes===
{{Main|People's commune}}

[[File:People's commone canteen3.jpg|thumb|A canteen in a people's commune, 1958]]
An experimental commune was established at Chayashan in [[Henan]] in April 1958. Here for the first time, private plots were entirely abolished and communal kitchens were introduced. At the [[Politburo of the Communist Party of China|Politburo]] meetings in August 1958, it was decided that these people's communes would become the new form of economic and political organization throughout rural China. By the end of the year, approximately 25,000 communes had been set up, with an average of 5,000 households each. The communes were relatively self-sufficient co-operatives where wages and money were replaced by work points.{{citation needed|date=July 2024}}

The commune system was aimed at maximizing production for provisioning the cities and constructing offices, factories, schools, and social insurance systems for urban-dwelling workers, cadres, and officials. Citizens in rural areas who criticized the system were labeled "dangerous". Later on, as more and more families linked together to form people's communes, peasants started to lose individual identities, since families were from vastly different communities with different cultural views, political views, family structures, and financial backgrounds, which created conflict regarding the means and modes of production. Some wealthier families who refused to join a people's commune might be labeled as rightists.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Cheng |first=Jingru |year=2022 |title=Collectivisation, paradox and resistance: The architecture of people's commune in china |journal=Journal of Architecture |volume=27 |issue=7–8 |pages=913–948 |doi=10.1080/13602365.2022.2158207 |doi-access=free}}</ref> Escape was also difficult or impossible, and those who attempted were subjected to "party-orchestrated public struggle", which further jeopardized their survival.{{sfnp|Thaxton|2008|p=3}} Besides agriculture, communes also incorporated some light industry and construction projects. Harvests did increase in 1958. However this was because of exceptional weather, not, which a lot of officials mistook, as the result of hard work of the peasants (collectivization lowered the efficiency of labour and increased overconsumption), causing officials to raise the projected quota. This led to famine in the countryside since they were required to reach set harvest goals, leaving not enough food for themselves.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kjeld Erik Brodsgaard, Koen Rutten |title=From Accelerated Accumulation to Socialist Market Economy in China Economic Discourse and Development from 1953 to the Present |date=2017 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=9789004330092 |pages=34–36}}</ref>

===Industrialization===
[[File:Carriages on the mine field.jpg|thumb|A minecart leading to the steel base, October 1957]]

Mao saw grain and steel production as the key pillars of economic development. He forecast that within 15 years of the start of the Great Leap, China's industrial output would surpass that of the UK. In the August 1958 Politburo meetings, it was decided that steel production would be set to double within the year, most of the increase coming through backyard steel furnaces.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Chan |first=Alfred L. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9pPxwn6EvR4C&pg=PA69 |title=Mao's Crusade: Politics and Policy Implementation in China's Great Leap Forward |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-19-155401-8 |pages=71–74 |access-date=15 November 2015}}</ref> Major investments in larger state enterprises were made: 1,587, 1,361 and 1,815 medium and large-scale state projects were started in 1958, 1959 and 1960 respectively, more in each year than in the first Five Year Plan.{{sfnp|Lardy|1987|p=367}}

Millions of Chinese became state workers as a consequence of this industrial investment: in 1958, 21 million were added to non-agricultural state payrolls, and total state employment reached a peak of 50.44 million in 1960, more than doubling the 1957 level; the urban population swelled by 31.24 million people.{{sfnp|Lardy|1987|p=368}} These new workers placed major stress on China's food-rationing system, which led to increased and unsustainable demands on rural food production.{{sfnp|Lardy|1987|p=368}} Those between the ages of sixteen and thirty were considered ideal candidates for the militia.{{citation needed|date=April 2024}} Peasants were working long hours, all year round, even contributed their own cooking utensils to be melted as a source of production.{{sfnp|Lieberthal|2003|p={{page needed|date=June 2024}}}}

The consequences of the Great Leap Forward were devastating, leading to one of the most severe famines in human history.{{sfnp|Ashton|Hill |Piazza|Zeitz|1984}} The policies that diverted labor from agriculture to industrial projects, such as backyard steel furnaces, resulted in a catastrophic drop in agricultural output; consequently, food shortages became widespread. According to demographic studies, the famine caused an estimated 15 to 45 million deaths, with rural areas being the hardest hit.{{sfnp|Ashton|Hill|Piazza|Zeitz|1984}} Ashton et al. (1984) highlight: "During the period 1958-62, about 30 million premature deaths occurred in China: deaths that occurred earlier than they would have on the basis of mortality trends for more normal years."{{sfnp|Ashton |Hill|Piazza|Zeitz|1984}}

During this rapid expansion, coordination suffered and material shortages were frequent, resulting in "a huge rise in the wage bill, largely for construction workers, but no corresponding increase in manufactured goods".{{sfnp|Lardy|1987|p=387}} Facing a massive deficit, the government cut industrial investment from {{CNY|38.9&nbsp;billion}} to {{CNY|7.1&nbsp;billion}} from 1960 to 1962 (an 82% decrease; the 1957 level was {{CNY|14.4&nbsp;billion}}).{{sfnp|Lardy|1987|p=387}} Partly due to misreporting, or corruption at every level of the government where they would over-report harvest and steel production, by the time people realized, it was too late to correct statistics without angering Mao.{{sfnp|Lieberthal|2003|p={{page needed|date=June 2024}}}}

===Backyard furnaces===
{{Main|Backyard furnace}}

[[File:Backyard furnace4.jpg|thumb|upright=0.75|Backyard furnaces in the countryside, 1958]]
The Great Leap Forward sought to revive folk technologies, including in the area of steel production.{{sfnp|Qian|2024|p=168}} [[Steel industry in China|China's steel industry]] faced a shortage of imported iron and calls to increase production of "native iron" had begun in 1956.{{sfnp|Qian|2024|p=168}} Efforts to improve steel production were a major focus of the Great Leap Forward.<ref name=":02" />{{Rp|page=234}} By mid-1958, the Chinese state began promoting indigenous metallurgical methods and the proliferation of "folk furnaces".{{sfnp|Qian|2024|p=168}} This was an effort to increase steel production without increased investment costs.<ref name=":02" />{{Rp|page=233}}

Although the 1958 national mobilization effort to produce steel reached its target of 10.7 million tons, more than 3 million of it was unusable.<ref name=":Zhu2"/>{{Rp|page=69}}

===Crop production experiments===
{{see also|Lysenkoism}}
[[File:People's daily 13 Aug 1958 .jpg|thumb|A ''[[People's Daily]]'' front-page report on 13 August 1958, that the Macheng Jianguo commune in Hubei had set a record in early rice, exceeding 36,900 [[Jin (mass)|jin]] per [[Mu (land)|mu]] (27.675 kg/m<sup>2</sup>).]]

On the communes, a number of radical and controversial agricultural innovations were promoted at the behest of Mao. Many of these innovations were based on [[Lysenkoism|the ideas]] of now-discredited Soviet agronomist [[Trofim Lysenko]] and his followers. The policies included close cropping, whereby seeds were sown far more densely than normal on the incorrect assumption that seeds of the same class would not compete with each other. Yang provides data on the failure of close planting techniques, which reduced yields in Anhui from 400 jin per mu to less than 200 jin per mu due to overcrowded plants competing for nutrients and sunlight."{{sfnp|Yang|2012|p={{page needed|date=June 2024}}}}{{sfnp|Dikötter|2010|p=39}} [[Deep plowing]] was encouraged on the mistaken belief that this would yield plants with extra large root systems.{{Citation needed|date=March 2019}} Moderately productive land was left unplanted based on the belief that concentrating manure and effort on the most fertile land would lead to large productivity gains per-acre. Altogether, these untested innovations generally led to decreases in grain production rather than increases.{{sfnp|Hinton|1984|pp=[https://archive.org/details/shenfan00hint/page/236 236]–245}}

Meanwhile, local leaders were pressured into falsely reporting ever-higher grain production figures to their political superiors. Participants at political meetings remembered production figures being inflated up to 10 times their actual production amounts as the race to please superiors and win plaudits—like the chance to meet Mao himself—intensified. The state was later able to force many production groups to sell more grain than they could spare based on these false production figures.{{sfnp|Hinton|1984|pp=[https://archive.org/details/shenfan00hint/page/234 234]–240, 247–249}}

===Treatment of villagers===
[[File:Xinyang working at night.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|Commune members working fields at night using lamps]]
[[File:People's commune Nursery school.jpg|thumb|People's commune at a nursery school]]

The ban on [[private property|private holdings]] severely disrupted peasant life at its most basic level. Villagers were unable to secure enough food to go on living because they were deprived by the commune system of their traditional means of being able to rent, sell, or use their land as collateral for loans.<ref name="Mirsky2009" /> In one village, once the commune was operational, the Party boss and his colleagues "swung into manic action, herding villagers into the fields to sleep and to work intolerable hours, and forcing them to walk, starving, to distant additional projects".<ref name="Mirsky2009" />

Edward Friedman, political scientist, Paul Pickowicz, historian, and [[Mark Selden]], sociologist, wrote about the dynamic of interaction between the Party and villagers:
{{blockquote|Beyond attack, beyond question, was the systemic and structured dynamic of the socialist state that intimidated and impoverished millions of patriotic and loyal villagers.<ref>Friedman, Edward; Pickowicz, Paul G.; and Selden, Mark (2006). ''Revolution, Resistance, and Reform in Village China''. Yale University Press.</ref>}}

The authors present a similar picture to Thaxton in depicting the party's destruction of the traditions of Chinese villagers. Traditionally prized local customs were deemed signs of [[feudalism]] to be extinguished. "Among them were funerals, weddings, local markets, and festivals. The Party thus destroyed much that gave meaning to Chinese lives. These private bonds were social glue. To mourn and to celebrate is to be human. To share joy, grief, and pain is humanizing."<ref name="Mirsky2006">{{Cite magazine |last=Mirsky |first=Jonathan |date=11 May 2006 |title=China: The Shame of the Villages |url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2006/may/11/china-the-shame-of-the-villages/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151029192253/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2006/may/11/china-the-shame-of-the-villages/ |archive-date=29 October 2015 |magazine=The New York Review of Books |volume=53 |number=8}}</ref> Failure to participate in the CCP's political campaigns—though the aims of such campaigns were often conflicting—"could result in detention, torture, death, and the suffering of entire families".<ref name="Mirsky2006" />

Public [[struggle session]]s were often used to intimidate the peasants into obeying local officials; they increased the death rate of the famine in several ways. "In the first case, blows to the body caused internal injuries that, in combination with physical [[emaciation]] and acute hunger, could induce death." In one case, after a peasant stole two cabbages from the common fields, the thief was publicly criticized for half a day. He collapsed, fell ill, and never recovered. Others were sent to [[labor camp]]s.{{sfnp|Thaxton|2008|p=212}}

