But how, in Anhui and elsewhere in China, did the Party ensure discipline during the famine? Why did lower-ranking officials continue to obey orders? And why did the peasants not revolt?
Fear and terror explain their behaviour. A cadre who questioned orders faced death. The anti-right opportunist campaign had clearly demonstrated this fact but it also showed that opposition not only endangered the official but also his family, his relatives and even his friends. On the other hand, as long as an official held on to his position, he and his family could eat because they had access to the state supply system. In many villages, the only people to survive the famine were the Party Secretary and his immediate family. Peasants interviewed said that only if the village Party Secretary was either an honest man or too frightened to steal grain, would he and his relatives die of hunger.
The terror was also possible because the Party had already reduced a section of society to the status of slaves. During the land reform campaign, landlords and their families had been treated as outcasts. Now, those condemned by their class ancestry or by a political mistake had no rights at all, not even to food. They could be subjected to any cruel or inhuman form of punishment. If one section of society could be treated in this way it was but a short step to relegating peasants who were unable to comply with the demands for grain to the status of political criminals. They too became the enemy who could be treated without mercy. Zhao Chuanju, a deputy brigade chief quoted in the Fengyang documents, spelt this out: ‘The masses are slaves, they won’t listen or obey if you don’t beat or curse them or deduct their food rations.’ Zhao Chuanju personally beat thirty peasants to death.
As the famine worsened and the peasants lost hope, the cadres also found that they could only keep order by creating more and more terror. According to Fengyang statistics, 12.5 per cent of its rural population – 28,026 people – were punished by one means or another. The report lists the punishments: some were buried alive; others were strangled with ropes; many had their noses cut off; about half had their rations cut; 441 died of torture; 383 were permanently disabled; and 2,000 were imprisoned, of whom 382 died in their cells. Sometimes torture was used to force the peasants to give up their food supplies, sometimes to punish them for stealing food. The Fengyang report gives examples:
The famine in the Ukraine in 1932-3 was to presage an even greater disaster in China during the Great Leap Forward: (above) collecting the emaciated corpses of Ukrainian famine victims for cremation; (below) on the streets of Kharkov, the capital of the Ukraine, pedestrians pay scant attention to the starving
At the height of the Great Leap Forward peasants all over China were marshalled into massive labour-intensive projects: (above) members of the Gangkou commune in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province, march off to work behind red flags. This photograph was taken in the autumn of 1959 when the slogan was ‘Go all out and continue the Great Leap Forward and defeat rightism’; (.below) peasants in Guangdong province at work on the Xinxihe reservoir. Armies of such peasants built reservoirs in every county in China but most collapsed within a few years
Chinas propaganda boasted of miraculous agricultural yields: (above) close planting of wheat reputedly produced a crop so dense that children could stand on top of it. This picture from China Pictorial was, like so many others, a fake — the children are standing on a bench hidden beneath the grain. Nevertheless, as the photograph below shows, China claimed she had outstripped even America in wheat production
The men responsible for the worst excesses during the Great Leap Forward included (above) Chen Boda, the editor of Red Flag. The son of a wealthy landlord, he became the most influential ultra-leftist thinker around Mao and his ideas inspired both the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution; (below) Li Jingquan, the Party Secretary of Sichuan province. Under his leadership between 7 and 9 million people starved to death in a province famous for its agricultural surpluses. He was never criticized for his actions but lost power during the Cultural Revolution
(Above) A rare photograph of Zeng Xisheng, Party Secretary of Anhui province. Up to a quarter of the population of Anhui perished during the famine but Zeng lost power in 1962 for pioneering reforms which saved many more lives; (below) Henan province was the pace-setter during the Great Leap Forward and its Party Secretary Wu Zhifu was Mao’s devoted follower. Under Wu s leadership millions starved, especially in the Xinyang prefecture, but Wu’s crimes were never publicly condemned
(Above) Mao inspects an experimental field in the famous Seven Li commune in Xinxiang county, Henan province, in 1958. It was here that he declared: ‘this name, the People’s Commune, is great’; (below) among the alleged scientific successes of the Great Leap Forward was the creation of giant vegetables. Here peasants parade a giant pumpkin
