Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962

Recently I read a short review of this work in the New York times, and then to my surprise saw this 629 page book on the Chinese Famine of 1958-61 in my local bookstore. I thought, who would buy it? I did graduate study in Chinese History, speak Chinese, and lived in China in 1982. Now I am not in the China field. The topic is interesting to me, so I bought it and read it over the weekend. I was very pleasantly surprised.

It's true that the writer's intention was to document the effects of the Great Leap Forward objectively, but I was also pleased that he was not afraid to draw conclusions and penetrate to the heart of the issue: Every major communist regime, the Soviet Union, the PRC, Cambodia, Vietnam, North Korea etc. caused mass starvation in the initial period when their zeal was high and they sought to get an iron grip on the population by controlling the food supply. The problem with these regimes is systemic; the suffering was not the result of "natural disasters" or "isolated abuses." Totalitarian systems have big problems pulling off mid-course corrections. They are not responsive to feedback until they go beyond the brink. In those systems everyone is a slave to their superiors and often they are also tyrants to those below them in the pecking order. The only way to prevent this from happening again is to educate the populace (stop calling them peasants) and gradually transition to openness and democracy.

Other things that the writer brought out that I think people should realize:
- Despite the depiction of the Communist movement as a "peasant movement," the regime caused great suffering among the farmers, killing more people than the Japanese invaders (1937-1945).
- The local cadres rode hard over the rural population to please their superiors, and then when the policy changed, got the blame for the problems. How ironic!
- The regime took great pains to hide the problems it created, and many Western scholars or politicians (the earlier Edward Friedman? Nixon? Kissinger?) and journalists were fooled. However, some brave analysts did pick up on this early on. The first book on this specific topic was written by Jasper Becker, a journalist who I have never met but respect very much. It's not true that no one knew about this until China opened up after 1989 -- some people just want to believe fairy tales and close their eyes to unpleasant facts.

I recommend this book, with the caveat that the non-specialist reader should not get too bogged down in the details. Sometimes the writer proves his point in one chapter, and then repeats the point in more chapters that are just the same story set in different locations. For specialists the details will be interesting but the general reader may want to skim over some parts, and focus on the analysis which I think is outstanding.

I read the original Chinese version, so this review is not about the translation quality of the book, but rather the content. And what a heavy content it is. This book is probably the most comprehensive body of work on the subject of the Great Chinese Famine to date. For those who has never heard of The Famine (and that makes for most people, since it is closely guarded by the CCP as part of their shameful history), it is a period from 1958-1962 where an estimated 36 million Chinese died of un-natural causes, all during peace time from ONE country. In comparison, the total number of civilian deaths in WWII from ALL combatant nations is estimated to be between 37 to 54 million. If you add in the number of reduced births (when people are starving they tend not to give birth), estimated at 40 million, then the total population reduction exceeds civilian war deaths in WWII.

This book represents nearly two decades of meticulous research by the author, who was a reporter from the New China News Agency, with access to restricted documents and living survivors. He conducted his research under the pretense of "researching farming policies in early years of PRC", and painstakingly pieced together birth/death statistics from multiple provinces heavily impacted by the famine. He also interviewed survivors, who gave live testimonies and names of the deceased and cause of death. The length of investigation, the thoroughness and above all, the author's dedication, is exemplary journalism rarely seen in today's world, let alone in China.

The topic of The Great Famine is rarely talked about in China, and thoroughly hidden in history books as a period of "Great Difficulty". It is an open secret in the Chinese society, with many people who'd rather forget about the whole affair (and it is nearly forgotten, since adult witnesses at the time are now all in their 70's or 80's), instead of asking the hard question "how could a government that staged such tragedy be allowed to stay in power still?", and more importantly, "what does this say about such government and it's policies?". The answers to those questions are very much relevant today, as the Chinese state continues to expand with little regard to the environment, the health of its citizens, or their rights as human beings.

"Those who forgot the past is doomed to repeat it". As the next generation of Chinese matures and take over the helm, it is especially important to remember this dark period in history, so such human tragedy will not be allowed to repeat itself.

Mao was determined to push the Soviets off their perch as leader of the world communist movement. Khrushchev boasted in May 1957 that the Russians would become the world's leading industrial and agricultural power within ten years. Mao sought a similar goal for China, over a much shorter period. Instead, his 'Great Leap Forward' generated the worst famine in history. An estimated 36 million Chinese starved to death during the late 1950s and early 1960s. The number killed exceed those killed by the hated Japanese during the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45 and even approached the overall mortality resulting from WWII.

Author Yang Jisheng's credibility on the topic is excellent - he experienced the death of his father from starvation during this period (but didn't link the event to government failure until three decades later), and spent twenty years interviewing numerous survivors and studying local records while creating over 3,600 folders of information. He is also a Communist Party member, with inside knowledge of the system. The detailed level of his reporting creates unquestionable authority, but becomes hard to digest.