About 7% of those who died during the Great Leap Forward were tortured to death or summarily killed.<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Becker |first=Jasper |author-link=Jasper Becker |date=25 September 2010 |title=Systematic genocide |url=http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/6296363/part_2/systematic-genocide-.thtml |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120411230653/http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/6296363/part_2/systematic-genocide-.thtml |archive-date=11 April 2012 |magazine=[[The Spectator]]}}</ref> Benjamin Valentino notes that "communist officials sometimes tortured and killed those accused of failing to meet their grain quota".{{sfnp|Valentino|2004|p=128}}

However, J. G. Mahoney has said that "there is too much diversity and dynamism in the country for one work to capture&nbsp;... rural China as if it were one place." Mahoney describes an elderly man in rural [[Shanxi]] who recalls Mao fondly, saying "Before Mao we sometimes ate leaves, after liberation we did not." Regardless, Mahoney points out that Da Fo villagers recall the Great Leap Forward as a period of famine and death, and among those who survived in Da Fo were precisely those who could digest leaves.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Mahoney |first=Josef Gregory |year=2009 |title=Ralph A. Thaxton, Jr., ''Catastrophe and Contention in Rural China: Mao's Great Leap Forward, Famine and the Origins of Righteous Resistance in Da Fo Village'' |journal=Journal of Chinese Political Science |type=Book review |publisher=Springer |volume=14 |pages=319–320 |doi=10.1007/s11366-009-9064-8 |number=3}}</ref>

==Direct consequences==
The failure of agricultural policies, the movement of farmers from agricultural to industrial work, and weather conditions suppressed the food supply. At the same time improvements in medicine,<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Babiarz |first1=K. S. |last2=Eggleston |first2=K. |last3=Miller |first3=G. |last4=Zhang |first4=Q. |year=2015 |title=An exploration of China's mortality decline under Mao: A provincial analysis, 1950–80. |journal=Popul Stud (Camb) |volume=69 |issue=1 |pages=39–56 |doi=10.1080/00324728.2014.972432 |pmc=4331212 |pmid=25495509}}</ref> infant mortality,<ref name="Dicker2018" /> and average life expectancy<ref name="Dicker2018" /> promoted by the [[Patriotic Health Campaign]] led to a greatly increased need for food. The shortage of supply clashed with an explosion in demand, leading to millions of deaths from severe famine. The economy, which had improved since the end of the civil war, was devastated, and in response to the severe conditions, there was resistance among the populace.

The effects on the upper levels of government in response to the disaster were complex, with Mao purging the Minister of National Defense [[Peng Dehuai]] in 1959, the temporary promotion of [[Lin Biao]], [[Liu Shaoqi]], and [[Deng Xiaoping]], and Mao losing some power and prestige following the Great Leap Forward, during the [[Seven Thousand Cadres Conference]] in 1962, which led him to launch the [[Cultural Revolution]] in 1966.<ref>{{Cite book |last=MacFarquhar |first=Roderick |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mfCaziaSBtwC&q=Seven+Thousand+Cadres+Conference&pg=PA137 |title=The Origins of the Cultural Revolution: Volume III, the Coming of the Cataclysm 1961–1966 |publisher=Columbia University Press |year=1999 |isbn=978-0-231-11083-9}}</ref><ref name="Columbia University"/>

<gallery class="center" widths="250px" heights="180px">
File:Birth rate in China.svg|Birth and death rate in China
</gallery>

===Famine===
{{Main|Great Chinese Famine}}

[[File:Tree-Sparrow-2009-16-02.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|The [[Eurasian tree sparrow]] was the most notable target of the [[Four Pests campaign]].]]
Despite the harmful agricultural innovations, the weather was very favorable in 1958 and the harvest was also good. However, the amount of labor which was diverted to steel production and construction projects meant that much of the harvest was left to rot because it was not collected in some areas. This problem was exacerbated by a devastating swarm of locusts, which was caused when their natural predators were killed as part of the [[Four Pests Campaign]].{{Citation needed paragraph|date=May 2023}}

Although actual harvests were reduced, local officials, under tremendous pressure to report record harvests to central authorities in response to the innovations, competed with each other to announce increasingly exaggerated results. These results were used as the basis for determining the amount of grain which would be taken by the State, supplied to the towns and cities and exported. This barely left enough grain for the peasants, and in some areas, starvation set in. A 1959 drought and flooding from the [[Yellow River]] in the same year also contributed to the famine.{{Citation needed paragraph|date=May 2023}}

During 1958–1960 China continued to be a substantial net exporter of grain, despite the widespread famine which was being experienced in the countryside, as Mao sought to maintain face and convince the outside world of the success of his plans. Foreign aid was refused. When the Japanese foreign minister told his Chinese counterpart Chen Yi about an offer of 100,000 tonnes of wheat which was going to be shipped away from public view, he was rebuffed.{{citation needed|date=July 2024}}

[[John F. Kennedy]] was also aware that the Chinese were exporting food to Africa and Cuba during the famine.{{sfnp|Dikötter|2010|pp=114–115}} He said during the news conference on 23 May 1962, "Well, there has been no indication of any expression of interest or desire by the Chinese Communists to receive any food from us, as I have said at the beginning, and we would certainly have to have some idea as to whether the food was needed and under what conditions it might be distributed. Up to the present, we have had no such indication." But Kennedy said that the US provided food for about half a million refugees in British Hong Kong.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Kennedy |first=John F. |date=23 May 1962 |title=News conference 34, May 23, 1962 |url=https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-press-conferences/news-conference-34 |access-date=4 June 2023 |website=John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum |archive-date=4 June 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230604201925/https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-press-conferences/news-conference-34 |url-status=live }}</ref>

With dramatically reduced yields, even urban areas received greatly reduced rations; however, mass starvation was largely confined to the countryside, where, as a result of drastically inflated production statistics, very little grain was left for the peasants to eat. Food shortages were bad throughout the country, but the provinces which had adopted Mao's reforms with the most vigor, such as [[Anhui]], [[Gansu]] and [[Henan]], tended to suffer disproportionately. [[Sichuan]], one of China's most populous provinces, known in China as "Heaven's Granary" because of its fertility, is thought to have suffered the highest number of deaths from starvation due to the vigor with which provincial leader [[Li Jingquan]] undertook Mao's reforms. There are widespread oral reports, though little official documentation, of cannibalism being practiced in various forms as a result of the famine.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Bernstein |first=Richard |date=5 February 1997 |title=Horror of a Hidden Chinese Famine |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0CE3D71E3DF936A35751C0A961958260 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090305072906/http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0CE3D71E3DF936A35751C0A961958260 |archive-date=5 March 2009 |website=The New York Times}}</ref><ref name="Branigan2013" /> Author [[Yan Lianke]] also claims that, while growing up in Henan during the Great Leap Forward, he was taught to "recognize the most edible kinds of bark and clay by his mother. When all of the trees had been stripped and there was no more clay, he learned that lumps of coal could appease the devil in his stomach, at least for a little while."<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Fan |first=Jiayang |date=15 October 2018 |title=Yan Lianke's Forbidden Satires of China |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/yan-liankes-forbidden-satires-of-china |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181101055252/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/yan-liankes-forbidden-satires-of-china |archive-date=1 November 2018 |access-date=31 October 2018 |magazine=The New Yorker}}</ref>

The agricultural policies of the Great Leap Forward and the associated famine continued until January 1961, when, at the Ninth Plenum of the [[8th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party]], the restoration of agricultural production through a reversal of the Great Leap policies was started. Grain exports were stopped, and imports from Canada and Australia reduced the impact of the food shortages, at least in the coastal cities.{{citation needed|date=July 2024}}

====Deaths by famine====
The exact number of deaths by famine is difficult to determine, and estimates range from 15 million to 55 million people.<ref name="Hasell2013" /><ref name="Dikötter2010 p. xii" /><ref name="Grangereau2011">{{Cite web |last=Grangereau |first=Philippe |date=17 June 2011 |title=La Chine creuse ses trous de mémoire |url=http://www.liberation.fr/planete/2011/06/17/la-chine-creuse-ses-trous-de-memoire_743211 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191002195005/https://www.liberation.fr/planete/2011/06/17/la-chine-creuse-ses-trous-de-memoire_743211 |archive-date=2 October 2019 |access-date=24 November 2016 |website=[[La Liberation]] |language=fr}}</ref> Because of the uncertainties which are involved in estimating the number of deaths which were caused by the failure of the Great Leap Forward and the ensuing famine and because of the uncertainties which are involved in [[List of famines|estimating the numbers of deaths which were caused by other famine]]s, it is difficult to compare the severity of different famines. If an estimate of 30 million deaths is accepted, the failure of the Great Leap Forward caused the deadliest famine in the history of China, and it also caused the deadliest famine in human history.<ref name="Ashton1984" /><ref>{{harvp|Yang|2010}}. Yang excerpts {{Cite journal |last=Sen |first=Amartya |year=1999 |title=Democracy as a universal value |journal=Journal of Democracy |volume=10 |issue=3 |pages=3–17 |doi=10.1353/jod.1999.0055}} Who calls it "the largest recorded famine in world history: nearly 30 million people died".</ref> This extremely high loss of human lives was partially caused by [[Demographics of China|China's large population]]. To put things into absolute and relative numerical perspective: in the [[Great Famine (Ireland)|Great Irish Famine]], approximately 1 million people<ref>{{Cite book |title=The Universal Almanac |publisher=Banta |year=1992 |editor-last=Wright |editor-first=John W. |location=Harrisonburg, VA |page=411}}</ref> out of a total population of 8 million people died, or 12.5% of Ireland's entire population. If approximately 23 million people out of a total population of 650 million people died during the Great Chinese Famine, the percentage would be 3.5%.<ref name="Hasell2013" /> Hence, the famine during the Great Leap Forward had the highest absolute death toll, though not the highest relative (percentage) one.

