Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962
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Hebei was hardly exceptional: in his report on salinisation, Liu Jianxun noted that in many counties in northern Henan the extent of salinisation had doubled, reaching as high as 28 per cent.63 Hu Yaobang, inspecting counties along the Yellow River, found that huge irrigation schemes in some counties in Shandong had increased the overall proportion of alkaline soil from 8 per cent to as much as 24 per cent.64 This was confirmed in a more detailed report on the northern and western parts of the province, where on average salinisation was above 20 per cent by 1962, having doubled since the Great Leap Forward. In Huimin county it was close to half of all cultivated land. There was little doubt about the reasons for this: ‘Over the last couple of years the development of irrigation schemes has disturbed the natural drainage system.’65 How many millions of hectares were lost to salt during the great famine is not clear, but it is likely to have reached 10 to 15 per cent of all irrigated cropland.
No nationwide or even provincial figures exist, but qualitative evidence suggests that air and water pollution also contributed to an environmental crisis of considerable proportions. China had no treatment plants, and both urban sewage and industrial waste were discharged directly into local rivers. In the drive to transform a predominantly agricultural society into an industrial powerhouse capable of leading the socialist camp in its conquest of the world, the amount of pollutants such as phenol, cyanide, arsenic, fluorides, nitrates and sulphates released into water streams surged. Phenol is one of the most common contaminants: 0.001 milligrams per litre is advisable for drinking water and 0.01 for farming fish. In spillages in the Songhua and Mudan rivers, which flow through the bleak industrial heartland of the north, the amount of phenol ranged from two to twenty-four milligrams per litre. Where carp, catfish and sturgeon once teemed, nothing but a noisome flow of toxic materials remained. In a 150-kilometre stretch of the Nen River, a major tributary of the Songhua, some 600 tonnes of dead fish were removed by fishermen in less than a day in the spring of 1959. In Liaoning fish disappeared completely from the rivers near the industrial cities of Fushun and Shenyang. Along the coast near Dalian, it was not unusual to harvest some 20 tonnes of sea cucumber each year, but the delicacy vanished during the Great Leap Forward.66 Further south, in Beijing, the State Council complained about pollution: the powerful Anshan iron and steel complex discharged such large amounts of waste that the rivers reeked of petrol, with dead fish floating belly up on the slimy surface.67
So great was the amount of alkaline waste released by paper mills in Jiamusi that even the bottoms of boats corroded. The mills themselves were no longer able to produce high-quality paper because they relied on the river water they so heavily polluted. This was the case for all factories in the belt stretching from Shanghai down to Hangzhou. Oil companies were also culprits, a single plant in Maoming releasing 24,000 tonnes of kerosene into rivers each year. Other scarce resources in the midst of famine were emptied into the water: smelting plants in dirty, dusty Shenyang, the State Council calculated, could have saved 240 tonnes of copper and 590 tonnes of sulphuric acid a year – simply by recycling the water they used.68
Few comparative studies were made at the time to measure the increase of pollution after 1957, but one case study illustrates the impact of the Great Leap Forward. The leather, knitting, paper and chemical factories in Lanzhou, the industrial centre of the north-west, generated some 1,680 tonnes of waste water a day in 1957. This had rocketed up to 12,750 tonnes a day by 1959. Lanzhou is the first large city along the Yellow River, which contained eight times more pollutants than was allowed by the Ministry of Hygiene. The river slowly wound its way through the deserts and grasslands of Inner Mongolia before entering the North China Plain, where the water was diverted for irrigation through endless conduits and culverts, the pollutants becoming embedded deep in the cultivated soil.69
People too were poisoned, as rivers were often the only source of drinking water. Workers living near steel plants in the north suffered from chronic poisoning. In Zibo, Shandong, a hundred farmers became ill after drinking water polluted with contaminants from a pharmaceutical factory upstream.70 In Nanjing, a single factory employing a mere 275 workers produced 80 to 90 tonnes of sewage containing radioactive material each day. No measures for waste disposal existed, and all of it was dumped straight down the drain, ending up in the Qinhuai River, which turned into a cesspool. Even groundwater was poisoned: used by local people to wash their rice, the water in the wells near the factory turned red or green.71 In Baoshan, Shanghai, the waste water produced by steel plants leached into workers’ dormitories. Outside, heaps of corrugated iron waste accumulated, so that workers had to climb over the rubbish to gain access to their sleeping quarters.72 While slag was of less concern compared to pollution caused by waste discharges, a quarter of a million tonnes accumulated every day in busy Shanghai.73
The air too was polluted, although we have fewer specific examples since water was a far more precious resource than air and thus was monitored in greater detail. But one study shows that in Shanghai the equivalent of 20 tonnes of sulphuric acid mist, created in the production of phosphate fertilisers, was spewed into the air each day by a number of factories.74
