Cat holocaust huh? Can massive human starvation be far off in China?
Cat holocaust huh? Can massive human starvation be far off in China?
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The Chinese Famine: 1958 to 1962
China has traditionally been a ‘land of famine’. The extent of the 1958-62 famine dwarfed previous famines, however, and yet it remained a secret for over 20 years. The scale of the famine only became internationally known in the mid-1980s when American demographers were able to examine Chinese population statistics. The findings were shocking: at least 30 million people had starved to death making it the worst famine in human history.
The great Chinese famine took place during Mao’s Great Leap Forward which was launched in January 1958. The ‘two generals’ that Mao said would modernise China were steel and grain production. Mao, therefore, initiated a crash industrialisation programme, in which steel output would be doubled or trebled within a year. The entire country set up smelters to create steel in backyard furnaces. Everyone had to meet a quota by handing over their metal possessions ranging from bicycles, iron bedsteads and door knobs to iron griddles, woks and pans. To fire the furnaces, huge numbers of trees had to be cut down. The lumps of metal which emerged from the backyard furnaces were to be used in the mechanisation of agriculture. Unfortunately they turned out to be useless.
Enforced collectivisation of agriculture and the obligatory procurement of grain harvests at low prices by the state had been started in the mid-1950s. In 1958, ‘people’s communes’ were established, private plots abolished and communal kitchens set up. State grain procurements were also increased as were grain taxes on peasants. Mao drew up an eight-point blueprint for all Chinese agriculture which every farmer had to follow. The results were disastrous including the campaign to reduce pests. The whole country was turned out to make a noise, beating drums and pans, to prevent sparrows from landing anywhere until they fell down dead with exhaustion. Without the birds to prey on them, however, insects multiplied causing damage to crops. The situation was exacerbated during the period 1959 to 1961 by several natural disasters. As a result, agricultural production dropped dramatically and despite wildly exaggerated claims of bumper harvests reported by Party cadres, there were huge food shortages. Per capita grain supply fell from 307 kg/year in 1956 to 235 kg/year in 1961 while the daily food energy availability fell to an estimated national average of 1,535 calories in 1960.
By the autumn of 1958, conditions, especially in the predominantly rural areas of the northern provinces, had begun to deteriorate drastically. The grain in the collective granaries began to run out and food from the collective kitchens became sparser and sparser. Leaves, ground corn stalks, wild grasses and anything else that the peasants could gather were added to the communal pot.
In the autumn of 1959, the grain harvest dropped by at least 30 million tonnes over that of 1958, but officials reported that it was much higher. The state procurement target was set at 40 per cent of total output and in many places the entire harvest was seized together with all livestock, vegetables and cash crops. Party leaders were sent to villages to search for hidden grain reserves. The peasants were not permitted to cook at home and the ‘internal passport’ was introduced banning peasants from travelling without permission. It was a brutal and violent campaign.
One of the famine survivors was Mrs Liu who recalled the winter of 1959-60: “On the muddy path leading from her village, dozens of corpses lay unburied. In the barren fields there were others; and amongst the dead, the survivors crawled slowly on their hands and knees searching for wild grass seeds to eat. In the ponds and ditches people squatted in the mud hunting for frogs and trying to gather weeds. It was winter, and bitterly cold, but...everyone was dressed only in thin and filthy rags tied together with bits of grass and stuffed with straw...Sometimes she saw her neighbours and relatives simply fall down as they shuffled through the village and die without a sound... The dead were left where they died because... no one had the strength to bury them... She remembered, too, the unnatural silence. The village oxen had died, the dogs had been eaten and the chickens and ducks had long ago been confiscated by the Communist Party in lieu of grain taxes. There were no birds left in the trees, and the trees themselves had been stripped of their leaves and bark. At night there was no longer even the scratching of rats and mice, for they too had been eaten or had starved to death.”
Out of 300 people who had lived in Mrs Liu’s village at the start of the famine, only 80 survived.
China’s leaders appeared to have been unaware of the severity of the famine until it was too late to prevent a catastrophe. Grossly exaggerated harvests were reported and those brave enough to suggest that there was a problem were labelled as ‘right-wing opportunists’. As a result, China continued to export grain while the famine raged. Over a three year period from 1958, China doubled grain exports and cut imports of food. It was only in 1961 that China stopped exporting grain and international supplies of grain were called on to compensate for food shortages inside the country.