The Great Leap Forward reversed the downward trend in mortality that had occurred since 1950,{{sfnp|Coale|1984|p=7}} though even during the Leap, mortality may not have reached pre-1949 levels.{{sfnp|Li|2008|p=41}}{{efn|Li compares official crude death rates for the years 1959–1962 (11.98, 14.59, 25.43, and 14.24 per thousand, respectively) with the nationwide crude death rate reported by the Nationalist government for the years 1936 and 1938 (27.6 and 28.2 per thousand, respectively).{{sfnp|Li|2008|p=41}}}} Famine deaths and the reduction in number of births caused the population of China to drop in 1960 and 1961.{{sfnp|Ashton|Hill|Piazza|Zeitz|1984|p=615}}{{sfnp|Banister|1987|p=42}}{{efn|Both Ashton and Banister get their data from Statistical Yearbook of China 1983 published by the State Statistical Bureau.}} This was only the third time in 600 years that the population of China had decreased.{{sfnp|Banister|1987|p=3}} Mao suggested, in a discussion with [[Field Marshal Montgomery]] in Autumn 1961, that "unnatural deaths" exceeded 5 million in 1960–1961, according to a declassified CIA report.<ref>{{Cite report |url=https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/polo-10.pdf |title=Communist China's Domestic Crisis: the Road to 1964 |last=Bridgham |first=Philip L. |date=31 July 1964 |publisher=[[Central Intelligence Agency]] |page=82 |via=Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room |archive-date=16 May 2017 |access-date=26 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170516134110/https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/polo-10.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> After the Great Leap Forward, mortality rates decreased to below pre-Leap levels and the downward trend begun in 1950 continued.{{sfnp|Coale|1984|p=7}}

The severity of the famine varied from region to region. By correlating the increases in the death rates of different provinces, Peng Xizhe found that Gansu, Sichuan, [[Guizhou]], [[Hunan]], [[Guangxi]], and Anhui were the hardest-hit regions, while [[Heilongjiang]], [[Inner Mongolia]], [[Xinjiang]], [[Tianjin]], and [[Shanghai]] experienced the lowest increases in death rates during the Great Leap Forward (there was no data for [[Tibet (1912–1951)|Tibet]]).{{sfnp|Peng|1987|pp=646–648}} In some areas, people resorted to eating tree bark and dirt, and in some places cannibalism as a result of starvation.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Gráda |first=CormacÓ |date=March 2011 |title=Great Leap into Famine: A Review Essay* |journal=[[Population and Development Review]] |language=en |volume=37 |issue=1 |pages=191–202 |doi=10.1111/j.1728-4457.2011.00398.x |issn=0098-7921 |jstor=23043270}}</ref> Peng also noted that the increase in death rates in urban areas was about half the increase in death rates in rural areas.{{sfnp|Peng|1987|pp=646–648}} According to Chinese government reports in the ''Fuyang Party History Research Office'', between 1959 and 1961, 2.4 million people from Fuyang died from the famine.<ref>Zhou Xun. Forgotten Voices of Mao's Great Famine, 1958–1962: An Oral History. 2013. pp. 138–139, 292</ref>{{sfnp|Gao|2007|p={{page needed|date=June 2024}}}}

===Long-term impact===

The long-term impact of the Great Leap Forward extended beyond immediate famine and loss of life. The policies and their disastrous outcomes led to significant changes in Chinese society and governance. In rural areas, the effects on education and women's labor roles were profound. The collapse of agricultural production systems and the communal structure led to a reevaluation of economic strategies in subsequent decades. Rural education suffered due to the upheaval, and while women were initially mobilized into the workforce, the ensuing chaos often negated these advances. Dali Yang explains, "The Great Leap Forward's failure necessitated significant policy shifts, leading to a more pragmatic approach in China's economic reforms."{{sfnp|Yang|1996|pp=150-170}}

<gallery class="center" widths="250px" heights="250px">
File:Global famines history.jpg|Global famines history
File:Total number of deaths by age globally for both sexes combined 1950–2017.png|The Great Leap Forward produced a significant spike in the global number of deaths (1950–2017)<ref name="Dicker2018">{{Cite journal |last=Dicker |first=Daniel |year=2018 |title=Global, regional, and national age-sex-specific mortality and life expectancy, 1950–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017 |journal=The Lancet |volume=392 |issue=10159 |pages=1684–1735 |doi=10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31891-9 |pmc=6227504 |pmid=30496102}}</ref>
</gallery>

==== Methods of estimating the death toll and methods of identifying the sources of the error ====
{| class="wikitable sortable" style="float: right; margin:10px; border:1"
|+ Estimates of Great Chinese Famine death toll
|-
! scope="col" | Deaths<br>(millions)
! scope="col" | Author(s)
! scope="col" | Year
|-
|15
|Houser, Sands, and Xiao{{sfnp|Houser |Sands |Xiao |2009}}{{efn|This estimate concludes that the excess death count by manmade causes numbers some 10.3 million, 69% of the total estimated deaths.}}
|2005
|-
|18
|Yao<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Yao |first=Shujie |year=1999 |title=A Note on the Causal Factors of China's Famine in 1959–1961 |journal=Journal of Political Economy |volume=107 |issue=6 |pages=1365–1369 |doi=10.1086/250100 }}</ref>
|1999
|-
| 23 || Peng{{sfnp|Peng|1987|pp=648–649}} || 1987
|-
| 27 || Coale{{sfnp|Coale|1984|p=7}}{{efn|Coale estimates 27 million deaths: 16 million from direct interpretation of official Chinese vital statistics followed by an adjustment to 27 million to account for under-counting.}} || 1984
|-
| 30 || Ashton, et al.<ref name="Ashton1984">{{harvp|Ashton|Hill|Piazza|Zeitz|1984|p=614}}. "Demographic evidence indicates that famine during 1958–61 caused almost 30 million premature deaths in China and reduced fertility very significantly. Data on food availability suggest that, in contrast to many other famines, a root cause of this one was a dramatic decline in grain output that continued for several years, involving a drop in output of more than 25 percent in 1960–61. Causes of this drop are found in both natural disaster and government policy."</ref>|| 1984
|-
| 30 || Banister{{sfnp|Banister|1987|pp=85, 118}} || 1987
|-
| 30 || Becker{{sfnp|Becker|1998|pp=270, 274}} || 1996
|-
| 32.5 || Cao<ref>{{harvp|Dikötter|2010|pp=324–325}}. Dikötter cites {{Cite book |last=Cao |first=Shuji |title=Da Jihuang (1959–1961): nian de Zhongguo renkou |publisher=Shidai guoji chuban youxian gongsi |year=2005 |location=Hong Kong |page=281 |language=zh |trans-title=The Great Famine: China's Population in 1959–1961}}</ref> || 2005
|-
| 36 || Yang{{sfnp|Yang|2012k|p=430}} || 2008
|-
| 38 || Chang and Halliday{{sfnp|Chang|Halliday|2005|p={{page needed|date=June 2024}}}}{{efn|[[Stuart Schram]] believes their estimate "may well be the most accurate".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Schram |first=Stuart |author-link=Stuart Schram |title=Mao: The Unknown Story |journal=The China Quarterly |issue=189 |page=207}}</ref>}} || 2005
|-
| 38 || Rummel<ref>{{Cite web |last=Rummel |first=R. J. |date=10 October 2005 |title=Reevaluating China's Democide to 73,000,000 |url=http://democraticpeace.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/reevaluating-chinas-democide-to-73000000/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180630190029/https://democraticpeace.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/reevaluating-chinas-democide-to-73000000/ |archive-date=30 June 2018 |access-date=12 February 2013 |website=Democratic Peace |type=blog}}</ref> || 2008
|-
| 45 minimum || Dikötter<ref name="Dikötter2010 p. xii">{{harvp|Dikötter|2010|pp=xii–xiii, 333|loc="at least 45 million people died unnecessarily"; "6 to 8 percent of the victims were tortured to death or summarily killed—amounting to at least 2.5 million people"; "a minimum of 45 million excess deaths"}}.</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=O'Neill |first=Mark |date=5 September 2010 |title=45 million died in Mao's Great Leap Forward, Hong Kong historian says in new book |url=https://www.scmp.com/article/723956/revisiting-calamitous-time |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161023142821/http://www.scmp.com/article/723956/revisiting-calamitous-time |archive-date=23 October 2016 |access-date=2 December 2016 |website=South China Morning Post |quote=At least 45 million people died unnecessary deaths during China's Great Leap Forward from 1958 to 1962, including 2.5 million tortured or summarily killed, according to a new book by a Hong Kong scholar. Mao's Great Famine traces the story of how Mao Zedong's drive for absurd targets for farm and industrial production and the reluctance of anyone to challenge him created the conditions for the countryside to be emptied of grain and millions of farmers left to starve.}}</ref>|| 2010
|-
|43 to 46 || Chen<ref>{{harvp|Becker|1996|pp=271–272}}. From an interview with Chen Yizi.</ref> || 1980
|-
|55 || Yu Xiguang<ref name="Grangereau2011" /><ref>{{Cite book |last=Yu |first=Xiguang |title=Da Yuejin Kurezi |publisher=Shidai chaoliu chubanshe |year=2005 |location=Hong Kong |language=zh}}{{page needed|date=June 2024}}</ref> || 2005
|}
Some outlier estimates include 11 million by [[Utsa Patnaik]], an Indian Marxist economist,<ref>{{Cite web |last=Patnaik |first=Utsa |date=9 November 2018 |title=Ideological Statistics: Inflated Death Rates of China's Famine, the Russian one Ignored |url=http://www.socialisteconomist.com/2018/11/ideological-statistics-inflated-death.html |website=Socialist Economist |access-date=11 December 2021 |archive-date=26 December 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221226175450/http://www.socialisteconomist.com/2018/11/ideological-statistics-inflated-death.html |url-status=live }}</ref> 3.66 million by Chinese mathematician Sun Jingxian ({{zhi|c=孙经先}})<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Sun |first=Jingxian |date=April 2016 |title=Population Change during China's 'Three Years of Hardship' (1959 to 1961) |url=https://rpb115.nsysu.edu.tw/var/file/131/1131/img/2375/CCPS2(1)-Sun.pdf |journal=Contemporary Chinese Political Economy and Strategic Relations |volume=2 |issue=1 |pages=453–500 |archive-date=9 December 2021 |access-date=11 December 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211209003958/https://rpb115.nsysu.edu.tw/var/file/131/1131/img/2375/CCPS2%281%29-Sun.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> and 2.6–4 million by Chinese historian and political economist Yang Songlin ({{zhi|c=杨松林}}).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Yang |first=Songlin |title=Telling the Truth: China's Great Leap Forward, Household Registration and the Famine Death Tally |publisher=Springer |year=2021 |isbn=978-981-16-1660-0 |location=Singapore |doi=10.1007/978-981-16-1661-7 }}{{page needed|date=June 2024}}</ref>

The number of famine deaths during the Great Leap Forward has been estimated with different methods. Banister, Coale, and Ashton et al. compare age cohorts from the 1953, 1964, and 1982 censuses, yearly birth and death records, and results of the 1982 1:1000 fertility survey. From these they calculate excess deaths above a death rate interpolated between pre- and post-Leap death rates. All involve corrections for perceived errors inherent in the different data sets.{{sfnp|Banister|1987|pp=118–120}}{{sfnp|Coale|1984|pp=1, 7}}{{sfnp|Ashton|Hill|Piazza|Zeitz|1984|pp=613, 616–619}} Peng uses reported deaths from the vital statistics of 14 provinces, adjusts 10% for under reporting, and expands the result to cover all of China assuming similar mortality rates in the other provinces. He uses 1956/57 death rates as the baseline death rate rather than an interpolation between pre- and post-GLF death rates.{{sfnp|Peng|1987|pp=645, 648–649}}{{efn|Peng used the pre-Leap death rate as a base line under the assumption that the decrease after the Great Leap to below pre-Leap levels was caused by Darwinian selection during the massive deaths of the famine. He writes that if this drop was instead a continuation of the decreasing mortality in the years prior to the Great Leap, his estimate would be an underestimate.}}