Unfortunately, Yang doesn't speculate on how Mao's massive failures probably have led to China's government today being much more by consensus to avoid repeating these two disasters. The likely rationale for his avoiding this - elsewhere he states that staying away from commenting on current government leaders is essential to avoiding government reaction.

The CCP had issued a March, 1953 resolution promoting the pooling of land for agricultural purposes. By the end of 1954, over 400,000 agricultural cooperatives had been established - often over the resistance of the peasants. About 40% of housing was destroyed - providing wood and straw for backyard furnaces. (Violence against the government was common throughout the Great Leap Forward.) During 1957-58, more than 600,000 intellectuals were persecuted, effectively eliminating dissenting views. A labor force consisting of tens of millions was deployed to irrigation projects. Communal kitchens were encouraged, and eventually 99.1% of rural households participated in the cooperatives as even their previously permitted small private plots were appropriated.

Farm work was inhibited by the large numbers of peasants diverted into irrigation projects and backyard steel production, many agricultural tools were melted into 'steel' (mostly useless quality) in those backyard furnaces, and techniques imported from a Russian 'seer' ('close cropping' - supposedly would increase yields, actually decreased them; deep plowing - extra labor that buried the topsoil, allowing second-rate land to lie fallow because the new techniques supposedly would be so productive, killing off grain-eating sparrows - this then allowed insects to multiply).

Exaggerated reports of production and harvests dogged the Great Leap Forward from the beginning. However, credible early reports accurately told of the devastation were brought to Mao's attention - even by his respected Defense Minister - Marshal Peng Duhai. However, the then strength of the cult of Maoism at the time allowed Mao to shunt aside those complaining by labeling them as obstructionists. Yang depicts China's hierarchical system of concentrated power as one in which every official is a slave facing upward and a dictator facing downward. At the bottom were the petty bureaucrats, harshest of all. An incalculable number of Chinese chose to kill other Chinese. Survival choices included keeping one child alive by starving the others, digging up and eating freshly buried relatives, protecting oneself by informing on neighbors, eating bark and grass, etc. Mass graves were filled with the dead, and then stomped flat and crops planted on top - covering up the evidence.

Grain exports in 1959 reached an all-time high - five million tons, used to finance acquisition of machinery etc. from outside. Peasants were forced to live on what was left after government procurement for urban workers, the armed forces, and exports. Military officers were frequently rotated to prevent building bonds with the locals; they were also separated from program administration.

Peasants were forbidden from moving to other areas, their information sources heavily censored and restricted, and even letters from one area to another were simply held without forwarding. Nonetheless, hundreds of thousands fled to Russia and Hong Kong, though many were repatriated.

The Chinese people were even deprived of the right to silence and repeatedly forced to expose their thoughts publicly, as well as flatter Party thinking and leaders.

The Great Leap Forward ended after a 1962 nationwide conference at which President Liu Shaoqi, along with the chairman of the State Planning Commission Li Fuchu presented their findings of what was occurring to the top 7,118 leaders. They were told that farmers believed their problems were 30% due to natural causes and 70% man-made. It was initially resisted, but slowly led to ending the program. Mao never forgave Liu Shaoqi, and like former Defense Minister Peng, he was ultimately purged and subjected to considerable physical abuse.

Since then Communist officials prohibit mention of this tragedy and no memorials to its victims exist. Any mention of the starvation's is dismissed as being caused by drought and floods. The original book consisted of two-volumes and 1,208 pages, with detailed citations to prevent the Chinese government from simply dismissing it. The book was intended as a tombstone for his father and all the other victims. It is banned in mainland China.

I'm a native Chinese and grew up in that sad period in China's history. I have relatives in the countryside who almost perished if it weren't for the money wired by my parents. For various reasons, my family was much better off on the hunger scale but still my father was reduced to about 100 pounds for a man 5'5" tall and my mother's menstrual periods were stopped for many months.

Just like in Orwell's 1984, the horrible history was covered up, distorted and re-written in whatever way to suit the need of regime. As the result, few fully understand their own past, much less the big picture. To understand my own country's history, I had to look in the books available outside China for the answers. I had read Hungry Ghosts: China's Secret Famine by Jasper Becker and Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikoetter. I had read Man-made Disaster (in Chinese) by DING, Shu and countless personal stories. Then I read Tombstone (in Chinese) by Jisheng YANG and found it the best written, most comprehensive on the subject. I'm very glad it has been translated into English. I haven't read the English version yet. But if the translation does justice to the book, the reader should gain tremendous insight into the cause, the scale and the consequence of the huge man-made disaster.

