Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962

by Frank Dikotter

  Why did China not import grain from its socialist allies? Pride and fear were the main obstacles. As we have seen, the leadership never hesitated to place the reputation of the country above the needs of the population, plundering the countryside to meet export agreements entered into with foreign partners. However, pride often does come before the proverbial fall, and in March 1961 Zhou Enlai had to execute a humiliating climbdown, explaining to his trading allies that China was no longer in a position to export foodstuffs, to meet its long-term trade agreements or to honour a number of contracts for large industrial plants. Over a million tonnes in grain and edible oils were still outstanding to the Soviet Union for the year 1960 alone, and China would not be able to catch up with food shipments in the near future. As Zhou put it diplomatically, how could his country possibly ask for grain when it had failed its socialist allies so badly?18

  Beijing also feared that a request for help might be turned down by Moscow, since the entire Great Leap Forward had been designed to show up the Soviet Union. This fear was probably justified, although initially Moscow displayed goodwill. The Russians, for instance, offered to deliver a million tonnes of grain and half a million tonnes of sugar on an exchange basis, free of interest, the cost to be reimbursed over several years. Beijing turned down the grain but took the sugar.19 Khrushchev repeated his offer of grain during a meeting with Ye Jizhuang at the Kremlin in April 1961. He had every sympathy for China’s predicament, he told the minister of foreign trade, all the more so since the Ukraine had suffered a terrible famine in 1946. In a crude and rather thoughtless reminder which could only cause offence, he added that there had even been cases of cannibalism. Then he changed the topic of the conversation, casually mentioning that the Soviet Union was about to overtake the United States in steel production. Ye Jizhuang politely declined the offer.20

  A few months later, as the famine failed to vanish with the arrival of summer, Zhou Enlai approached the Russians again. At a meeting with a delegation from Moscow in August 1961, he explained why, for the first time in the history of the People’s Republic, grain was being imported from the imperialist camp. Then Zhou, in a rather roundabout manner, enquired about the Soviet Union’s willingness to trade 2 million tonnes of grain against soybeans, bristles and tin, possibly even rice. Only a third would be paid upfront, the rest would follow over the next two years. Coming just after the delegation had baulked at a trade deficit of 70 million rubles, the timing of the request was poor. ‘Do you have any foreign currency?’ the Soviet side asked bluntly, forcing Zhou to admit that China had none, and that it was selling silver.21 The delegation left the issue hanging in the air, and nothing further happened for several months, till finally someone dropped a hint by telling Deng Xiaoping that the Soviet Union was experiencing difficulties and was not in a position to help. The loss of face for China must have been tremendous.22

  Delaying tactics in the midst of calamity were also adopted by Moscow when Zhou Enlai asked for an extra 20,000 tonnes of petrol in July 1961: Khrushchev waited for four months until after the Twenty-Second Soviet Party Congress before acceding to Beijing’s request.23 Political leverage was also extracted from a swap of grain agreed upon in June 1961. Out of all the wheat Beijing purchased from Canada, 280,000 tonnes were earmarked for the Soviet Union, which in turn exported a similar amount to China. After the wheat had been shipped directly to Russia from Canada, the Soviets acted as if the import came from North America, at the same time listing their export of grain to China in the published trade statistics for the year 1961. In the eyes of the world, with foreign experts raking over published statistics for signs of a rift between the two socialist giants, it looked as if the Soviet Union was feeding China.24

  Not all of the grain purchased abroad was intended for home consumption. The rice bought from Burma, for instance, was shipped directly to Ceylon to meet outstanding commitments. Some 160,000 tonnes also found their way to East Germany to address the trade deficit with socialist allies. And China, in the midst of famine, continued to be generous to its friends. Two cargoes of wheat carrying some 60,000 tonnes were shipped directly to Tirana from Canadian ports as a gift. Since Albania had a population of about 1.4 million, this amount provided as much as one-fifth of domestic requirements.25 Pupo Shyti, Tirana’s chief negotiator in Beijing, later recalled that he could see the signs of famine in Beijing, but ‘the Chinese gave us everything . . . When we needed anything we just asked the Chinese . . . I felt ashamed.’26 Other countries, aside from Albania, also received rice for free at the height of the famine, for instance Guinea, the recipient of 10,000 tonnes in 1961.27

