Great Leap Famine Denial

In my other class this semester, contemporary Chinese politics, we are getting ready to consider the Great Leap Famine.  In noodling around the internet in search of the any new bits of information, I have found several examples of what I will call GLF denialism, arguments that attempt to deflect attention away from the horrible fact that millions and millions of people starved to death as a direct result of state policy. 

I will not link to these sites, because I do not want to advance their project; moreover, they are an insult to the countless victims of the CCP's horrific assault on rural society.  But I do want to engage with a point or two that the denialists raise.

The basic denialist approach is to raise doubts about the estimated death toll of the Great Leap Famine, which ranges from about 16 - 45 million.  Notice that range of estimates.  It is fairly broad, reflecting the difficulty in discovering the truth in the face of an extraordinarily determined authoritarian state that resists the release of information.  Obviously, we do not know, for sure, precisely how many people died.  But what is incontrovertible is that the Great Leap Famine killed millions and millions of people.  Even if the lower estimates are true, we must remember that we are talking about a rather short period of time: three years or so.  We are talking about, as Zhou Xun (see below) suggests, the worst famine in modern history.

Thus, there will always be uncertainty about the true toll.  But GLF denialists are pursuing a political agenda: to protect Mao Zedong from bearing responsibility for the massive loss of Chinese lives.  They are not simply engaged in an honest search for the truth.  They are trying to obfuscate and divert.  We cannot let them.

One deniliast tactic is to suggest that "Western" media and scholars exaggerate the death toll of the GLF, part of a nefarious plot to weaken China.  An extended denialist critique of Judith Banister's path-breaking attempt to arrive at an informed estimate of famine deaths (she comes to the figure of 30 million) leaves us with a conclusion that we should not assign blame to Party leaders for the catastrophe.  The implication is that such high a number can only be a Western plot to embarrass Mao.

Now, Banister's work may well have certain empirical and methodological problems.  No single study is ever really definitive.  It is notable, though, that Peng Xizhe has done similar work.  But what the denialists avoid is the fact that those sorts of demographic analyses are far from the only relevant evidence.  What has emerged in the past decade is extensive archival research, pain-staking sifting through documents held in provincial Party offices, that has confirmed and detailed the worst of what we know of the GLF.  Yang Jisheng's work is central here.  As is Zhou Xun's.  Their estimates of the death toll are actually higher than Banister's.

And notice, too, that these are not "Westerners:" Peng and Yang and Zhou.  I imagine that deniliasts will simply say that they are traitors, selling their souls to the "West" to gain fame and fortune, or something like that.  Anything to keep from recognizing the grim truth that millions and millions of Chinese people died because Party cadres took their food away.

And that needs to be remembered, too: the deaths were not simply the result of "natural disasters" or the removal of Soviet aid, or some sort of Western plot.  People died because the Party, led by Mao, and abetted by the entire top leadership including Deng Xiaoping, took their food away.  Yang bats away extraneous rationalizations:

The government admits the fact that some people starved to death. Is mentioning starvation really a sensitive topic half a century later?

The government says the famine was caused by “three difficult years” (natural disasters), the Sino-Soviet split (of 1960), and by political errors. In my account I acknowledge that there were natural disasters but there always have been. China is so big that there is some kind of natural disaster every year. I went to the meteorological bureau five times, looked at material and talked to experts. I didn’t find that climate conditions in those three years were significantly different from that of other periods. It all seemed normal. This wasn’t a factor.

What about the Sino-Soviet split?

It had no impact. The Soviets’ break with China was in 1960. People had been starving to death for more than a year already. They built a tractor factory and that was finished in 1959. Wouldn’t that have been a help to Chinese agriculture rather than a hindrance?

        So what can account for starvation on such a vast scale?

The key reason is political misjudgment. It is not the third reason. It is the only reason. How did such misguided policies go on for four years? In a truly democratic country, they would have been corrected in half a year or a year. Why did no one oppose them or criticize them? I view this as part of the totalitarian system that China had at the time. The chief culprit was Mao.

That simple truth, that simple, searing truth is what the denialists cannot abide.  Mao does bear significant responsibility, not sole responsibility, but very significant responsibility.  And denialists can also not stand the fact that the more we know of the GLF - the forced starvation, the beatings, the cannibalism - by way of Yang and Zhou and other archival researchers, the more evident it is that the Maoist system was responsible for many, many more deaths of Chinese people than was Japanese imperialism.  That is is a horrible thing to contemplate, but it is likely true.

For those with about a half hour to spare, here is a clip of a presentation by Zhou Xun, talking about her new book:

Comments

[billrich]

The denialists should be tried for crime against humanity.

[FOARP]

Denial of any historical event is self-inflicted stupidity, stupidity which is, in, of, and by itself is punishment enough. And yes, we all know you're talking about HH's ridiculous assertion that no-one died during the GLF.

