6 The report of the US Congress Commission on the Ukrainian Famine held in Washington and issued in 1988. This extract is from 19 July 1933.
7 Reported by Nicholas D. Kristof in The New York Times, January 1993.
Chapter 15: Life in the Cities
1 Interviews with the author.
2 Interviews with the author.
3 Peng Xizhe, ‘Demographic Consequences of the Great Leap Forward in China’s Provinces’, Population and Development Review, Vol. 3, No. 4, December 1987, p. 655.
4 Steven Mosher, A Mother’s Ordeal, p. 32.
5 Tsering Dorje Gashi, Memoirs of a Graduate of the Peking Institute of National Minorities, p. 71.
6 Wang Lixin, The Agricultural Reforms of Anhui—A True Record, p. 271.
7 Interview with the author.
8 Interview with the author.
9 Interview with the author.
10 Interview with the author.
11 Interviews with the author.
12 Interviews with the author.
13 Nien Cheng is the author of Life and Death in Shanghai, the story of her arrest and detention during the Cultural Revolution. This incident, however, comes from an interview.
14 Tsering Doije Gashi, Memoirs of a Graduate of the Peking Institute of National Minorities, p. 76.
15 Steven Mosher, A Mother’s Ordeal, p. 37.
16 Far Eastern Economic Review, 10 November 1960 and 4 December 1962.
17 Interview with the author. Yuan Mu became a senior official and achieved considerable notoriety as the government’s spokesman during the Tiananmen demonstrations in 1989.
Chapter 16: Liu Shaoqi Saves the Peasants
1 Ross Terrill, Mao: A Biography, p. 292.
2 Liang Heng, Son of the Revolution, p. 18.
3 Ding Shu, Ren Huo.
4 Interview with the author.
5 Ding Shu, Ren Huo.
6 One former senior official told me that Mao was pleased with what he heard and then sent Hu to investigate the famine in Anhui and report on the reforms taking place there. Hu returned with a report which accused Zeng of abandoning Communism. Mao liked this and circulated it, rewarding Hu by promoting him to a senior position in charge of the Party organization in southern Hunan. A biography of Hu claims that Hu’s attitudes changed in 1961, after he was sent to supervise agricultural policy changes in Tang county, Hebei province. Furthermore, the Hong Kong magazine Ming Bao later carried a story with a more positive view of his activities in Anhui: ‘Twice inspection teams arrived in Anhui to look at the disaster but both times they were turned away. The investigators were confined to local guesthouses and not allowed to meet lower cadres or the masses. Deng and Liu both believed that without firsthand information it would be impossible to deal with Zeng Xisheng so they sent Hu Yaobang at the head of the third team.’
7 Wang Lixin, Agricultural Reforms of Anhui—A True Record, p. 279.
8 Li Zhisui, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, pp. 377-378.
9 Li Zhisui, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, p. 378.
10 Interview.
11 Denis Fred Simon and Merle Goldman (eds.), Science and Technology in Post Mao China; Lawrence Schneider, Learning from Russia: Lysenkoism and the Fate of Genetics in China, 1950-1968; and Merle Goldman, China’s Intellectuals: Advise and Dissent.
12 Wu Ningkun, A Single Tear, p. 180.
13 Merle Goldman, China’s Intellectuals: Advise and Dissent; and T. Cheek, Merle Goldman and Carol Lee Hanom, China’s Intellectuals and the State: In Search of a New Relationship.
14 Wang Lixin, The Agricultural Reforms of Anhui—A True Record, p. 280.
15 Li Zhisui, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, p. 388.
16 Li Zhisui, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, p. 386.
17 Stanley Karnow, Mao and China, p. 106.
18 Far Eastern Economic Review, various reports in 1962.
19 Uli Frantz, Deng Xiaoping, p. 160.
20 Frederick W. Crook (ed.), Agricultural Statistics of the People’s Republic of China, 1949-86.
21 Richard Baum, Prelude to Revolution Mao, the Party and the Peasant Question, 1962-66, pp. 112-113.
22 Interviews.
23 The Struggle between the Two Roads in China’s Countryside.
24 John Byron and Robert Pack, The Claws of the Dragon: Kang Sheng, p. 366.
Chapter 17: Mao’s Failure and His Legacy
1 Judith Banister, China’s Changing Population, quotes this from Liu Guoguang and Wang Xianming, ‘An Exploration into the Problems of the Rate and Balance of China’s National Economic Development’, Social Sciences, No. 4, 1980, pp. 254-255.
2 China: Agriculture to the Year 2000, p. 18.
3 Vaclav Smil, The Bad Earth: Environmental Degradation in China, p. 44.
4 Dan Connell and Dan Gover (eds.), China: Science Walks on Two Legs, pp. 45-54.
5 Liu Binyan, A Higher Kind of Loyalty, p. 99.
6 Wang Lixin, The Agricultural Reforms in Anhui—A True Record, p. 351.
7 When Wan Li returned from the meeting, he allowed some communes to contract out land to production teams but not households. This was first tried in Feixi county, not far from the provincial capital, Hefei, and here each team farmed the land collectively, so that in a village of 150 people, land would be split between four teams. Once the harvest was in, the state’s grain would be handed over and the rest divided among the members. One brigade did try the household responsibility system but dropped it after the People’s Daily published a letter attacking it. The letter caused widespread panic, prompting provincial leaders to summon emergency meetings to reassure the peasants.