  China never ceased to cultivate its international image with liberal aid and cheap loans to developing nations in Asia and Africa. One reason why Beijing increased foreign donations during the Great Leap Forward was to prove that it had discovered the bridge to a communist future. But the main consideration was rivalry with Moscow. In an age of decolonisation, Khrushchev had started competing for the allegiance of developing nations, trying to draw them away from the United States into the Soviet orbit by lavishing aid on prestige projects such as dams and stadiums. Mao wanted to challenge him for leadership in Asia and Africa. Dismissive of the Kremlin’s notion of ‘peaceful evolution’, on which relations with the developing world were premised, he encouraged instead a militant theory of revolution, aiding communist revolutionaries in such countries as Algeria, Cameroon, Kenya and Uganda in determined competition with Moscow.

  How much help was given in times of famine? Overall, China provided 4 billion yuan to foreign countries from 1950 to July 1960, of which 2.8 billion was free economic aid and 1.2 billion came as interest-free or low-interest loans.28 Most of this was granted from 1958 onwards. In 1960, as a new body called the Foreign Economic Liaison Bureau with ministerial rank was created to cope with increased donations, aid to foreign countries was fixed at 420 million yuan.29 The following year, as Beijing refused new loans or even deferment of payments offered by socialist allies aware of China’s predicament, some 660 million yuan was slated for foreign aid.30 The beneficiaries included Burma at US$84 million and Cambodia at US$11.2 million, while Vietnam was granted 142 million rubles and Albania 112.5 million rubles.31 These sums were made available as the overall income of the state shrank by 45 per cent to 35 billion yuan, cuts having been made in a number of areas, including 1.4 billion in health and education.32

  Such generosity meant that on the ground, where people were starving, grain was still being exported in 1960, some of it for free. In fact, with a policy of ‘export above all else’ (chukou diyi?), just about every province had to export more than ever before. Hunan was instructed to export goods to the value of 423 million yuan, or 3.4 per cent of the total output value of the province, the produce to be exported including 300,000 tonnes of rice and 270,000 pigs.33

  In the five months following Zhou Enlai’s decision in August 1960 to curb the export of food to the socialist camp, well over 100,000 tonnes of grain were procured in Guangdong and sent to Cuba, Indonesia, Poland and Vietnam, representing about a quarter of the 470,000 tonnes requisitioned in the province during that period. As provincial boss Tao Zhu explained after formal diplomatic relations were established with Fidel Castro’s regime in September 1960, delivering grain to the people of Cuba, besieged by American imperialism, was a matter of ‘international reputation’.34 Factory workers in Guangzhou were less enthusiastic about selfless assistance to the developing world: already bitter about the lack of cotton, exported and put on sale in the department stores of Hong Kong, they openly wondered: ‘why export to Cuba when we don’t have enough to eat?’35 Even in places as far away as Gansu, villagers protested that they had to go hungry because Mao was shipping rice to Cuba.36 At a party gathering in Beidaihe, the following month, the leadership decided to send Castro a further 100,000 tonnes of rice worth 26 million yuan in exchange for sugar.37

  Could China have accepted aid instead of spending all its foreign currency on
grain imports? President John Kennedy, apparently, noted coolly that Beijing was still exporting food to Africa and Cuba even in a time of famine, adding that ‘we’ve had no indication from the Chinese Communists that they would welcome any offer of food’.38 The Red Cross did try to assist, but approached Beijing in a blundering way by first enquiring about famine in Tibet – where a major rebellion had just been squashed by the People’s Liberation Army. The response was swift and predictable. The country had witnessed an unprecedentedly rich harvest in 1960, there was absolutely no famine and rumours to the contrary were slanderous. Adding fuel to the fire, Henrik Beer, clumsy secretary general of the League of Red Cross Societies, then sent a second telegram from Geneva asking whether this was true as well for China. A furious reply followed from Beijing, pointing out that Tibet and China were not separate entities but constituted one country, throughout which the government relied on the many advantages of the people’s communes to overcome the natural calamities of the previous two years.39

  But even had the Red Cross broached the issue in a more tactful way, it is very likely that foreign help would have been refused. When the Japanese foreign minister had a quiet word with his counterpart, Chen Yi, about a discreet gift of 100,000 tonnes of wheat, to be shipped out of the public view, he was rebuffed.40 Even gifts of clothes by schoolchildren in East Berlin, offered to help typhoon-ravaged Guangdong in 1959, were seen as a loss of face, and embassies were told to accept no further donations.41 China was willing to patronise the developing world but would accept help from nobody.