[Ngok Ming Cheung]

I am aware of the blogs you referred on studying the population estimates before and after of the GLF and the resulting missing population as a result of mismanagement of the economy and agriculture by Mao and Chinese Communist Party. The postings were trying to correct the impressions of recent books on GLF and tried to put an range of missing population due to both starvation and fertility declines by statistical method and questioned the validity of the assumptions involved. As I posted on those blogs Mao and the Chinese Communist Party bear primary responsibility for the fiasco, and any attempt to mitigate responsibility by citing repayment of debt to Soviet Union or sanctions by West were beside the point and will fuel counterattacks by such as you here. The fact that China has turned away from those policies which caused such disasters is the essence of my argument that China is far from the China at GLF which critics like you continue to lump together as evidence of failure.

[Ngok Ming Cheung]

To critics like you will never be satisfied unless the Chinese Communist Party officially repudiate Mao and its past and embrace democracy as you define it. Chinese Communist Party has its ups and downs through the years. It was almost exterminated in the 1920s when the party followed the Moscow line and attempted urban insurrection. Mao and others saved it by launching the Long March and changed leadership. The anti-Japanese war in the 30s strengthened the party and resulting the founding of The People's Republic of China. Mao is a figure revered by peasants and reviled by exiles and West, his place in history will be for the future to judge. I think you will wait in vain for his repudiation.

[Sam]

Ngok,
Just to be clear: I have no expectation that the CCP is going to "repudiate Mao and its past and embrace democracy." My purpose here is to make sure that my students, and others who surf the internet, understand certain basic truths about the GLF, truths that the CCP works very hard to repress and that certain regime apologists obfuscate and deny. The most basic truth is that millions and millions of Chinese people died because the Party took their food away. It is as simple, and as terrible, as that. I also happen to respect the archival work that Yang Jisheng and Zhou Xun and other Chinese scholars have done. Both Yang and Zhou report that they lost family members in the famine. They are doing what I believe is a classically moral Confucian thing: they are honoring their families. And I believe that we should honor all of those people who were killed in that horrible time.

[FOARP]

"To critics like you will never be satisfied unless the Chinese Communist Party officially repudiate Mao and its past and embrace democracy as you define it."

This would be a good start, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

The simple fact is that Mao's deluded policies designed to increase the production of food resulted in a shortage of food. This shortage was entirely predictable as exactly the same policy (collectivisation) had lead to exactly the same result in the Soviet Union, in fact the shortage was worse than that in the Soviet Union because the policies implemented were even more deluded.

To ensure that food continued to be available to the people in the cities it was requisitioned from the peasants at gun-point. This, again, is exactly what Lenin and Stalin did the USSR, and, again, it had exactly the same result - mass starvation in the countryside.

The reverence for Mao you describe is largely the result of 30-40 years of intervening hagiography and censorship of criticism. Mao was either aware what the result of his policies would be (and therefore directly culpable for the result) or unaware (in which case he must be considered extremely negligent).

It is, however, worth considering how exactly it is that Mao could have been unaware of the famines caused by collectivisation in the USSR. Perhaps instead he thought, as apologists for Stalin claimed, that they were merely a creation of western propagandists? In which case we have a clear example of how apologism can lead to the repetition of tragedies.

[Ngok Ming Cheung]

What is the truth? You seem to see truth as black and white and immutable. Mao maybe negligent and responsible for the deaths, but certainly not as you claimed to force starvation on people for what? Ideology? History and human nature are not cardboard figures as you described. Rashomon illustrated that there are many different view points and interpretations for any given fact. For those whose families suffered during GLF, no amount of sympathy or explanation is suffice, but then history move on. Looking at U.S. history, we may laud the founding fathers, yet the result of the founding of United States resulting suffering for millions of slaves and genocide of millions of Native Americans. Do we blame them? For the millions of Vietnamese death and Iraqian, do we blame the present generation of Americans or just Bush and Johnson, and leave us free of blames?

[Sam]

There is much careful scholarship on the Great Leap Famine. This article is behind a paywall on the internet, but perhaps the journal is available at a library:

Thomas P. Bernstein, "Mao Zedong and the Famine of 1959-1960: A Study in Willfulness," China Quarterly vol. 186 (June 2006), pp. 421-445.

Here is the last line of the abstract: "...he [Mao] wilfully ignored the lessons of the first radical phase for the sake of achieving extreme ideological and developmental goals." I think Yang Jisheng and Zhou Xun would agree. Mao knew what was happening and chose to ignore it. He crushed Peng Dehuai, who truthfully reported at the Lushan Plenum.

Yes, truth is complex. I tend not to think in terms of a singular, ultimate "Truth." But we can know more specific, concrete truths. And one of those truths is that millions and millions of Chinese people died during the Great Leap Famine because the Party apparatus, of which Mao was the leader, took their food away. And, yes, another knowable truth is that slavery in the United States was a horrible abomination that killed and maimed many, many, many people. As was the extermination of native Americans. And, yes, the "founding fathers" of the US are responsible for those things, and their historical legacies must always include those facts. Also, I do not blame the present generation of Chinese for the things Mao was responsible for. I blame Mao, because he was directly responsible.

Here is a link to the Bernstein piece, if you have access to a university library:

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=449714

[Greg]

The fact that China has turned away from those policies which caused such disasters is the essence of my argument that China is far from the China at GLF which critics like you continue to lump together as evidence of failure.