Houser, Sands, and Xiao in their 2005 research study using "provincial-level demographic panel data and a Bayesian empirical approach in an effort to distinguish the relative importance of weather and national policy on China's great demographic disaster" conclude that "in aggregate, from 1959 to 1961 China suffered about 14.8 million excess deaths. Of those, about 69% (or 10.3 million) seem attributable to effects stemming from national policies."{{sfnp|Houser|Sands|Xiao|2009|p=156}}

Cao uses information from "local annals" to determine for each locality the expected population increase from normal births and deaths, the population increase due to migration, and the loss of population between 1958 and 1961. He then adds the three figures to determine the number of excess deaths during the period 1959–1961.{{sfnp|Yang|2012k|p=427}} Chang and Halliday use death rates determined by "Chinese demographers" for the years 1957–1963, subtract the average of the pre-and post-Leap death rates (1957, 1962, and 1963) from the death rates of each of the years 1958–1961, and multiply each yearly excess death rate by the year's population to determine excess deaths.{{sfnp|Chang|Halliday|2005|p=438}}

[[Chen Yizi]], a top adviser to [[CCP General Secretary]] [[Zhao Ziyang]] and former head of the Institute for Economic Structural Reform,<ref>{{Cite news |date=2014-04-25 |title=Chen Yizi, a Top Adviser Forced to Flee China, Dies at 73 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/26/world/asia/chen-yizi-a-top-adviser-forced-to-flee-china-dies-at-73.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241202235611/https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/26/world/asia/chen-yizi-a-top-adviser-forced-to-flee-china-dies-at-73.html |archive-date=2 December 2024 |access-date= |work=[[The New York Times]] |language=en }}</ref> concluded 43 million died in the famine after conducting a county-by-county review of deaths in five provinces and performing extrapolation.<ref>{{Cite news |last1=Strauss |first1=Valerie |last2=Southerl |first2=Daniel |date=July 17, 1994 |title=HOW MANY DIED? NEW EVIDENCE SUGGESTS FAR HIGHER NUMBERS FOR THE VICTIMS OF MAO ZEDONG'S ERA |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/07/17/how-many-died-new-evidence-suggests-far-higher-numbers-for-the-victims-of-mao-zedongs-era/01044df5-03dd-49f4-a453-a033c5287bce/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190925173059/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/07/17/how-many-died-new-evidence-suggests-far-higher-numbers-for-the-victims-of-mao-zedongs-era/01044df5-03dd-49f4-a453-a033c5287bce/ |archive-date=2019-09-25 |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]]}}</ref> Chen was part of a large investigation group led by the Institute for Economic Structural Reform which "visited every province and examined internal Party documents and records".{{sfnp|Becker|1996|pp=271–272}}

Becker, Rummel, [[Frank Dikötter|Dikötter]], and Yang each compare several earlier estimates. Becker considers Banister's estimate of 30 million excess deaths to be "the most reliable estimate we have".{{sfnp|Becker|1998|pp=270, 274}} Rummel initially took Coale's 27 million as a "most likely figure",{{sfnp|Rummel|1991|p=248}} then accepted the later estimate of 38 million by Chang and Halliday after it was published.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Rummel |first=Rudy J. |year=2005 |editor-last=Ciolek |editor-first=T. Matthew |title=Reevaluated democide totals for 20th C. and China |url=http://www.ciolek.com/spec/rummel-on-democide-2005.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140827070539/http://www.ciolek.com/SPEC/rummel-on-democide-2005.html |archive-date=27 August 2014 |access-date=22 October 2016 |via=Asia Pacific Research Online}}</ref> Dikötter judged Chen's estimate of 43 to 46 million to be "in all likelihood a reliable estimate".{{sfnp|Dikötter|2010|p=333}} He also claimed that at least 2.5 million of these deaths were caused by beatings, tortures, or summary executions.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Bianco |first=Lucien |date=30 July 2011 |title=Frank Dikötter, Mao's Great Famine, ''The History of China's most devastating catastrophe, 1958–62'' |journal=China Perspectives |volume=2011 |issue=2 |pages=74–75 |doi=10.4000/chinaperspectives.5585 |doi-access=free}}</ref> On the other hand, Daniel Vukovich asserts that this claim is coming from a problematic and unverified reference, because Chen simply threw that number as an "estimate" during an interview and because Chen hasn't published any scholarly work on the subject.{{sfnp|Vukovich|2013|p=70}} Yang takes Cao's, Wang Weizhi's, and Jin Hui's estimates ranging from 32.5 to 35 million excess deaths for the period 1959–1961, adds his own estimates for 1958 (0.42 million) and 1962 (2.23 million) "based on official figures reported by the provinces" to get 35 to 37 million, and chooses 36 million as a number that "approaches the reality but is still too low".{{sfnp|Yang|2012k|p=430}}

Estimates contain several sources of error. National census data was not accurate and even the total population of China at the time was not known to within 50 to 100 million people.{{sfnp|Rummel|1991|p=235}} The statistical reporting system had been taken over by party cadre from statisticians in 1957,{{sfnp|Banister|1987|p=13}} making political considerations more important than accuracy and resulting in a complete breakdown in the statistical reporting system.{{sfnp|Banister|1987|p=13}}{{sfnp|Peng|1987|p=656}}{{sfnp|Ashton|Hill|Piazza|Zeitz|1984|p=630}}{{sfnp|Dikötter|2010|p=132}}{{sfnp|Becker|1996|p=267}} Population figures were routinely inflated at the local level, often in order to obtain increased rations of goods.{{sfnp|Dikötter|2010|p=333}} During the Cultural Revolution, a great deal of the material in the State Statistical Bureau was burned.{{sfnp|Banister|1987|p=13}}

According to [[Jasper Becker]], under-reporting of deaths was also a problem. The death registration system, which was inadequate before the famine,{{sfnp|Banister|1987|p=85}} was completely overwhelmed by the large number of deaths during the famine.{{sfnp|Banister|1987|p=85}}{{sfnp|Becker|1996|pp=268–269}}{{sfnp|Dikötter|2010|p=327}} In addition, he claims that many deaths went unreported so that family members of the deceased could continue to draw the deceased's food ration and that counting the number of children who both were born and died between the 1953 and 1964 censuses is problematic.{{sfnp|Becker|1996|pp=268–269}} However, Ashton, et al. believe that because the reported number of births during the GLF seems accurate, the reported number of deaths should be accurate as well.{{sfnp|Ashton|Hill|Piazza|Zeitz|1984|p=617}} Massive internal migration made both population counts and registering deaths problematic,{{sfnp|Becker|1996|pp=268–269}} though Yang believes the degree of unofficial internal migration was small{{sfnp|Yang|2012|p=430}} and Cao's estimate takes internal migration into account.{{sfnp|Yang|2012k|p=427}}

Coale's, Banister's, Ashton et al.'s, and Peng's figures all include adjustments for demographic reporting errors, though Dikötter, in his book ''[[Mao's Great Famine]]'', argues that their results, as well as Chang and Halliday's, Yang's, and Cao's, are still underestimates.{{sfnp|Dikötter|2010|p=324. (Dikötter does not mention Coale on this page)}} The System Reform Institute's (Chen's) estimate has not been published and therefore it cannot be verified.{{sfnp|Yang|2012k|p=427}}

==== Causes of the famine and responsibility for it ====
The policies of the Great Leap Forward, the failure of the government to respond quickly and effectively to famine conditions, as well as Mao's insistence on maintaining high grain export quotas in the face of clear evidence of poor crop output were responsible for the famine. There is disagreement over how much, if at all, weather conditions contributed to the famine.

Significant amounts of agricultural labor had been transferred for steel production, resulting in a shortage of agricultural workers.<ref name="Marquis2022">{{Cite book |last1=Marquis |first1=Christopher |author-link1=Christopher Marquis |title=Mao and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise |last2=Qiao |first2=Kunyuan |date=15 November 2022 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-26883-6 |page=147 |jstor=j.ctv3006z6k }}</ref> Approximately 10% of crops could not be harvested as a result.<ref name="Marquis2022" />

[[Yang Jisheng (journalist)|Yang Jisheng]], a former CCP member and former reporter for the official Chinese news agency ''[[Xinhua]]'', puts the blame squarely on [[Maoist]] policies and the political system of [[totalitarianism]],<ref name="Branigan2013" /> such as diverting agricultural workers to steel production instead of growing crops, and exporting grain at the same time.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Yu |first=Verna |date=18 November 2008 |title=Chinese author of book on famine braves risks to inform new generations |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/world/asia/18iht-famine.1.18785257.html?pagewanted=all |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190226022150/https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/world/asia/18iht-famine.1.18785257.html?pagewanted=all |archive-date=26 February 2019 |work=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Applebaum |first=Anne |author-link=Anne Applebaum |date=12 August 2008 |title=When China Starved |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/11/AR2008081102015.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121107055147/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/11/AR2008081102015.html |archive-date=7 November 2012 |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]]}}</ref> During the course of his research, Yang uncovered that some 22 million tons of grain was held in public granaries at the height of the famine, reports of starvation went up the bureaucracy only to be ignored by top officials, and the authorities ordered that statistics be destroyed in regions where population decline became evident.<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Link |first=Perry |date=13 January 2011 |title=China: From Famine to Oslo |url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jan/13/china-famine-oslo/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151126192536/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jan/13/china-famine-oslo/ |archive-date=26 November 2015 |magazine=[[The New York Review of Books]]}}</ref> Using Henan as an example, Yang documents that inflated reports claimed production of 1200 jin per mu, while the actual production was closer to 600 jin per mu, resulting in excessive grain requisitions and local starvation, nearly 6% of the population passed away.{{sfnp|Yang|2012|p=38}} In the later book, Yang states, "36 million Chinese starved to death in the years between 1958 and 1962, while 40 million others failed to be born, which means that "China's total population loss during the Great Famine then comes to 76 million."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Mirsky |first=Jonathan |date=7 December 2012 |title=Unnatural Disaster |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/books/review/tombstone-the-great-chinese-famine-1958-1962-by-yang-jisheng.html |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220319191607/https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/books/review/tombstone-the-great-chinese-famine-1958-1962-by-yang-jisheng.html |archive-date=19 March 2022 |access-date=12 May 2022 |work=The New York Times}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine 1958–1962, by Yang Jisheng, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012, 629 pp. |url=https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&=&context=gsp&=&sei-redir=1&referer=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.bing.com%252Fsearch%253Fq%253Dtombstone%252Bby%252BYang%252BJisheng%2526FORM%253DAWRE#search=%22tombstone%20by%20Yang%20Jisheng%22 |access-date=12 May 2022 |archive-date=12 May 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220512192344/https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&=&context=gsp&=&sei-redir=1&referer=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.bing.com%252Fsearch%253Fq%253Dtombstone%252Bby%252BYang%252BJisheng%2526FORM%253DAWRE#search=%22tombstone%20by%20Yang%20Jisheng%22 |url-status=live }}</ref>

