Editing Great Leap Forward (section)

===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 the years 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}}}}