Great Chinese Famine

A catastrophic famine in China from 1959 to 1961, during which tens of millions died amid Great Leap Forward policies, disrupted agriculture, and natural disasters.

Great Leap Forward: A Chinese campaign from 1958 to 1962 to rapidly industrialize and collectivize the economy. Its production targets and mass mobilization reshaped farming as famine emerged.
Grain procurement: The state collection of grain from producers for storage, redistribution, or sale. Procurement quotas continued to remove grain from villages even as harvests collapsed.
Liu Shaoqi: A Chinese Communist leader who served as president of the People's Republic of China from 1959 to 1968. Liu acknowledged the crisis and later became a target in the political struggle over responsibility.
Demographic transition: The shift from high birth and death rates to lower birth and death rates as populations develop. Famine mortality and falling births interrupted China's demographic change.
People's communes: Large rural collectives established in China during the Great Leap Forward, combining agricultural production, administration, and communal services. Communal kitchens and collective labor altered food access and farming incentives.
Lysenkoism: A politically enforced doctrine of heredity and agriculture associated with Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko. Lysenkoist farming ideas helped justify planting methods that damaged yields.
Deng Xiaoping: A Chinese Communist leader who became China's paramount leader in the late 1970s and introduced market-oriented reforms. Deng helped advance the post-famine policies that dismantled people's communes.
Cultural Revolution: A political campaign launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 that mobilized mass struggle and disrupted Chinese institutions. The famine's political aftermath preceded another upheaval that further constrained open discussion.
Four Pests Campaign: A mass campaign in China targeting rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows as threats to public health and production. The campaign’s attack on sparrows disrupted ecosystems and may have worsened crop losses.
Food rationing: The controlled distribution of scarce food through officially allocated quantities or entitlements. Rationing determined who could obtain food as supplies dwindled.

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