Economist [[Steven Rosefielde]] argues that Yang's account "shows that Mao's slaughter was caused in considerable part by terror-starvation; that is, voluntary manslaughter (and perhaps murder) rather than innocuous famine."<ref>[[Steven Rosefielde|Rosefielde, Steven]] (2009). ''Red Holocaust''. [[Routledge]]. p.&nbsp;114. {{ISBN|0-415-77757-7}}.</ref> Yang claims that local party officials were indifferent to the large number of people dying around them, as their primary concern was the delivery of grain, which Mao wanted to use to pay back debts to the USSR totaling 1.973&nbsp;billion [[Chinese yuan|yuan]]. In [[Xinyang]], people died of starvation at the doors of grain warehouses.<ref>O'Neill, Mark (2008). [http://en.chinaelections.org/newsinfo.asp?newsid=18328# A hunger for the truth: A new book, banned on the mainland, is becoming the definitive account of the Great Famine.] China Elections, 10 February 2012 {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120210190821/http://en.chinaelections.org/newsinfo.asp?newsid=18328 |date=10 February 2012 }}</ref> Mao refused to open the state granaries as he dismissed reports of food shortages and accused the "[[rightists]]" and the ''[[kulak]]s'' of conspiring to hide grain.{{sfnp|Becker|1998|p=86}}

From his research into records and talks with experts at the meteorological bureau, Yang concludes that the weather during the Great Leap Forward was not unusual compared to other periods and was not a factor.<ref name="Johnson2010">Johnson, Ian (2010). [http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/dec/20/finding-facts-about-maos-victims/ Finding the Facts About Mao's Victims] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151029002955/http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/dec/20/finding-facts-about-maos-victims/ |date=29 October 2015 }}. ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'' (Blog), 20 December 2010. Retrieved 4 September 2011. Johnson interviews Yang Jisheng. (Provincial and central archives).</ref> Yang also believes that the [[Sino-Soviet split]] was not a factor because it did not happen until 1960, when the famine was well under way.<ref name="Johnson2010" />

Mao's efforts to cool the Leap in late 1958 met resistance within the Party and when Mao proposed a scaling down of steel targets, "many people just wouldn't change and wouldn't accept it".<ref name="Joseph1986" /> Thus, according to historian Tao Kai, the Leap "wasn't the problem of a single person, but that many people had ideological problems". Tao also pointed out that "everyone was together" on the [[Anti-Rightist Campaign]] and only a minority didn't approve of the Great Leap's policies or put forth different opinions.<ref name="Joseph1986" /> The actions of the party under Mao in the face of widespread famine are reminiscent of Soviet policy nearly three decades earlier during the [[Soviet famine of 1932-33]]. At that time, the USSR exported grain for international propaganda purposes despite millions dying of starvation across southern areas of the Soviet Union.

Benjamin Valentino writes that like in the USSR during the [[Soviet famine of 1932–33|famine of 1932–33]], peasants were confined to their starving villages by a system of household registration,{{sfnp|Valentino|2004|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=LQfeXVU_EvgC&pg=PA127 127]}} and the worst effects of the famine were directed against enemies of the regime.{{sfnp|Valentino|2004|p=128}} Those labeled as "black elements" (religious leaders, rightists, rich peasants, etc.) in any previous campaign were given the lowest priority in the allocation of food, and therefore died in the greatest numbers.{{sfnp|Valentino|2004|p=128}} Drawing from Jasper Becker's book Hungry Ghosts, genocide scholar [[Adam Jones (Canadian scholar)|Adam Jones]] states that "no group suffered more than the Tibetans" from 1959 to 1962.<ref>[[Adam Jones (Canadian scholar)|Jones, Adam]] (2010). ''Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction''. [[Routledge]], 2nd edition (2010). p.&nbsp;96. {{ISBN|0-415-48619-X}}.</ref>

Ashton, et al. write that policies leading to food shortages, [[natural disaster]]s, and a slow response to initial indications of food shortages were to blame for the famine. Policies leading to food shortages included the implementation of the commune system and an emphasis on non-agricultural activities such as backyard steel production.{{sfnp|Ashton|Hill|Piazza|Zeitz|1984|pp=624–625}} Natural disasters included [[drought]], flood, typhoon, plant disease, and insect pest.{{sfnp|Ashton |Hill |Piazza |Zeitz|1984|p=629}} The slow response was in part due to a lack of objective reporting on the agricultural situation,{{sfnp|Ashton |Hill|Piazza|Zeitz|1984|p=634}} including a "nearly complete breakdown in the agricultural reporting system".{{sfnp|Ashton|Hill|Piazza|Zeitz|1984|p=630}}

This was partly caused by strong incentives for officials to over-report crop yields.{{sfnp|Ashton|Hill|Piazza|Zeitz|1984|pp=613, 616–619}} According to Frank Dikötter, local officials frequently reported production figures 30-40% higher than the actual output to meet the central government's ambitious targets.{{sfnp|Dikötter|2010|p={{page needed|date=June 2024}}}} The unwillingness of the Central Government to seek international aid was a major factor; China's net grain exports in 1959 and 1960 would have been enough to feed 16 million people 2000 calories per day.{{sfnp|Ashton|Hill|Piazza|Zeitz|1984|p=629}} Ashton, et al. conclude that "It would not be inaccurate to say that 30 million people died prematurely as a result of errors of internal policy and flawed international relations."{{sfnp|Ashton|Hill|Piazza|Zeitz|1984|p=634}}

Mobo Gao suggested that the Great Leap Forward's terrible effects came not from malignant intent on the part of the Chinese leadership at the time, but instead related to the structural nature of its rule, and the vastness of China as a country. Gao says "the terrible lesson learnt is that China is so huge and when it is uniformly ruled, follies or wrong policies will have grave implications of tremendous magnitude".{{sfnp|Gao|2007|p={{page needed|date=June 2024}}}}

In the official ''[[Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People's Republic of China]]'' passed in 1981, the Chinese Communist Party called the purge of the so-called anti-Party clique of Peng Dehuai and others as "entirely wrong" and cut short the process of the rectification of "Left" errors.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |title=Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People's Republic of China |url=https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/resolution-certain-questions-history-our-party-founding-peoples-republic-china |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241225024145/https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/resolution-certain-questions-history-our-party-founding-peoples-republic-china |archive-date=25 December 2024 |access-date=2024-12-28 |website=[[Wilson Center]] |language=en |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name=":18">{{Cite web |title=关于建国以来党的若干历史问题的决议 |url=http://www.gov.cn/test/2008-06/23/content_1024934_2.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191022175245/http://www.gov.cn/test/2008-06/23/content_1024934_2.htm |archive-date=22 October 2019 |access-date=23 April 2020 |website=The Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China |language=zh}}</ref> The 1981 Resolution also states that, "it was mainly due to the errors of the Great Leap Forward and of the [[Anti-Right Deviation Struggle|struggle against 'Right opportunism']] together with a succession of natural calamities and the perfidious scrapping of contracts by the Soviet Government that our economy encountered serious difficulties between 1959 and 1961, which caused serious losses to our country and people."<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":18" />

===Deaths by violence===
Not all deaths during the Great Leap were from starvation. In accounts documented by [[Yang Jisheng (journalist)|Yang Jisheng]], people were beaten or killed for rebelling against the government, reporting the real harvest numbers, for sounding alarm, for refusing to hand over what little food they had left, for trying to flee the famine area, for begging for food or as little as stealing scraps or angering officials.<ref name="Branigan2013" />{{sfnp|Yang|2012k|p=430}}

In the book ''Tombstone'', a cycle of starvation and violence was documented during the Great Leap Forward.<ref name="Guardian2012" />

==Other impacts==
===Failures of the food supply===
In agrarian policy, the failures of the food supply during the Great Leap were met by a gradual de-[[collectivization]] over the course of the 1960s that foreshadowed the further measures taken under Deng Xiaoping. Political scientist [[Meredith Jung-En Woo]] argues: "Unquestionably the regime failed to respond in time to save the lives of millions of peasants, but when it did respond, it ultimately transformed the livelihoods of several hundred million peasants (modestly in the early 1960s, but permanently after Deng Xiaoping's reforms subsequent to 1978)."<ref>[http://www.lsa.umich.edu/orgstudies/people_detail.asp?id=422 Woo-Cummings, Meredith] {{webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20131129094106/http://www.lsa.umich.edu/orgstudies/people_detail.asp?id=422 |date=29 November 2013 }} (2002). {{Cite web |date=22 January 2015 |title=''The Political Ecology of Famine: The North Korean Catastrophe and Its Lessons'' |url=http://www.adbi.org/files/2002.01.rp31.ecology.famine.northkorea.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060318194644/http://www.adbi.org/files/2002.01.rp31.ecology.famine.northkorea.pdf |archive-date=18 March 2006 |access-date=13 March 2006}}, ADB Institute Research Paper 31, January 2002. Retrieved 3 July 2006.</ref>

Despite the risks to their careers, some CCP members openly laid blame for the disaster at the feet of the Party leadership and took it as proof that China must rely more on education, acquiring technical expertise and applying [[bourgeoisie|bourgeois]] methods in developing the [[economic science|economy]]. [[Liu Shaoqi]] made a speech at the [[Seven Thousand Cadres Conference]] in 1962, stating that "[the] economic disaster was 30% fault of nature, 70% [[human error]]."<ref>''Twentieth Century China: Third Volume''. Beijing, 1994. p.&nbsp;430.</ref>

A 2017 paper by economists found "strong evidence that the unrealistic yield targets led to excessive death tolls from 1959 to 1961, and further analysis shows that yield targets induced the inflation of grain output figures and excessive procurement. We also find that Mao's radical policy caused serious deterioration in human [[capital accumulation]] and slower economic development in the policy-affected regions decades after the death of Mao."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Liu |first1=Chang |last2=Zhou |first2=Li-An |title=Radical Target Setting and China's Great Famine |journal=The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization |date=23 December 2021 |volume=38 |issue=1 |pages=120–160 |doi=10.1093/jleo/ewab025 |ssrn=3075015 }}</ref>{{long quote|date=December 2023}}

A dramatic decline in grain output continued for several years, involving in 1960–61 a drop in output of more than 25 percent. Causes of this drop are found in both natural disaster and government policy.<ref name="Ashton1984" />