Times have changed but the continuities remain. The regime that Mao founded is still the regime of today. The privileges that were accorded to the politically connected few (fresh organically grown food) have grown to become the massive disparity of opportunity and wealth of today; the truth-distorting ideological program of the regime lives on in the Internet censorship of today; the internal apparatus of repression has not been dismantled and is still there, ready to be used if necessary; the primacy of ideology over law is still in place as the party struggles to protect itself from outer scrutiny; the forced integration of border minority regions (which some have maintained were 'invaded' by the Chinese) is continuing at an accelerated pace. Ngok is 100% correct that the party's policies on economic development have changed, but that does mean that we are now dealing with a different regime. The regime and its basis of power remain the same, and that is precisely why it is unable to talk straight about the past. It is also why Sam is right to insist on speaking the truth rather than bending it this way and that and trying to explain it into nothingness.

As for the sins of colonialism, that is a whole nother story that is too big to be discussed in passing here. Blaming Mao and his regime naturally means similar treatment for the history of the West. I don't see how bringing it up will change how we look at the facts of Chinese history.

[Ngok Ming Cheung]

The title of this column is "The Great Leap Famine Denial", essentially Mr. Crane accuse of those who were trying to quantify the GLF deaths as deniers of history. I do not deny that they were trying to question the validity of the numbers of deaths as presented by West and those books Mr. Crane cited. As they used census and statistical methods to show that the total deaths claimed are suspect and exaggerated. I see there is no point in these debates as whether 16 million or 46 million died are beside the point. I accept Mr. Crane's charge that millions dies during GLF.
Yet I suspect Mr. Crane is the real denier by refuse to ask questions about what really happened then, and blame it all on Mao, as history is a closed book. Those vivid personal recollections cited aren't open to question, but the rational behind them are very much so.
I left Shanghai in May 1959 as a child, I still remember the various coupons for grain and cooking oil and waiting in line at 3 in the morning to buy meat even with the coupons. I knew the shortages in the rural areas were much worse and aware of the famines reported while I was in Hong Kong. yet I also studied Chinese history or maybe claimed by others brainwashed to not blame Mao per se. Mao was an idealist and nationalist much more than as a Marxist. He has a utopian view of human nature and think human perseverance can overcame material conditions. The Chinese Communist Party aware the forced commune experiment failed and the combining of Sino-Soviet break and weather caused harvest failures generated food shortages. They imported as much food as they can from Canada and Australia as they can afford and imposed strict egalitarian measures like requisitioning foods from surplus area to deficit ones and the cities. As some area the local leaders boosted the numbers to show they were performing well and resulting higher quotas to meet and resulting famines as reported. An emperor living in Forbidden Palace by no means knew everything before it became widespread. Mao of course was responsible for the fiasco but certainly was not as described by Mr. Crane as coldblooded calculation.

[Nathaniel Carr]

@Ngok MIng Cheung, Your last post was all we wanted: the simple truth.

Now if that would be published in a Chinese history textbook, clearer thinking from Chinese students would prevent such situations of power and corruption from realigning in the future government.

[pug_ster]

Great, another westerner who wants to hang a dunce cap of Shame on China about something happened more than 50 years ago. Such stupidity from you referring to people who don't agree with you as denialists like it never have happened. Everybody, including the denialists, is in agreement that people have died as a result of starvation, but the blame is the heart of disagreement. Seems that most of these western bloggers and Historians about China only cares about the dark past about China. You ever see Chinese bloggers and historians write stories about the atrocities of the US within the last 50 years? No.

Besides, people who run Chinese government are not the same people 50 years ago. So why these same western bloggers talk about the atrocities as if it has happened today?

[Puggies puppy]

Besides, people who run Japanese government are not the same people 70 years ago. So why these same Chinese bloggers talk about the atrocities as if it has happened today?

[Greg]

I see there is no point in these debates as whether 16 million or 46 million died are beside the point. I accept Mr. Crane's charge that millions dies during GLF.

This is the same fruitless debate that rages around the Rape of Nanking. Anyone who makes even a reasonable attempt to revise the Chinese government's official 300,000 death toll is shouted down as a revisionist or worse.

Why is Chinese history so hard to talk about in rational terms?

[Wayne]

Sam, what were the actual death rates during the Great Leap Forward eh?

Come on. Let us seek truth from facts.

Provide us with the average death rates during the years of the Great Leap Forward, and you will see that they were no higher than that of a typical developing nation of the time, and in fact lower than some British African colonies.

There is absolutely no doubt that there were huge climatic problems in 1959/1960 -- I refer you to the more nuanced interpretation of Cormac O'Grada.

What demographers, even Western ones will acknowledge is this. That of all developing countries between 1950 and 1980, China had absolutely the best record in reducing mortality and increasing life expectancy, thereby saving tens of millions of lives, relative to the performance of other developing countries.

So Sam Crane.

Answer me this very simply logical question. A bit of homework for you.

China's population grew at a staggering rate under Mao, the fastest in all of its history. It almost doubled.

Yet birth rates, and fertility plunged during his time in power.

Google all the research out there, both Western and Chinese, and you cannot escape these two bare facts.

How wise guy. Tell me. How to explain?