  16

  Finding a Way Out

  Faced with a bankrupt economy, Zhou Enlai, Li Fuchun and Li Xiannian, the triumvirate in charge of foreign trade, began in August 1960 to move the trade structure away from the Soviet Union towards the West. In the following months Zhou Enlai and Chen Yun managed to convince Mao that imports of grain were needed to get the economy back on its feet after the agricultural losses attributed to natural disasters. The party planners also started quietly masterminding a turnaround by tinkering, ever so prudently, with policy guidelines. Li Fuchun initiated work on a new motto that emphasised ‘adjustment’ instead of great leaps forward in August 1960. In a one-party state where government by slogan held sway, the very notion of adjustment would have been unthinkable only six months earlier. Zhou Enlai warily added the term ‘consolidation’ to make it more palatable to Mao.1 Li Fuchun would have to navigate carefully to get the new mantra past a mercurial Chairman.

  Then, on 21 October 1960, a report from the Ministry of Supervision landed on Li Fuchun’s desk. It was about mass starvation in Xinyang, a region in Wu Zhipu’s model province of Henan. Where an earlier investigation had mentioned 18,000 deaths in the county of Zhengyang alone, now the figure had quadrupled to 80,000 deaths. In Suiping, the seat of the hallowed Chayashan commune, one in ten villagers had starved to death.2

  When Li Fuchun handed over the report to Mao Zedong three days later, the Chairman was visibly shaken: here were counter-revolutionaries who had seized control of an entire region, carrying out horrific acts of revenge against class enemies. After an urgent meeting with Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai, a team was dispatched under the leadership of Li Xiannian, who was joined en route by Tao Zhu and Wang Renzhong.

  In Xinyang they found a nightmare. In Guangshan county, ground zero of the famine, they were met by quiet sobs of despair from famished survivors, huddled in the bitter cold among the rubble of their destroyed homes, surrounded by barren fields marked by graves. The hearths were stone cold, as everything from doors, windows and lintels to the straw roofs had been ripped out for fuel. The food was gone. In a reign of terror after the Lushan plenum, the local militias had rampaged through the villages searching for hidden grain, confiscating everything to make up for the shortfall in output. In a hamlet once humming with activity, two children with drumstick limbs and skeletal heads, lying by their cadaverous grandmother, were the only survivors.3 One in four people in a local population of half a million had perished in Guangshan.4 Mass graves were dug. Ten infants, still breathing, had been thrown into the frozen ground in Chengguan.5 In total in 1960 over a million people died in the Xinyang region. Of these victims 67,000 were clubbed to death with sticks.6 Li Xiannian cried: ‘The defeat of the Western Route Army was so cruel yet I did not shed a tear, but after seeing such horror in Guangshan even I am unable to control myself.’7

  ‘Bad people have seized power, causing beatings, deaths, grain shortages and hunger. The democratic revolution has not been completed, as feudal forces, full of hatred towards socialism, are stirring up trouble, sabotaging socialist productive forces’: Mao could no longer deny the extent of the disaster, but as a paranoid leader who saw the world in terms of plots and conspiracies, he blamed the trouble on class enemies.8 Rich farmers and counter-revolutionary elements had taken advantage of the anti-rightist campaign to worm their way back into power and carry out acts of class revenge. At no point did the Chairman acknowledge that the regime of terror he modelled at the top was being mirrored at every level down the party hierarchy.