Some of these factories also produced pesticides, which contaminated animals, people, soil and air. In Shanghai, for instance, thousands of tonnes of Dipterex and DDT were produced, as well as benzene hexachloride (BHC), a highly toxic farm chemical labelled 666 which degraded only slowly in the soil.75 The effects of pesticides on livestock, agricultural land and aquatic products are well known, but in times of famine chemical poison found new applications, spreading far beyond the farm. Desperate for food, some communes used pesticides to catch fish, birds and animals. In Hubei, insecticides such as Systox and Demeton, commonly called 1605 and 1059 powders, as well as a hypertoxic pesticide known as 3911, were deliberately spread to capture ducks, which were then sold to the cities. In Shakou alone dozens of customers were poisoned and several died after eating the contaminated fowl. Famished farmers also foraged independently for food, releasing chemicals in ponds and lakes to kill the wildlife. In some places the water turned green, killing all.76
But the most popular form of pest control was mass mobilisation. Enthralled by the power of the masses to conquer nature, Mao had raised the call to eliminate rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows in 1958. Sparrows were targeted because they ate grain seeds, depriving the people of the fruits of their labour. In what is one of the most bizarre and ecologically damaging episodes of the Great Leap Forward, the country was mobilised in an all-out war against the birds. Banging on drums, clashing pots or beating gongs, a giant din was raised to keep the sparrows flying till they were so exhausted that they simply dropped from the sky. Eggs were broken and nestlings destroyed; the birds were also shot out of the air. Timing was of the essence, as the entire country was made to march in lockstep in the battle against the enemy, making sure that the sparrows had nowhere to escape. In cities people took to the roofs, while in the countryside farmers dispersed to the hillsides and climbed trees in the forests, all at the same hour to ensure complete victory.
Soviet expert Mikhail Klochko witnessed the beginning of the campaign in Beijing. He was awakened in the early morning by the bloodcurdling screams of a woman running to and fro on the roof of a building next to his hotel. A drum started beating, as the woman frantically waved a large sheet tied to a bamboo pole. For three days the entire hotel was mobilised in the campaign to do away with sparrows, from bellboys and maids to the official interpreters. Children came out with slings, shooting at any kind of winged creature.77
Accidents happened as people fell from roofs, poles and ladders. In Nanjing, Li Haodong climbed on the roof of a school building to get at a sparrow’s nest, only to lose his footing and tumble down three floors. Local cadre He Delin, furiously waving a sheet to scare the birds, tripped and fell from a rooftop, breaking his back. Guns were deployed to shoot at birds, also resulting in accidents. In Nanjing some 330
kilos of gunpowder were used in a mere two days, indicating the extent of the campaign. But the real victim was the environment, as guns were taken to any kind of feathered creature. The extent of damage was exacerbated by the indiscriminate use of farm poison: in Nanjing, bait killed wolves, rabbits, snakes, lambs, chicken, ducks, dogs and pigeons, some in large quantities.78
The main casualty was the humble sparrow. We do not have any reliable figures, as numbers were part of a campaign in which rhetorical inflation combined with specious precision to produce digits as surreal as the campaign itself. Shanghai thus triumphantly reported that it had eliminated 48,695.49 kilos of flies, 930,486 rats, 1213.05 kilos of cockroaches and 1,367,440 sparrows in one of their periodic wars against all pests (one wonders how many people secretly bred flies or cockroaches to obtain a medal of honour).79 Sparrows were probably driven to near extinction, and few were seen for years afterwards. By April 1960, as the leaders realised that the birds also ate insects, they were removed from the list of harmful pests and bedbugs substituted instead.80
But the reversal came too late: insect infestations spread after 1958, ruining a significant proportion of the crop. The biggest damage was done before the harvest, as swarms of locusts would obscure the sky and cover the countryside under a bristling blanket, devouring the crop. Taking advantage of the drought in Hubei in the summer of 1961, they infested some 13,000 hectares in the Xiaogan region alone. In the Jingzhou region more than 50,000 hectares were devastated. Overall, in the province, some 15 per cent of the rice crop was lost to the voracious grasshopper. Everything was stripped bare, over half of all cotton being lost in the Yichang region.81 Around Nanjing, where a ferocious campaign had been fought against sparrows, some 60 per cent of all fields suffered from insect damage in the autumn of 1960, which led to severe shortages of vegetables.82 All sorts of harmful species thrived: in Zhejiang province 500,000 to 750,000 tonnes of grain, or roughly 10 per cent of the harvest, were lost in 1960 to snout moth, leafhopper, pink bollworm and red spider, among other pests. Preventive measures were hampered by lack of insecticide: farm chemicals had first been squandered in the assault on nature in 1958–9, and then shortages of all commodities extended by 1960 to pesticides, just as they were needed more than ever.83
In the war on nature, different factors thus combined to amplify dramatically what the leadership described as ‘natural catastrophes’. The steel campaign caused deforestation, leading in turn to soil erosion and water loss. Grandiose irrigation schemes further disturbed the ecological balance, worsening the impact of inundations and droughts, both of which were drivers of locusts: drought eliminated all competition, while the heavy rains that followed allowed locusts to hatch more quickly than other insects and take over a mauled landscape. Because sparrows had vanished and pesticides had been misused, the insects descended unopposed on whatever meagre crop the farmers had managed to grow.
