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