Facts and figures, facts and figures, facts and figures. No real personal human interest stories, which seems strange since it chronicles the needless and early deaths of more than 35 million Chinese people due to Mao's evil policies. It shows what can happen when average people blindly follow an evil man, and how even good ideas can be corrupted by simple people put in charge of their peers with no training and no accountability. My wife is a survivor of that time, being born in China in 1958. This book does help me understand why she is always hungry, grows a huge garden, is always preparing food, and gets frantic if a meal is an hour late; food is the most important thing in her life. None of us, not even the poorest of the poor, in the U.S. can comprehend what tens of millions of Chinese suffered in the late 1950's and 1960's. I wish the author would have used the help of a professional writer to make an easier read, but it is none the less an important historical book.

This is a topic which has frequently attracted fake misuses of statistics, and so I was prepared for that when I ordered this book. If the author were a US writer then the book would not be worth looking at. This author is Chinese and represents that sector of the current capitalist class which seeks to more broadly disown the revolution. As such, the author has an agenda but is still worth looking at critically.

OK, so what happened and what does this book attempt to do? The general outline is rather clear, despite gaps in the data. The first major gap which we're faced with is that no system of regular population counts, with registry of births and deaths, had really existed in pre-revolutionary China. All of the existing reports from the earlier era support something like what John Finley summarized in the Foreword to the 1926 publication of the American Geographical Society by Walter Mallory, China: Land of Famine:

"It is a shocking fact that with all of the labor expended and virtues practiced, nearly a fourth of the people of the globe live in a land of famine--not of general famine at any one time nor of continuous famine in any one place, but of famine in one or another province or locality all the time."

That is not a substitute for real hard statistics, but it gives an idea of what China in peaceful years was like. One can also gain some useful information by looking at the known statistics for the provinces of Czarist Russia that remained in the USSR after 1917, as given in Frank Lorimer, The Population of the Soviet Union:

Year_____Deaths per thousand among the population
1899_____33.4
1900_____32.3
1901_____33.6
1902_____33.1
1903_____31.1
1904_____31.1
1905_____33.2
1906_____31.6
1907_____30.2
1908_____30.2
1909_____31.6
1910_____33.3
1911_____29.2
1912_____28.7
1913_____30.9

You can find some books which give the number 30.2 for 1913 instead of Lorimer's 30.9. That has to do with the 11 other provinces of Czarist Russia which broke away from the USSR after 1917. Mortality was actually higher in the main Russian part of the Czarist Empire than in Finland, Poland or the Baltic.

For another comparison, some select years of the United States can be placed alongside this:

Year_____Deaths per thousand among the population
1913_____13.8
1915_____13.2
1940_____10.8
1950_____9.6
1951_____9.7
1952_____9.6
1953_____9.6
1954_____9.2
1955_____9.3
1956_____9.4
1957_____9.6

These offer some useful guides on what is realistic to think of as likely death rates in China. It is beyond question that any serious guess of mortality rates under the most peaceful conditions in pre-revolutionary China would have to be notably higher than all of the rates listed for Czarist Russia. It also makes sense to assume that mortality rates in China for the first decade after the revolution of 1949 would have been notably higher than the death rates listed above for the United States. Unfortunately, the very flawed statistics published by the Statistical Yearbook of China 1986 are obviously way off and do not meet these criteria:

Year_____Deaths per thousand among the population
1949_____20.00
1950_____18.00
1951_____17.80
1952_____17.00
1953_____14.00
1954_____13.18
1955_____12.28
1856_____11.40
1957_____10.80
1958_____11.98
1959_____14.59
1960_____25.43
1961_____14.24
1962_____10.02
1963_____10.04

These are comical underestimates. There is no way that Chinese mortality could have been as low as 20/1000 in 1949 or 10.8/1000 in 1957. At the same time the official Chinese data is instructive on general patterns. What this table asserts is that mortality for China in 1958, 1959 and 1961 (11.98, 14.59. 14.24) was well below anything that had ever existed in pre-revolutionary China. 1960 was a year of famine which these numbers imply caused about 3.36 million deaths over and above the rate of 1949 (25.43 - 20 = 5.43, multiplied by the approximate size of the population). At the same time, if one were to compute from the official data the numbers who died in 1958-61 above the 1957 death rate of 10.8, then the result would be 15.1 million. That says something about the general pattern, but the numbers are obviously all wrong.

Judith Banister constructed a different table, in response to official statistics, and Banister's numbers are a bit more realistic:

Year_____Deaths per thousand among the population
1949_____38
1950_____35
1951_____32
1952_____29
1953_____25.77
1954_____24.20
1955_____22.33
1956_____20.11
1957_____18.12
1958_____20.65
1959_____22.06
1960_____44.60
1961_____23.01
1962_____14.02
1963_____13.81

Banister's numbers are more realistic, while conforming to the same general pattern as the official statistics. Banister's assigned numbers for the years 1958, 1959, and 1961 (20.65, 22.06, 23.01) are all visibly lower than all of the death rates recorded for Czarist Russia, and far lower than anything which had ever occurred in pre-revolutionary China. Banister's numners imply that about 4.35 million deaths occurred in 1960 above the death rate of 1949 (44.6 - 38 = 6.6, multiplied by the approximate size of the population). At the same time they indicate about 25.4 million dying in 1958-61 above the rate of 18.12 which Banister assigns to 1957.