Mao lost his war against nature. The campaign backfired by breaking the delicate balance between humans and the environment, decimating human life as a result.
Part Four
Survival
22
Feasting through Famine
Equality may have been a pillar of communist ideology, but all communist states built elaborate hierarchical orders on the ground. One reason for this was that most of these regimes lived in constant fear of real or imagined enemies, justifying the regimentation of society along military lines in which each subordinate unit was expected to carry out orders without questioning: ‘each official is the anvil of his superiors and the hammer of his subordinates’.1 Another reason was that the command economy distributed goods and services according to need rather than demand. And the needs of different groups were assigned different priorities by the party, whether the country was defending the realm against imperialist powers or busy building a communist future. In the People’s Republic access to food, goods and services was largely determined by a household registration system – the rough equivalent of the internal passport instituted in December 1932 in the Soviet Union. Introduced to the cities in 1951, it was extended to the countryside in 1955 and became law in 1958, just when farmers were being pitchforked into communes. It divided people into two separate worlds by classing them either as ‘city dwellers’ (jumin) or as ‘peasants’ (nongmin).2 The status conferred by the registration system was inherited through the mother, meaning that even if a village girl married a city dweller she and her children remained farmers.
The household registration system was a linchpin of the planned economy. As the state was in charge of the distribution of goods, it had to have a rough idea of the needs of different sectors of the economy. If large flows of people moved about the country in complete freedom it would upset the production quotas and distribution charts so meticulously mapped by central planners. But another function of the system was to tie the cultivators to the land, making sure that cheap labour was available in the collective farms from which a surplus was taken to pay for industrialisation. Farmers were treated as an hereditary caste deprived of the privileges given to city dwellers, which included subsidised housing, food rations and access to health, education and disability benefits. In the midst of famine the state left farmers to fend for themselves.
A wall was created between cities and the countryside, but an equally important fault line ran between ordinary people and party members. And within the party – as in the army – an elaborate internal hierarchy further determined the privileges to which one was entitled, from the amount of grain, sugar, cooking oil, meat, fowl, fish and fruit to the quality of durable goods, housing, health care and access to information. Even the quality of cigarettes varied according to rank. In Guangzhou in 1962 cadres of ranks 8 and 9 received two cartons of ordinary cigarettes a month, cadres of ranks 4 to 7 two better-quality cartons, while the highest three ranks, reserved for top intellectuals, artists, scientists and party leaders, received three cartons of the finest quality.3
At the apex of the party stood the leadership, who had special residences ensconced behind high walls, security guards round the clock and chauffeured cars. Special shops with scarce goods at discounted prices were reserved for them and their families. Dedicated farms produced high-quality vegetables, meat, chicken and eggs, which were analysed for freshness and tested for poison before being sampled by tasters. Only then was the food served to leaders in the capital and the provinces.4 Above them was Mao, living in opulence near the Forbidden City where emperors had once dwelled, his bedroom the size of a ballroom. Sumptuous villas, staffed with chefs and attendants all year round, were at his beck and call in every province or major city.5 At the bottom of the scale were the millions locked away in labour camps located in the harshest parts of the countryside, from the bitterly cold plains of Manchuria to the arid deserts of Gansu. They were made to break stones, dig for coal, carry bricks or plough the desert for years on end without any recourse to the law.
As the famine developed, the ranks of the privileged swelled. Despite continuous purges, the party membership increased by almost half, from 12.45 million in 1958 to 17.38 million in 1961.6 Party members knew how to take good care of themselves. One way to feast through famine was to attend frequent meetings, where everything was provided for by the state. Some 50,000 officials came to Shanghai in 1958, a number which had doubled to 100,000 by 1960. They stayed in state-run hotels and dined at state-sponsored banquets. A favourite haunt was the Donghu Hotel, former residence of the famous gangster Du Yuesheng: it was one of the few venues not to charge for anything at all, whether elaborate menus or a range of perfumes on offer in the toilets. Some of these conferences lasted for over a month. In 1960 roughly one high-level conference was held every day of the year, at great cost to the city.7
Lower-ranking cadres feasted at local meetings. In Nayong county, in famine-ravaged Guizhou province, 260 cadres spent four days working through 210 kilos of beef, 500 kilos of pork, 680 chickens, 40 kilos of ham, 130 litres of wine and 79 car
tons of cigarettes as well as mountains of sugar and pastries. To that had to be added fine blankets, luxury pillows, perfumed soap and other goods specifically purchased for the conference. In Beijing an automobile factory spent more than 6,000 yuan on eight visits to top-class hotels to entertain visitors towards the end of 1960.8 Another ploy was to organise ‘product testing’ sessions. In Yingkou, Liaoning, over twenty cadres convened one morning in March 1960, systematically working their way through a range of local produce, starting with cigarettes and moving on to tinned meat, fruit and biscuits, all the while helping themselves to copious portions of rice wine. By the end of the day, satiated and drunk, three of the testers had vomited.9