The Chinese Communist Party founded by Mao Zedong still rules China today. To understand modern China, one must start with these origins. In particular, Mao’s Great Famine. 

China may not be the predominately agrarian society it once was, but similar political ideologies and philosophies prevail. As Frank Dikötter describes in his book, Mao’s Great Famine, coercion, terror, and systematic violence were the foundations of the Great Leap Forward, which was a government drive to make China a world power on par with the United Kingdom.

Instead, as Dikötter notes in his opening sentence, “Between 1958 – 1962, China descended into hell.” The book chronicles one of the worst human rights disasters and famines in history, along with the government failures that caused and perpetuated the devastation. In this article, I’ll highlight some of the more salient parts of the book that help paint the picture of modern-day China and its origins. 

Most of Dikötter’s sources come from party archives in China. That’s saying something given how revelatory (and horrifying) they appear to be.   

An obsession with the Soviet Union and overtaking Britain

Modern Russia and China may have a cozier relationship today, but it was not always this way. Mao had an icy and competitive relationship with the Soviet Union. He constantly compared himself first to Stalin and then to subsequent Soviet leaders.

This obsession with beating his communist rivals and overtaking the United Kingdom as a world power sparked the government initiative: the Great Leap Forward. 

“China was dipped into a sea of fire.” 

Mao pushed so hard to increase industrial productivity that villagers were making steel in their backyards. That’s right, backyard furnaces. What this caused was an adversarial relationship with nature that still exists in China today. 

“Mao viewed nature as an enemy to be overcome.”

As Mao ruled with an iron fist, local leaders below him inevitably tried to emulate his leadership style. During the Great Leap Forward, China was awash in mini Maos. They each had their own pet projects in “slavish imitation of the capital.” 

This push by Mao and his mini Maos to become an industrial powerhouse led to environmental destruction. Pollutants were released into water streams at unprecedented levels. Desperate for food – more on that below – some communes used pesticides to catch fish, birds, and animals. 

Mao tried to wage war on all rats, flies, mosquitos, and sparrows in 1958. He lost. Insect infestation spread and crops died en masse. Of course, Chinese leadership blamed “natural catastrophe”, not government policy.  

And this is only the very tip of the iceberg.

Forced collectivization caused chaos

To fully understand China, one must remember that its current party origins were built on a foundation of forced collectivization. The “command economy” required centralized state decisionmaking where all economic decisions were made for the “greater good.” 

This is still true to a degree in modern China. Just ask Jack Ma. 

One of the ways Mao implemented forced collectivization was through farming and production quotas. For example, farmers had to meet crop quotas and were only permitted to buy back surplus at a premium price from the state. So they were forced to buy at inflated prices while selling to the state at rock-bottom prices. 

This forced collectivization had disastrous results. People sold assets and consumed as much as possible for fear it would be taken by the state. 

“What you eat is yours, what you don’t is anyone’s.”

People overate and often flushed excess grain and rice down the toilet.

Farmers were forced to plant seeds too close together to try to meet ever-rising quotas. 

Mao required that most of the agricultural production be allocated to foreign trade. This was a key part of his quest for China’s arrival on the world economic stage. 

All of this – and more – caused mass famine across China. In Xinyang, for example, over one million people died in 1960 alone. It was ground zero for the famine. Barren fields expanded beyond the rubble of destroyed homes, which had been dismantled for fuel.

Yes, people were burning their own houses to fuel their backyard furnaces to make steel and other industrial products. 

This haphazard approach to production, all of which was being performed by increasingly hungry workers, led to extreme waste. Factory bosses cut corners to increase output, mixing products like sand with manganese ore, resulting in a useless mixture that had to be discarded. 

Imagine the steel quality from those backyard furnaces. 

Meanwhile, Mao proposed vegetarianism. Without practicing it himself, of course. 

Many of Mao’s people instead increasingly turned to eating mud and then, each other. 

Chinese suppliers cut corners to meet targets and quotas. They were often forced to refund and resupply foreign partners because of defective or shoddy products. This cost the people even more money.

“Overall the Great Leap Forward constitutes, by far, the greatest demolition of property in human history.”

The greatest victims of this forced collectivization were not the peasant workers themselves. Sure, they lost property and many of them lost their lives, but by far the biggest victims were the young and elderly. 

With almost every able-bodied person put to work, nobody was left for childcare. Many infants died. Children ran wild. They often had to fight adults for food.

Any critics were silenced, leading to disaster 

Grand industrial projects were a centerpiece of the Great Leap Forward. Similar to the corners cut through forced collectivization, major miscalculations were made in infrastructure projects. Many died. Others were forced to work day and night.

Dams leaked. Some were built in the wrong locations. Other projects were simply abandoned after years of wasted manpower. And it all came down to one primary reason.

Nobody was allowed to be critical. 

Mao was ruthless against those who voiced dissent. In particular, he had a deep distrust of intellectuals, many of whom were persecuted during the Hundred Flowers Campaign.

Anyone who expressed reservations about the Great Leap Forward was hunted down. A large gulag system dealt with dissidents by attempting to reform them through labor. 

As a result, many Chinese during the Mao era were silent. When oedema swept the country because of mass starvation and lack of rest, few said anything for fear of being labeled a rightist. When water conservancy schemes trapped water in irrigation networks, silting them up, and transforming them into an “evil dragon turning the land into a sea”, people largely said nothing.  

Blame everything but Mao’s great famine

When disaster struck during the Great Leap Forward, few attributed it to Mao’s great famine. Mao, in fact, tried to claim that hunger was caused by Soviet pressure to repay debts at an accelerated pace. But the decision to send more food from China to the Soviet Union was made by Mao, not the Soviets. 

Mao was obsessed with maintaining a strong international image. He gave away food despite having no surplus. When food shortages inevitably occurred, they were always the result of external pressures or natural disasters. Never were they caused by Mao or forced collectivization.

Even today in modern China, few can learn about Mao’s great famine. Few have access to the party documents that contain at least some of the truth, from the economic data to the death tolls. 

Much of this is due to party ideology. It hasn’t really changed. Sure, modern China embraced more capitalist components to its economy, which has propelled its unprecedented growth in the last few decades, but its leadership is essentially the same. 

Xi Jinping acts more like Mao every day. As I predicted following the recent communist party conclave:

“So what to expect in President Xi Jinping’s third term? Less respect for property rights, the rule of law, and human rights. More control over economic activity, censorship, surveillance, and geopolitical aggression.”

Modern China glorifies Mao. It hides Mao’s great famine while celebrating a cherry-picked legacy. To understand modern China, one must first understand the full – often horrid – history of Mao.

Some conservative estimates put the number of premature deaths from Mao’s great famine at 45 million. Other historians estimate somewhere between 50 or 60 million.  

Whatever the tragic number, only once we have learned from the past are we capable of not repeating it.