8 China: Agriculture to the Year 2000, p. 128.
Chapter 18: How Many Died?
1 Judith Banister, China’s Changing Population, p. 13.
2 Judith Banister, China’s Changing Population, pp. 2-26.
3 Interview with Chinese officials. The worst fear for droughts and floods was 1954 according to tables produced by the Chinese Central Meteorological Centre. Both 1960 and 1961 had fewer floods and droughts than 1958 which was publicly hailed as an outstanding year.
4 Peng Xizhe, ‘Demographic Consequences of the Great Leap Forward in China’s Provinces’, Population and Development Review, Vol. 3, No. 4, December 1987, p. 641.
5 Banister (p. 85) draws on work on Chinese population figures by John S. Aird, AnsleyJ. Coale and other authorities in the United States.
6 Wang Weizhi, Contemporary Chinese Population, edited by Xu Dixin, p. 9.
7 Congjin, China, 1949-1989: The Zig-zag Development Era, p. 272.
8 Wen Yu, Disasters of Leftism in China, p. 280.
9 See also Nicholas R. Lardy, ‘The Chinese Economy under Stress, 1958-1965’ in The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 14, which looks at mortality and compares China’s famine with that in the Soviet Union.
10 Daniel Southerland in Washington Post, 18 July 1994. Chen Yizi is now President of the Center for Modern China at Princeton University.
Chapter 19: How to Record the Annals of a Place?
1 Yang Jiang, A Cadre School Life: Six Chapters, translated by Geremie Barmé.
2 New York Review of Books, 27 September 1990.
3 Anne Thurston, A Chinese Odyssey: The Life and Times of a Chinese Dissident, pp. 94-95.
4 The New York Times,. 1980. Wei’s autobiographical notes were smuggled out of China and translated by Lee Ta-ling. Reported in South China Morning Post, 8 March 1981.
5 Interview.
6 Interview.
7 Interview.
8 Steven Mosher, A Mother’s Ordeal, p. 84.
9 Steven Mosher, A Mother’s Ordeal, pp. 34-35.
10 Interview.
11 Loe Goodstadt, Mao Tse Tung—The Search for Plenty, p. 121. Here he cites a broadcast on Guangdong Radio of 22 April 1971.
12 Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, ‘Resolution on Communist Party History, 1949-81.’
13 Zheng Zhengxi (ed.), How to Record the Annal
s of a Place.
14 Zhi Liang, Hungry Mountain Village.
Chapter 20: The Western Failure
1 Starving in Silence: A Report on Famine and Censorship, p. 3. See also Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines, published in 1981.
2 The New York Times, 14 October 1962.
3 New York World Telegram and Sun, 25 June 1959.
4 Time, 22 August 1960.
5 Harry Schwartz, The New York Times, 22 April 1962.
6 New York Herald Tribune, 13 September 1961.
7 China Quarterly, July-September 1962, quoted in Basil Ashton, Kenneth Hill, Alan Piazza and Robin Zeitz, ‘Famine in China, 1958-61’, Population and Development Review, Vol. 10, No. 4, December 1984, pp. 631-632.
8 The Times, 1 January 1963.
9 The Times, 18 April 1962.
10 Quoted in Dennis Bloodworth, Messiah and Mandarins, p. 154.
11 Far Eastern Economic Review, 2 November 1961.
12 Quoted in Basil Ashton, Kenneth Hill, Alan Piazza and Robin Zeitz, ‘Famine in China, 1958-61’, Population and Development Review, Vol. 10, No. 4, December 1984, p. 630.
13 Quoted in Dennis Bloodworth, The Messiah and the Mandarins, pp. 154—155.
14 Han Suyin, My House Has Two Doors.
15 Interviewed in 1994.
16 The Times, 7 March 1961.
17 Far Eastern Economic Review, 27 June 1961.
18 See Basil Ashton, Kenneth Hill, Alan Piazza and Robin Zeitz, ‘Famine in China, 1958-61’, Population and Development Review, Vol. 10, No. 4, December 1984; and Richard Walker, China under Communism—The First Five Years.
19 Weekly Post, 21 January 1961.
20 Daily Herald, 22 May 1962.
21 Daily Telegraph, 12 February 1961.
22 The Times, 15 June 1962.
23 The Times, 2 June 1962. The MP was Philip Noel-Baker.
24 Daily Telegraph, 10 February 1961.
25 The Times, January 1961.
26 Far Eastern Economic Review—various reports in 1962.
27 SartEy Aziz, Rural Development—Learning from China.
28 C. K. MacDonald, Modern China, p. 45.
29 Gladys Hickman, Introducing the New China, p. 21.
30 Haing S. Ngor with Roger Warner, Surviving the Killing Fields, p. 401.
* The Chinese measure of land is the mu, equivalent to 0.17 acres.
1 Since then Xinyang has been divided into two prefectures.
Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine Page 39