===Industrialization===
Overall, the Great Leap Forward failed to rapidly industrialize China as intended;{{sfnp|Harrell|2023|p=84}} however, there was significant capital construction (especially in iron, steel, mining and textile enterprises) that ultimately contributed greatly to [[Chinese industrialization|China's later industrialization]].<ref name="Joseph1986">{{Cite journal |last=Joseph |first=William A. |year=1986 |title=A Tragedy of Good Intentions: Post-Mao Views of the Great Leap Forward |journal=Modern China |volume=12 |issue=4 |pages=419–457 |doi=10.1177/009770048601200401 |jstor=189257 }}</ref> The Great Leap Forward period also marked the initiation of China's rapid growth in tractor and fertilizer production.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Lippit |first=Victor D. |year=1975 |title=The Great Leap Forward Reconsidered |journal=[[Modern China (journal)|Modern China]] |volume=1 |issue=1 |pages=92–115 |doi=10.1177/009770047500100104 |jstor=188886 }}</ref>

The successful construction of the [[Daqing Oil Field|Daqing oil field]] despite harsh weather conditions and supply limitations became a model held up by the Party as an example during subsequent industrialization campaigns. During its 1960 construction, Oil Minister [[Yu Qiuli]] mobilized workers through ideological motivation instead of material incentives, focusing enthusiasm, energy, and resources to complete a rapid industrialization project. The project also delivered critical economic benefits because without the production of the Daqing oil field, crude oil would have been severely limited after the Soviet Union cut off supplies as a result of the Sino-Soviet split.{{sfnp|Meyskens|2020|pp=52–54}}

Large-scale irrigation projects begun during the late 1950s as part of the Great Leap Forward continued to grow rapidly until the late 1970s.{{sfnp|Hou|2021|p=206}}

During the Great Leap Forward, control of [[State-owned enterprises of China|state-owned enterprises]] was largely decentralized, with control being transferred to local governments from the central government.<ref name=":02">{{Cite book |last=Hirata |first=Koji |title=Making Mao's Steelworks: Industrial Manchuria and the Transnational Origins of Chinese Socialism |date=2024 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-1-009-38227-4 |series=Cambridge Studies in the History of the People's Republic of China series |location=New York, NY}}</ref>{{Rp|page=231}} This process of decentralization also significantly increased the power of local Party organizations.<ref name=":02" />{{Rp|page=238}}

===Women's labor advancement===
The Great Leap Forward's focus on total workforce mobilization resulted in opportunities for women's labor advancement.{{sfnp|Karl|2010|pp=104–105}} Increasing collectivization of labor brought more opportunities for women to "leave the home", thereby increasing their economic and personal independence.{{sfnp|Cai|Karl|Zhong|2016|pp=297–298}} The number of women in state institutions and [[State-owned enterprises of China|state-owned enterprises]] more than tripled during the period 1957 to 1960.{{sfnp|Hou|2021|p=215}}

As women became increasingly needed to work in agriculture and industry, and encouraged by policy to do so, the phenomenon of [[Iron Girls|Iron Women]] arose. Women did traditionally male work in both fields and factories, including major movements of women into management positions. Women competed for high productivity, and those who distinguished themselves came to be called Iron Women.{{sfnp|Karl|2010|pp=104–105}} Slogans such as "There is no difference between men and women in this new age," and "We can do anything, and anything we do, we can do it well," became popular.{{sfnp|Hou|2021|p=215}}

Neighborhood production teams established during this period offered women labor that allowed them to leave the home without leaving the neighborhood community. This mode of labor provided urban women with the right to work while still preserving existing forms of household social life.{{sfnp|Cai|Karl|Zhong|2016|p=302}}

=== Education ===
During the Great Leap Forward, the number of universities in China increased to 1,289 by 1960 and nationwide enrollment more than doubled to 962,000 in 1960.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Minami |first=Kazushi |title=People's Diplomacy: How Americans and Chinese Transformed US-China Relations during the Cold War |publisher=[[Cornell University Press]] |year=2024 |isbn=9781501774157 |location=Ithaca, NY |page=92}}</ref> This was a wave of "great leap forward" in [[higher education]].<ref name="Zhang2009">{{Cite web |last=Zhang |first=Ming |date=13 August 2009 |script-title=zh:高等教育大跃进:到处是大学遍地是教授 |trans-title=Great Leap Forward of higher education: professors and universities were everywhere |url=https://culture.ifeng.com/3/detail_2009_08/13/308516_0.shtml |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240212015631/https://culture.ifeng.com/3/detail_2009_08/13/308516_0.shtml |archive-date=12 February 2024 |website=[[Phoenix New Media]] |publisher=Shaanxi People's Publishing House |language=zh}}</ref><ref name="Kwong1979">{{Cite journal |last=Kwong |first=Julia |year=1979 |title=The Educational Experiment of the Great Leap Forward, 1958-1959: Its Inherent Contradictions |journal=Comparative Education Review |volume=23 |issue=3 |pages=443–455 |doi=10.1086/446072 |jstor=1187608 }}</ref> Many of the newly established universities, however, were affiliated with [[people's commune]]s and were directly transformed from local middle schools.<ref name="Zhang2009" /> For example, in [[Xushui County]], Hebei, every commune built one university of its own and local middle school teachers were promoted to professors; for another example, in [[Suiping County]], Henan, a new university was established with 10 departments and 529 students, where some "professors" were actually teachers from local elementary school.<ref name="Zhang2009" /> According to official sources:<ref name="Kwong1979" />

<blockquote>Some comrades expressed the fear that the movement would be a mockery of school education ....With regard to the development of higher education, some comrades, hearing that peasants have set up their own universities in the countryside, would ridicule the idea, believing that a university without a staff of qualified professors and students who have graduated from senior middle schools cannot be called a university.</blockquote>

Educational reforms during the Great Leap Forward sought to increase student and staff participation in the administration process, to favor students from worker, peasant, or soldier backgrounds in admissions, and to increase the role of the CCP and of politics in schools. Beginning in 1961, universities rolled back these policy initiatives, and increase meritocratic university policies instead of egalitarian ones.{{sfnp|Thornton|2019|p=59}}

===Resistance===
There were various forms of resistance to the consequences of the Great Leap Forward. Several provinces saw armed rebellion,{{sfnp|Dikötter|2010|pp=226–228}}{{sfnp|Rummel|1991|pp=247–251}} though these rebellions never posed a serious threat to the Central Government.{{sfnp|Dikötter|2010|pp=226–228}} Rebellions are documented to have occurred in [[Henan]], [[Shandong]], [[Qinghai]], [[Gansu]], [[Sichuan]], [[Fujian]], [[Yunnan]], and [[Tibet Autonomous Region|Tibet]].{{sfnp|Dikötter|2010|pp=226–228|loc=(Qinghai, Tibet, Yunnan)}}{{sfnp|Rummel|1991|pp=247–251. (Honan, Shantung, Qinghai [Chinghai], Gansu [Kansu], Szechuan [Schechuan], Fujian), p.&nbsp;240 (TAR)}} In Henan, Shandong, Qinghai, Gansu, and Sichuan, these rebellions lasted more than a year,{{sfnp|Rummel|1991|pp=247–251. (Honan, Shantung, Qinghai [Chinghai], Gansu [Kansu], Szechuan [Schechuan], Fujian), p.&nbsp;240 (TAR)}} with the [[Spirit Soldier rebellion (1959)|Spirit Soldier rebellion of 1959]] being one of the few larger-scale uprisings.{{sfnp|Smith|2015|p=346}} There was also occasional violence against cadre members.{{sfnp|Rummel|1991|pp=247–251}}{{sfnp|Dikötter|2010|pp=224–226}} Raids on granaries,{{sfnp|Rummel|1991|pp=247–251}}{{sfnp|Dikötter|2010|pp=224–226}} arson and other vandalism, train robberies, and raids on neighboring villages and counties were common.{{sfnp|Dikötter|2010|pp=224–226}}

According to Ralph Thaxton, professor of politics at [[Brandeis University]], villagers turned against the CCP during and after the Great Leap, seeing it as autocratic, brutal, corrupt, and mean-spirited.<ref name="Mirsky2009" /> According to Thaxton, the CCP's policies included plunder, forced labor, and starvation, which led villagers "to think about their relationship with the Communist Party in ways that do not bode well for the continuity of socialist rule."<ref name="Mirsky2009" />

Often, villagers composed [[doggerel]] to show their defiance to the regime, and "perhaps, to remain sane". During the Great Leap, one jingle ran: "Flatter shamelessly—eat delicacies.... Don't flatter—starve to death for sure."<ref name="Mirsky2006" />

===Impact on the government===
{{See also|Seven Thousand Cadres Conference}}
Officials were prosecuted for exaggerating production figures, although punishments varied. In one case, a provincial party secretary was dismissed and prohibited from holding higher office. A number of county-level officials were publicly tried and executed.<ref>Friedman, Edward; Pickowicz, Paul G.; Selden, Mark; and [[Kay Ann Johnson|Johnson, Kay Ann]] (1993). ''Chinese Village, Socialist State''. Yale University Press. p.&nbsp;243. {{ISBN|0300054289}} / As seen in [https://books.google.com/books?id=GN2cXHxg_6oC&pg=PA243 Google Book Search].</ref>

Mao stepped down as State Chairman of the PRC on 27 April 1959, but remained CCP Chairman. Liu Shaoqi (the new PRC Chairman) and reformist [[Deng Xiaoping]] (CCP General Secretary) were left in charge to change policy to bring economic recovery. Mao's Great Leap Forward policy was openly criticized at the [[Lushan Conference|Lushan party conference]] by one person. Criticism from Minister of National Defense [[Peng Dehuai]], who, discovered that people from his home province starved to death caused him to write a letter to Mao to ask for the policies to be adapted.<ref name="Guardian2012" /> After the Lushan showdown, Mao replaced Peng with [[Lin Biao]] and Peng was sent off into obscurity.<ref name="Guardian2012" />

However, by 1962, it was clear that the party had changed away from the extremist ideology that led to the Great Leap. During 1962, the party held a number of conferences and rehabilitated most of the deposed comrades who had criticized Mao in the aftermath of the Great Leap. The event was again discussed, with much [[self-criticism]], and the contemporary government called it a "serious [loss] to our country and people" and blamed the [[cult of personality]] of Mao.{{citation needed|date=July 2024}}

At the Lushan conference of 1959, Peng Dehuai, one of the great marshals of the Chinese civil war against the nationalists, was a strong supporter of the Leap. But the discovery that people from his own home area were starving to death prompted him to write to Mao to ask for the policies to be adapted. Mao was furious, reading the letter out in public and demanding that his colleagues in the leadership line up either behind him or Peng. Almost to a man, they supported Mao, with his security chief Kang Sheng declaring of the letter: "I make bold to suggest that this cannot be handled with lenience."{{citation needed|date=July 2024}}