  Mao ordered power to be taken back. Across the country a campaign unfolded to root out ‘class enemies’, often backed by powerful delegations sent by Beijing. Li Xiannian and Wang Renzhong supervised a purge in Henan in which county leaders were overthrown and thousands of cadres investigated, some arrested on the spot.9 A general with a forty-man team was dispatched by Beijing to clean up the militia.10 In Gansu a delegation sent by the Ministry of Inspection led by Qian Ying oversaw a major purge, which resulted in the downgrading of Zhang Zhongliang to third secretary of the provincial party committee. Other regions followed, as one urgent order after another pressed for an overthrow of ‘abusive cadres’ in the people’s communes. On 3 November 1960 an emergency directive was finally issued allowing villagers to keep private plots, engage in side occupations, rest for eight hours a day and restore local markets, among other measures designed to weaken the power of the communes over villagers.11

  It was the beginning of the end of mass starvation. Sensing a change in the wind, Li Fuchun pushed through his policy of economic adjustment for the year 1961.12 He had been the first planner to back Mao in the launch of the Great Leap Forward. Now he was the first one to backtrack, prudently steering a policy of economic revival past the Chairman.

  At this stage Liu Shaoqi was still looking from the sidelines. He shared the Chairman’s view that the countryside had become a breeding ground for counter-revolution. Like other leaders, he had preferred to ignore what happened on the ground after the confrontation at Lushan, and instead devoted much of his energy to stridently denouncing the revisionist path taken by the Soviet Union. He was not oblivious to the famine. Malnourishment was evident even inside the vermilion walls of Zhongnanhai, the compound which served as the headquarters of the party in Beijing. Meat, eggs and cooking oil were scarce, and famine oedema and hepatitis were endemic.13 But it was politically safer to interpret the signs of starvation as the result of environmental disasters. On 20 January 1961, Liu Shaoqi harangued an audience from Gansu about the dangers of feudalism, which had led to the calamity witnessed in Xinyang: ‘This is a revolution: the key is in mobilising the masses. We should mobilise the masses and allow them to free themselves.’14

  Only days before, Mao had voiced his surprise at the extent of the bourgeois backlash in the countryside: ‘Who would have thought that the countryside harboured so many counter-revolutionaries? We did not expect that the counter-revolution would usurp power at the village level and carry out cruel acts of class revenge.’15 Instead of relying on the reports from the grass-roots which, Mao claimed, had obviously misled the leadership, the Chairman decided to dispatch several high-powered teams to investigate the countryside. Deng Xiaoping, Zhou Enlai and Peng Zhen were all sent off to visit communes around Beijing. Mao himself spent several weeks in Hunan. In the hope that farmers would speak to him without inhibition, Liu Shaoqi headed back to his home in Huaminglou, H
unan. It would be a revelatory experience with far-reaching repercussions.

  Determined to avoid the large retinue of bodyguards and local officials that inevitably came with every visit from a top dignitary, Liu set off on 2 April 1961 from Changsha, travelling in two jeeps in the company of his wife and a few close assistants, bowl and chopsticks tucked away in light luggage, ready for a spartan regime in the countryside. Soon the convoy came across a sign announcing a giant pig farm. On closer inspection, it turned out that the farm consisted of no more than a dozen scrawny hogs foraging in the mud. Liu decided to spend the night in the fodder store, and his escorts combed the place in vain for some rice straw to soften the plank beds. Liu noted that even the dried human excrement piled up for fertiliser consisted of nothing but rough fibre, another telltale sign of widespread want. Nearby a few children in rags were digging for wild herbs.16

  Liu Shaoqi’s fears were confirmed over the following weeks, however difficult it was to get wary farmers to tell the truth. In one village where he stopped on his way home, he found that the number of deaths had been covered up by local leaders, while an official report drew a picture of everyday life which had nothing to do with the destitution Liu saw on the ground. He clashed with the local boss, who tried to steer the team away from speaking with villagers. He tracked down a cadre who had been dismissed as a rightist in 1959: Duan Shucheng spoke up, explaining how the brigade had earned a red flag during the Great Leap Forward. To protect their privileged status, Duan explained, local leaders had systematically persecuted anybody who dared to voice a dissenting view. In 1960 a meagre crop of 360 tonnes of grain was talked up to 600 tonnes. After requisitions villagers were left with a paltry 180 kilos, out of which seed and fodder had to be taken, leaving a handful of rice a day.17