Editing Great Leap Forward (section)

===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>