In particular, at the ''[[Seven Thousand Cadres Conference]]'' in January–February 1962, Mao made a [[self-criticism]] and re-affirmed his commitment to [[democratic centralism]]. In the years that followed, Mao mostly abstained from the operations of government, making policy largely the domain of Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. Maoist ideology took a back seat in the CCP, until Mao launched the [[Cultural Revolution]] in 1966 which marked his political comeback.{{citation needed|date=July 2024}}

Following the failures of the Great Leap Forward, Chinese leadership slowed the pace of industrialization, focusing more on the development of China's already more developed coastal areas and the production of consumer goods.{{sfnp|Meyskens|2020|p=3}} Thus, during the preliminary formulation of the Third Five Year Plan (which had been delayed due to the economic turmoil),<ref>{{Cite journal |last=W. K. |date=Jan–Mar 1966 |title=China's Third Five-Year Plan |journal=The China Quarterly |issue=25 |pages=171–175 |jstor=3082101}}</ref> Liu stated:{{sfnp|Meyskens|2020|p=51}}

{{Blockquote|text=In the past, the infrastructure battlefront was too long. There were too many projects. Demands were too high and rushed. Designs were done badly, and projects were hurriedly begun ... We only paid attention to increasing output and ignored quality. We set targets too highly. We must always remember these painful learning experiences.}}

During the discussion of the Third Five Year Plan, Mao made similar statements about the Great Leap Forward having "extended the infrastructure battlefront too long", acknowledging that it was "best to do less and well".{{sfnp|Meyskens|2020|p=56}}

The failures of the Great Leap Forward also informed the government's approach to the [[Third Front (China)|Third Front]] construction campaign which followed a few years later and which built basic industry and national defense industry in China's interior.{{sfnp|Meyskens|2020|p=9}} Rather than adopting the Great Leap Forward's approach of locally developed projects, the mass mobilizations of the Third Front were centrally planned.{{sfnp|Meyskens|2020|pp=10–12}}

In addition, according to historian Philipp Brigham, the failures of the Great Leap Forward significantly contributed to the Cultural Revolution, which is another pivotal event in modern Chinese politics that happened later in Chairman Mao's regime. Specifically, he posits that one of the main objectives of the Cultural Revolution was to extricate Chairman Mao and the [[Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party]] from the responsibility for the Great Leap Forward.<ref name="Bridgham1967">{{Cite journal |last=Bridgham |first=Philip |year=1967 |title=Mao's "Cultural Revolution": Origin and Development |journal=The China Quarterly |issue=29 |pages=5 |jstor=651587}}</ref> According to Brigham's explanation, Chairman Mao and the central committee tried to incite through the Cultural Revolution that the Great Leap Forward had failed despite the right direction from above due to inadequate leadership of the local cadres.<ref name="Bridgham1967" />

=== Ecological impact ===
The Great Leap Forward resulted in ecological impacts through [[deforestation]] that resulted, as well as the expansion of agriculture into areas ill-suited for it.{{sfnp|Harrell|2023|pp=83–84}}

=== Health impacts ===
There is evidence that survivors of the famine suffered sustained negative effects to their long-term health and economic outcomes. Those in early childhood during the famine were impacted the most, and it has been estimated that the 1959 birth cohort would have otherwise grown three centimeters taller in adulthood.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Chen |first=Yuyu |date=1 July 2007 |title=The long-term health and economic consequences of the 1959–1961 famine in China |journal=Journal of Health Economics |volume=26 |issue=4 |pages=659–681 |doi=10.1016/j.jhealeco.2006.12.006 |pmid=17289187 }}</ref>

Cohorts born during the famine showed higher infant and early life mortality, but exhibit a "mortality crossover" pattern, with mortality rates leveling off or even dropping relative to non-famine cohorts beyond a certain point. This could be explained by the combined effects of initial debilitation, in which malnutrition and hardship increase early deaths, and selection for robustness among famine survivors resulting in fewer later deaths.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Song |first=Shige |year=2010 |title=Mortality consequences of the 1959–1961 Great Leap Forward famine in China: Debilitation, selection, and mortality crossovers |journal=Social Science & Medicine |volume=71 |issue=3 |pages=551–558 |doi=10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.04.034 |pmid=20542611 }}</ref>

=== Cultural impact ===
Consistent with the Great Leap Forward in agriculture and industry, authorities promoted the New Folksong Movement and the Peasant Painting Movement, from which hundreds of thousands of new artists emerged. Through the New Folksong Movement, millions of new folk songs and poems were written and collected. As part of the Peasant Painting Movement, peasant artists decorated village walls with Great Leap Forward-themed murals.{{sfnp|Qian|2024|p=167}}

The Great Leap Forward also prompted a wave of the New ''[[Guohua]]'' Campaign in which the state commissioned landscape artists to paint new production projects; select paintings of the campaign were taught in schools, published widely as propaganda posters, exhibited in museums, and used as the backdrops of state events.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Laikwan |first=Pang |title=One and All: The Logic of Chinese Sovereignty |publisher=[[Stanford University Press]] |year=2024 |isbn=9781503638815 |pages=138 |doi=10.1515/9781503638822}}</ref>

On 9 March 1958, the [[Ministry of Culture (China)|Ministry of Culture]] held a meeting to introduce a Great Leap Forward in [[Cinema of China|cinema]]. During the Great Leap Forward, the film industry rapidly expanded, with documentary films being the genre that experienced the greatest growth. The total number of film-screening venues, including both urban cinemas and mobile projection units which traveled through rural China, radically increased.{{sfnp|Qian|2024|pp=149–150}}

==See also==
* [[Lysenkoism]]
{{Portal|China|1950s}}
* [[Democratic Kampuchea]], an agrarian socialist and classless society inspired by [[Mao Zedong|Mao]]'s [[China]] which declared Cambodia as "[[Year Zero (political notion)|Year Zero]]"
* [[Cambodian genocide]], known as the "Super Great Leap Forward" by the [[Khmer Rouge]] and [[Pol Pot]] under the leadership of [[Communist Party of Kampuchea|Angkar]]
* [[Crimes against humanity under communist regimes]]
* [[Criticism of communist party rule]]
* [[List of campaigns of the Chinese Communist Party]]
* [[Mass killings under communist regimes]]
* [[Neo-Stalinism]]
* [[Stalinism]]
* [[Virgin Lands Campaign]], a contemporaneous program in the [[Soviet Union]]

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

==References==
{{Reflist|refs=
<ref name="Guardian2012">{{Cite news |date=7 December 2012 |title=Tombstone: The Untold Story of Mao's Great Famine by Yang Jisheng – review |url=http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/dec/07/tombstone-mao-great-famine-yeng-jisheng-review |access-date=12 May 2022 |work=The Guardian}}</ref>
<ref name="Branigan2013">{{Cite news |last=Branigan |first=Tania |year=2013 |title=China's Great Famine: the true story |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/01/china-great-famine-book-tombstone |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160110054200/http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/01/china-great-famine-book-tombstone |archive-date=10 January 2016 |access-date=15 February 2016 |work=The Guardian}}</ref>
}}
{{Country study|country=China}}