(Above) In Anhui Mao Zedong shows his approval for an innovation intended to help triple steel output — the backyard furnace. City-dwellers had to melt down whatever metal objects they could find to make steel; (below) peasants in even the remotest regions had to do the same in much larger furnaces. This propaganda photograph shows crude smelters built near Xinyang in Henan province. Party documents later described what happened in Xinyang as a ‘holocaust’
(Above) The most hated part of the communes were the communal kitchens. This propaganda photograph of a village communal canteen shows peasants eating together – the reality was much harsher; (below) the communes were run as militarized units and were intended to be effective both in war and in peace. In some places this was taken literally to mean arming the peasants. Here members of the Dongjiao commune near Zhengzhou, Henan province, work with their weapons close at hand
(Above) As part of the Great Leap Forward’s attempt to wipe out all pests in a massive public hygiene movement, sparrows were exterminated. Here peasants parade the bodies of those killed during a single day; (below) all over the country peasants were inspired to create homemade tools and machines as part of the promised mechanization of agriculture. Since the steel produced in the backyard furnaces was useless, all these devices were made out of wood, like this truck built in Gaotang county in Shandong province. It was powered by a kerosene engine
(Above) The Great Leap Forward was, above all, an attempt to master nature. Nothing was impossible if the masses were mobilized to perform extraordinary feats of manual labour. To symbolize this peasants painted murals on their houses. This one, entitled ‘Making the mountains bow their heads and the rivers give way’, was painted in the Spring Flower commune near Xi’an in Shaanxi province; (left) one of the greatest of these senseless endeavours was the construction of the Red Flag Canal in Henan province. To divert water to a poor region, peasants spent years constructing a channel through mountains and along steep hillsides using the most primitive tools
(Above) The slightest opposition to Mao’s policies led to condemnation as a rightist. In this scene Zhang Bojun, Chairman of the Democratic Party of Peasants and Workers, is condemned as a rightist at a public meeting. His party was a remnant of political parties which had existed before 1949 but which were allowed to continue to give an impression of tolerance; (below) in the communes, peasants were made to work day and night and often slept in the fields. These peasants from Xianyang county in Henan province are engaged in deep ploughing which Mao believed would create bigger and better crops. In some places, furrows twelve feet deep were dug
Those who benefited from the Great Leap Forward included (above left) Hua Guofeng, who later became Mao’s successor after denying that peasants were starving in Mao’s home county; (above right) Zhao Ziyang, who first reported that the peasants were hiding grain – under Deng Xiaoping he later became General Party Secretary and launched the rural reforms; (below right) Hu Yaobang, who was promoted after inspecting Mao’s home county and lying about what he saw there – he later regretted his actions and in 1979, after Deng Xiaoping made him General Party Secretary, he began to dismantle the communes; (below left) Kang Sheng, one of the few to die while still in favour – he impl
emented Mao’s purges before 1949 and after, and gave his enthusiastic backing to the Great Leap Forward
The chief victim of the Great Leap Forward was Marshal Peng Dehuai (top) who presented a private letter to Mao during the Lushan summit in mid-1959 that criticized the Great Leap Forward (middle). The blurred photograph below was taken during the Lushan summit when Mao attacked Peng as a rightist
Two of the men who helped end the famine and earned Mao’s hatred: (above) President Liu Shaoqi and his wife Wang Guangmei, photographed setting an example during the famine by picking wild fruit and grasses in the wooded hills of Wenquan near Guangzhou; (left) Zhang Wentian, one of those who spoke out at the Lushan summit in support of Peng Dehuai and who had evidence of the famine in Anhui
(Above) The tenth Panchen Lama of Tibet was one of the very few who dared to speak out during the famine. His report came close to accusing the Party of attempted genocide against the Tibetans. Soon after his report was delivered, he was imprisoned and did not regain the trust of the Communist Party until shortly before his death in 1989; (right) the writer Deng Tuo was among the first victims of the Cultural Revolution. Deng had written a history of famine relief in China which was republished in 1961 when he and a small group of intellectuals openly ridiculed Mao and his catastrophic policies
Mao Zedong, architect of the famine
In the spring of 1960, Li Zhonggui and Zhang Yongjia, Secretary and chief of Qiaoshan brigade, began to bury four children alive and they were only pulled out when their families begged for mercy. The children were buried up to their waists before being taken out and were traumatized by the experience.