==Bibliography and further reading==
{{Refbegin|30em|indent=true}}
* {{Cite journal |last1=Ashton |first1=Basil |last2=Hill |first2=Kenneth |last3=Piazza |first3=Alan |last4=Zeitz |first4=Robin |date=Dec 1984 |title=Famine in China, 1958–61 |journal=Population and Development Review |volume=10 |issue=4 |pages=613–645 |doi=10.2307/1973284 |jstor=1973284}}
* {{Cite book |last=Bachman |first=David |title=Bureaucracy, Economy, and Leadership in China: The Institutional Origins of the Great Leap Forward |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1991 |location=New York}}
* {{Cite book |last=Banister |first=Judith |title=China's Changing Population |publisher=Stanford University Press |year=1987}}
* {{Cite book |last=Becker |first=Jasper |author-link=Jasper Becker |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=y3qwAAAAIAAJ |title=Hungry ghosts: Mao's secret famine |publisher=J. Murray |year=1996 |isbn=978-0-7195-5433-9 |location=London}}
* {{Cite book |last=Becker |first=Jasper |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iC4g0gXBmIkC |title=Hungry ghosts: Mao's secret famine |publisher=Holt |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-8050-5668-6 |location=New York |author-mask=3}}
* {{Cite book |last1=Chang |first1=Jung |author-link1=Jung Chang |title=[[Mao: The Unknown Story]] |last2=Halliday |first2=Jon |author-link2=Jon Halliday |publisher=Knopf |year=2005 |isbn=978-0-679-42271-6 |location=New York}}
* {{Cite book |last=Chen |first=Lingchei Letty |title=The Great Leap Backward: Forgetting and Representing the Mao Years |publisher=Cambria |year=2020 |isbn=9781604979923 |location=Amherst, NY}}
* {{Cite book |last1=Chen |first1=Yulu |title=Major issues and policies in China's financial reform |last2=Guo |first2=Qingwang |publisher=[[Enrich Professional Publishing]] |year=2016 |isbn=978-1623200695 |volume=1 |location=Hong Kong}}
* {{Cite book |last1=Chen |first1=Yulu |title=Major issues and policies in China's financial reform |last2=Guo |first2=Qingwang |publisher=[[Enrich Professional Publishing]] |year=2017 |isbn=978-1623200725 |volume=2 |location=Honolulu |author-mask1=3 |author-mask2=3}}
* {{Cite book |last=Coale |first=Ansley J. |author-link=Ansley J. Coale |title=Rapid Population Change in China, 1952–1982 |publisher=National Academy Press |year=1984 |location=Washington, D.C.}}
* {{Cite book |title=The black book of communism: crimes, terror, repression |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-674-07608-2 |editor-last=Courtois |editor-first=Stéphane |edition=5th |location=Cambridge, MA |pages=463–546 |editor-last2=Kramer |editor-first2=Mark}}
* {{Cite book |last=Dikötter |first=Frank |title=Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–62 |publisher=Walker |year=2010 |isbn=978-0-8027-7768-3}}
* {{Cite book |last=Gao |first=Mobo C. F. |title=Gao village: rural life in modern China |publisher=University of Hawaiʻi Press |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-8248-3192-9 |location=Honolulu}}
* {{Cite book |last=Gao |first=Mobo C. F. |title=The battle for China's past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution |publisher=Pluto |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-7453-2780-8 |location=London |author-mask=3}}
* {{Cite book |last=Harrell |first=Stevan |title=An Ecological History of Modern China |publisher=[[University of Washington Press]] |year=2023 |isbn=978-0295751719 |location=Seattle}}
* {{Cite book |last=Hinton |first=William |author-link=William H. Hinton |url=https://archive.org/details/shenfan00hint |title=Shenfan: The Continuing Revolution in a Chinese Village |publisher=Vintage |year=1984 |isbn=978-0-394-72378-5 |location=New York |url-access=registration}}
* {{Cite book |last=Hou |first=Li |title=Building for Oil: Daqing and the Formation of the Chinese Socialist State |publisher=[[Harvard University Asia Center]] |year=2021 |isbn=978-0-674-26022-1 |series=[[Harvard-Yenching Institute]] monograph series |location=Cambridge, MA}}
* {{Cite journal |last1=Houser |first1=D. |last2=Sands |first2=B. |last3=Xiao |first3=E. |date=February 2009 |title=Three parts natural, seven parts man-made: Bayesian analysis of China's Great Leap Forward demographic disaster |url=https://figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/6571502 |journal=Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization |volume=69 |issue=2 |pages=148–159 |doi=10.1016/j.jebo.2007.09.008 }}
* {{Cite book |last=Karl |first=Rebecca E. |title=Mao Zedong and China in the twentieth-century world: a concise history |publisher=[[Duke University Press]] |year=2010 |isbn=978-0-8223-4780-4 |location=Durham, NC}}
* {{Cite journal |last1=Kim |first1=Seonghoon |last2=Fleisher |first2=Belton |last3=Sun |first3=Jessica Ya |year=2007 |title=The Long-term Health Effects of Fetal Malnutrition: Evidence from the 1959–1961 China Great Leap Forward Famine |journal=Health Economics |volume=26 |issue=10 |pages=1264–1277 |doi=10.1002/hec.3397 |pmid=27539791 |url=https://econpapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9093 }}
* {{Cite book |last=Lardy |first=R. Nicholas |title=The People's Republic, Part 1: The Emergence of Revolutionary China 1949–1965 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1987 |isbn=978-0-521-24336-0 |editor-last=MacFarquhar |editor-first=Roderick |pages=360–397 |chapter=The Chinese economy under stress, 1958–1965 |doi=10.1017/CHOL9780521243360.009 |editor-last2=Fairbank |editor-first2=John K.}}
* {{Cite book |last=Li |first=Minqi |title=The rise of China and the demise of the capitalist world-economy |publisher=[[Monthly Review Press]] |year=2008 |isbn=978-1-58367-182-5 |location=New York}}
* {{Cite journal |last1=Li |first1=Wei |last2=Yang |first2=Dennis Tao |year=2005 |title=The Great Leap Forward: Anatomy of a Central Planning Disaster |journal=[[Journal of Political Economy]] |volume=113 |issue=4 |pages=840–877 |doi=10.1086/430804 }} {{Cite web |title=[alternate site] |url=https://faculty.darden.virginia.edu/liw/papers/JPE-final2.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060830005738/https://faculty.darden.virginia.edu/liw/papers/JPE-final2.pdf |archive-date=30 August 2006 |access-date=6 June 2024 |via=faculty.darden.virginia.edu}}
* {{Cite book |last=Lieberthal |first=Kenneth |title=The People's Republic, Part 1: The Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1949–1965 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1987 |isbn=978-0-521-24336-0 |series=The Cambridge History of China |volume=14 |page=301 |chapter=The Great Leap Forward and the split in the Yenan leadership |access-date=5 April 2011 |chapter-url=http://histories.cambridge.org/extract?id=chol9780521243360_CHOL9780521243360A008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120312075301/http://histories.cambridge.org/extract?id=chol9780521243360_CHOL9780521243360A008 |archive-date=12 March 2012 |url-status=dead}}
* {{Cite book |last=Lieberthal |first=Kenneth |title=Governing China: From Revolution Through Reform |publisher=W. W. Norton |year=2003 |edition=2nd}}
* {{Cite book |last=Meyskens |first=Covell F. |title=Mao's Third Front: The Militarization of Cold War China |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |year=2020 |isbn=978-1-108-78478-8 |doi=10.1017/9781108784788 }}
* {{Cite journal |last=Peng |first=Xizhe |year=1987 |title=Demographic consequences of the Great Leap Forward in China's Provinces |url=http://www.xgc2000.net/wh/famine/Research/Peng87.pdf |url-status=dead |journal=Population and Development Review |volume=13 |issue=4 |pages=639–670 |doi=10.2307/1973026 |jstor=1973026 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190306044333/http://www.xgc2000.net/wh/famine/Research/Peng87.pdf |archive-date=6 March 2019 |access-date=5 March 2019}}
* {{Cite book |last=Perkins |first=Dwight |title=The Cambridge History of China |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |year=1991 |editor-last=Roderick MacFarquhar |series=Vol. 15. ''The People’s Republic, Part 2: Revolutions within the Chinese Revolution 1966-1982'' |pages=475–530 |chapter=Chapter 6: China's Economic Policy and Performance |editor-last2=John K. Fairbank}}
* {{Cite book |last=Qian |first=Ying |title=Revolutionary Becomings: Documentary Media in Twentieth-Century China |publisher=[[Columbia University Press]] |year=2024 |isbn=9780231204477 |location=New York}}
* {{Cite book |last=Rummel |first=R. J. |title=China's bloody century: genocide and mass murder since 1900 |publisher=Transaction |year=1991 |isbn=9780887384172 |location=New Brunswick}}
* {{Cite book |last1=Sansan |author-link1=Bette Bao Lord |title=Eighth Moon: The True Story of a Young Girl's Life in Communist China |last2=Lord |first2=Bette Bao |publisher=Harper & Row |year=1964 |location=New York |name-list-style=and}}
* {{Cite journal |last1=Shen |first1=Zhihua |author-link1=Shen Zhihua |last2=Xia |first2=Yafeng |date=November 2011 |title=The Great Leap Forward, the People's Commune and the Sino-Soviet Split |journal=[[Journal of Contemporary China]] |volume=20 |issue=72 |pages=861–880 |doi=10.1080/10670564.2011.604505 }}
* {{Cite book |last=Short |first=Philip |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HQwoTtJ43_AC |title=Mao: A Life |publisher=Holt |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-8050-6638-8 |location=New York}}
* {{Cite book |last=Smith |first=S. A. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KRTRCgAAQBAJ |title=Maoism at the Grassroots: Everyday Life in China's Era of High Socialism |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2015 |isbn=978-0674287204 |editor-last=Brown |editor-first=Jeremy |location=Cambridge, MA |pages=340–364 |chapter=Redemptive Religious Societies and the Communist State, 1949 to the 1980s |editor-last2=Johnson |editor-first2=Matthew D.}}
* {{Cite journal |last=Yang |first=Dennis Tao |year=2008 |title=China's Agricultural Crisis and Famine of 1959–1961: A Survey and Comparison to Soviet Famines |journal=Comparative Economic Studies |volume=50 |issue=1 |pages=1–29 |doi=10.1057/ces.2008.4 }}
* {{Cite book |last=Thaxton |first=Ralph A. Jr. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=14A1qPQOgQMC |title=Catastrophe and contention in rural China: Mao's Great Leap Forwards famine and the origins of righteous resistance in Da Fo Village |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-521-72230-8}}
* {{Cite book |last=Thornton |first=Patricia M. |title=Afterlives of Chinese Communism: Political Concepts from Mao to Xi |publisher=[[Australian National University Press]] |year=2019 |isbn=9781760462499 |editor-last=Sorace |editor-first=Christian |location=Acton |chapter=Cultural Revolution |editor-last2=Franceschini |editor-first2=Ivan |editor-last3=Loubere |editor-first3=Nicholas}}
* {{Cite book |last=Valentino |first=Benjamin A. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LQfeXVU_EvgC |title=Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century |publisher=[[Cornell University Press]] |year=2004 |isbn=0-8014-3965-5}}
* {{Cite book |last=Vukovich |first=Daniel |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7f2G7PkqhVwC |title=China and Orientalism: Western Knowledge Production and the PRC |publisher=[[Routledge]] |year=2013 |isbn=978-1-136-50593-5}}
* {{Cite book |last=Wertheim |first=Willem Frederik |title=Third World whence and whither? Protective State versus aggressive market |publisher=Het Spinhuis |year=1997 |isbn=978-9-055-89082-8 |location=Amsterdam}}
* {{Cite book |last1=Wheelwright |first1=E. L. |title=The Chinese Road to Socialism: Economics of the Cultural Revolution |last2=McFarlane |first2=Bruce |author-link2=K. B. McFarlane}}
* {{Cite book |last1=Cai |first1=Xiang |title=Revolution and its narratives: China's socialist literary and cultural imaginaries (1949–1966) |last2=Karl |first2=Rebecca E. |last3=Zhong |first3=Xueping |publisher=[[Duke University Press]] |year=2016 |isbn=978-0-8223-7461-9 |location=Durham, NC |author-mask1=Cai Xiang (蔡翔); |author-mask3=Zhong Xueping (钟雪萍)}}
* {{Cite book |last=Yang |first=Dali L. |title=Calamity and Reform in China: State, Rural Society, and Institutional Change since the Great Leap Famine |publisher=Stanford University Press |year=1996}}
* {{Cite book |last=Yang |first=Jisheng |author-link=Yang Jisheng (journalist) |publisher=Cosmos |year=2008 |isbn=978-988-211-908-6 |location=Hong Kong |language=zh |script-title=zh:墓碑：中國六十年代大飢荒紀實 |trans-title=Tombstone: an account of Chinese famine in the 1960s}}
* {{Cite journal |last=Yang |first=Jisheng |author-mask=3 |year=2010 |title=The Fatal Politics of the PRC's Great Leap Famine: The Preface to ''Tombstone'' |journal=[[Journal of Contemporary China]] |volume=19 |issue=66 |pages=755–776 |doi=10.1080/10670564.2010.485408 }}
* {{Cite book |last=Yang |first=Jisheng |url=https://ia904506.us.archive.org/28/items/tragedy-of-socialism-communism-and-the-cultural-revolution/Tombstone%20-%20Yang%20Jisheng.pdf |title=Tombstone: the great Chinese famine, 1958-1962 |publisher=Farrar, Straus & Giroux |year=2012 |isbn=9780374277932 |location=New York |author-mask=3 |access-date=2 June 2024}}
* {{Cite book |last=Yang |first=Jisheng |title=Tombstone: the great Chinese famine, 1958-1962 |publisher=Farrar, Straus & Giroux |year=2012k |isbn=978-1466827790 |edition=Kindle |location=New York |author-mask=3}}
{{Refend}}

{{Commons}}
{{Library resources box}}{{Mao Zedong}}{{Economy of China}}
{{Cultural Revolution}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Great Leap Forward| ]]
[[Category:1950s in China]]
[[Category:1950s neologisms]]
[[Category:1958 in China]]
[[Category:1959 in China]]
[[Category:1960 in China]]
[[Category:1960s in China]]
[[Category:Economic collapses]]
[[Category:Industrial history of China]]
[[Category:Maoist terminology]]
[[Category:Political controversies in China]]