Su Heren, chief of the Liwu brigade, buried alive a commune member, Xu Kailan, because she was crying and begging him to give her some rice soup to eat.
Cadre Hua Guangcui refused to give peasant Chang the noodles she had begged for her sick mother. He said the mother was so ill that she would soon die anyway. He told Chang to bury the old woman before the others returned from working in the fields. Hua said that if she did not do this immediately he would force her to bury her mother in the house when she died. Chang had no choice but to bury her mother alive.
Ding Xueyuan was arrested for slaughtering his pig. He was forced to work at a reservoir construction site in the daytime and then handcuffed in a cell at night. He died in his prison cell of torture.
Wang Yuncong, chief of Fengxing production team in Zongpu commune, detained Li Yijun and accused him of being a thief. He thrust a burning iron bar into Li’s mouth.
Han Futian, chief of Zhaoyao production team of Yingjiang commune, captured a thief and chopped off four of his fingers.
Zhang Dianhong, chief of Huangwan production team of Huaifeng brigade in Huangwan commune, caught Wang Xiaojiao, a peasant who had stolen grain. He pushed iron wire through his ears, strung him up and beat him.
Huang Kaijin pushed iron wire through the ears of children and then connected the wires and joked that he was ‘making a telephone call’.
Zhong Kecheng, secretary of Xinghuo brigade, raped a woman, Xiao Qing, by blackmailing her after catching her stealing.
Sun Yucheng, chief of Zhetang brigade of Banqiao commune, caught a woman stealing and shoved his gun up her vagina.
Zhang Yulan, deputy chief of Xinhua brigade, ordered an elderly woman and her two grandchildren to hand in 70 jin [67 lbs] of wild vegetables and grasses every day. He said that otherwise they would not be given any food. Eventually, the old woman and the two children died of illness and starvation.
In each county in Anhui, tens of thousands were beaten and imprisoned by kangaroo courts. Even after the cadres had forced the peasants to hand over their grain during the winter of 1959-60, the violence did not abate. The cadres had to use whips and sticks to force the emaciated and enfeebled peasants to plant food for the next harvest and to stop them from eating the grain that they were supposed to sow. It is quite likely that if the Party had not halted the Great Leap Forward, the rural cadres would have carried on irrespective of the cost in human lives. Zhao Yushu, the head of Fengyang county, is alleged to have said: ‘Even if 99 per cent die, we still have to hold high the red flag.’45
What happened next is equally incredible. The whole machinery of terror came to a stop and its perpetrators were put on trial. In January 1961, Anhui mounted a full-scale ‘rectification’ campaign and the peasants were summoned to testify against those who had terrorized them. A Fengyang Party document records the trial:
In the extended meeting of five levels of cadres of Fengyang county, the atmosphere was intense and solemn. More than 90 per cent of the speakers at the meeting came from the families of people who had died. All of them voiced their complaints of wrong-doing and cried miserably and bitterly. The overwhelming majority of comrades in the meeting were moved to tears. Some told their stories from the morning until 7 p.m. and until their tears became dry...46
The trial established the exact number of cadres who had ‘made mistakes’. In the two worst communes of Xiaoxihe and Wudian, 39.1 per cent and 22.2 per cent respectively of the officials were declared guilty. In the entire county, the figure was 34 per cent, or 1,920 cadres. The rectification followed the classic pattern of such internal purges: the Communist Party decided that 70 per cent of its cadres were ‘good’ and that a further 25 per cent were ‘good in nature’ but had made mistakes. That left a mere 5 per cent as scapegoats, the ‘bad elements’ who had sabotaged Party policies. Only a handful of these, all low-ranking officials, were tried and sentenced as criminals. The county Secretary, Zhao Yushu, had only to make a self-criticism. Two senior county-level Party members were found guilty of making mistakes but neither was punished or expelled from the Party. Out of Fengyang’s 91 commune leaders, only one was expelled and another tried in a civil court. Among the 787 cadres at the brigade level, 50 were arrested but only 9 were given prison sentences. At the team level, only 17 out of 3,318 cadres went to prison. The documents mention only one case where the 5 per cent quota was exceeded, that of Wudian commune where the county’s first collective had been set up in 1955 and which became a provincial model. There, 26 per cent of the population had perished in the famine and cadres had murdered peasants just for stealing sweet potatoes: 13 per cent of its cadres were punished and 95 were executed.47
Another object of the rectification campaign was to return what had been forcibly taken from the peasants. This too was a failure. The communes had no cash or other resources with which to compensate individuals for their losses and the state would not help. Wudian commune gave its peasants little more than a quarter of what they were owed. The commune should have paid each household about 1,000 yuan, a tidy sum when monthly urban wages averaged 50 yuan. Fierce arguments broke out when it came to dividing up whatever tools or pots the communes possessed. Sometimes people insisted on getting their original possessions back and no others. Or they became angry when the communes handed back broken or damaged tools. The peasants refused to accept such tools, saying that they would now have to spend their own money repairing them. Some peasants were accused of lying and cheating in order to grab more than they were entitled to. Then there was the problem of households which had fled or died out. Who was entitled to their compensation? In some cases, cadres sold off the possessions of those who had fled and spent the money on funerals or other necessities, only to be confronted later by the original owners who came back demanding the return of their goods or compensation.
As well as instituting the rectification campaign, in 1961 Anhui also discarded the central tenet of the Great Leap Forward – complete public ownership of land. As Mao later remarked bitterly, the province reverted to capitalism. Just why the provincial Party Secretary Zeng Xisheng swung from an extreme ‘leftist’ position to one on the ‘far right’ is not clear. Perhaps, sensing that the tide was turning, he was motivated by self-interest. Perhaps he felt genuine revulsion at what he had done. For much of 1960 he had been in Shandong province to the north, where he had en
forced Mao’s policies as brutally as in Anhui. In August 1960, he came back to accompany the senior leaders Deng Xiaoping, Liu Shaoqi and Peng Zhen on a tour of Anhui. It was at this moment that Zeng first proposed giving the land back to the peasants and abandoning Mao’s great endeavour. According to his doctor, Li Zhisui, Mao was still unwilling to confront his failures and was so depressed that he retreated to his bed. Zeng cautiously began to try out what came to be known as ze ren tian or ‘contract field farming’ under which peasants were given back partial control of their land and grain levies were reduced.
What Zeng attempted to do created a split in the Party that would tear it apart. One camp supported Zeng’s ze ren tian and a return to private farming. The other camp, grouped around Mao, would admit no compromise and insisted on continuing with collective farming and the communes. Tensions rose in the winter of 1960-1 as central Party inspection teams produced incontrovertible evidence of the famine’s terrible cost. The events which followed are described later but, ironically, Zeng Xisheng lost his position, and later his life, not for causing the death of so many people but for introducing the reforms which saved many more lives. He was dismissed in 1962 and appointed to a lowly position in Shanghai before being brought to work in the South-West China Bureau in Chengdu alongside Peng Dehuai. In 1967, Red Guards were sent from Hefei to seek him out. They accused him of causing the deaths of millions. He was dragged from his home and beaten to death. Officially, the cause of death was high blood pressure. When he was cremated at the Babaoshan crematorium for revolutionary heroes in Beijing, Mao praised his achievements.
Hungry Ghosts Page 17