Banister's numbers may suffer from inaccuracies with inflated birth rates in several years. For 1957-63, Banister assigns fertility rates per thousand of 43.25, 37.76, 28.53, 26.76, 22.43, 41.02, and 49.79. These numbers imply that fertility surpassed mortality by a large margin in all years but 1960-1, and only in 1960 did mortality exceed fertility by a wide margin. That is not very likely. Even such an author as Jasper Becker, who is also part of the same bandwagon in support of capitalist restoration, maintains:

"Very few women were able to have children during the famine. A large proportion stopped menstruating because of the lack of protein in their diet. Some students sent down to the countrtside said that they stopped menstruating for as long as five years."
-- Hungry Ghosts, p. 210.

The numbers given for fertility by both Banister and the official yearbook do not reflect such tendencies of loss in fertility. That may probably mean that Banister has overestimated the death rate in 1960. But regardless, the general pattern given is clear and makes sense. China experienced a dramatic unprecedented drop in mortality rates during the years following the revolution. Revolutionary leaders became overambitious and attempted a Great Leap Forward, which proved to be a failure in 1958-9. That resulted in some increase in mortality in those years, without actually reaching what had been the normal annual death rates in pre-revolutionary China, or even Czarist Russia. By the year 1960 the main effort of the Great Leap Forward had been called off, but this also proved to be a year of severe weather catastrophe. Even Roderick MacFarquhar has documented this fact:

"Not surprisingly in view of the drought, most of the flooding had been due to the typhoons, more of which had hit the Chinese mainland than in any of the previous 50 years, 11 between June and October; and each typhoon had lasted longer than usual, averaging ten hours, the longest stretching to 20. Moreover, nature had played an additional trick. The typhoon did not strike north-westwards as usual, but northwards. This added to their impact because it meant that there were no high mountains to ward them off, and that less rain reached the rest of the country. In the aftermath of the drought and floods came insect pests and plant diseases."
-- The Great Leap Forward 1958-1960, Volume 2 of The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, p. 322.

Against the background of these natural disasters, further compounded by the lack of comprehension within the Party apparatus, which led to even more errors, the mortality rate in China in 1960 rose to a level that was fairly common in many previous famines which used to occur quite regularly in pre-revolutionary China, perhaps approaching 44.6 per thousand for the country as a whole. That brought an end to the age when China was regarded as "the land of famine" and by 1963 China's mortality rate had fallen as low as 13.81 per thousand and continued to fall thereafter steadily during the years before Deng Xiao-ping began the capitalist counter-revolution. That what the real data shows.

Not surprisingly, many proponents of capitalist restoration in China have sought to promote the most wildly inflated estimates of famine deaths in these years in an effort to justify counter-revolution. The more honest books will simply quote plausible numbers for the years 1957-63, but without telling the reader anything about what real mortality patterns in China historically looked like. But there is another even more dishonest approach favored among some proponents of capitalism which actually requires deliberately faking statistics by citing numbers from the official statistics where it is politically convenient, yet citing higher numbers from other sources for other years.

It is analogous to if someone found two census agencies which regularly offer an annual estimate of the black population in the USA, but which use a different criterion so that there is always a disparity of one million in the numbers for each year. Now suppose that someone looked up such numbers from such sources and quoted them for two consecutive years in a way which implied that white racists had murdered one million black people. That is the type of hoax which Yang Jisheng tries playing in this book.

It's easy to cite specific illustrations of this from the text. On p. 394 he says:

"The mortality rate in Sichuan from 1958 to 1962 was 1.517 percent, 4.69 percent, 5.39 percent, 2.942 percent, and 1.482 percent."

Comparing these numbers with the numbers given by both Judith Banister and the Statistical Yearbook, it's clear that the number "1.517 percent" which he gives for 1958 is meant to read as a little bit higher than the number "11.98 per thousand" which the Statistical Yearbook gives. Yet this number is significantly lower than the number "18.12 per thousand" which Banister gives for 1957, and the gap is even larger when compared with the "20.65 per thousand" which Banister assigns to 1958 itself.

This isn't just a fluke accident. On pp. 408-9 the author lists alleged death rates which clearly come from the Statistical Yearbook and he uses to compute what he declares to be a "normal mortality rate" of 1.047 percent. This is obviously a very steep underestimate of what real mortality rates in China up to 1957 had been like. Banister's guess of 18.12 per thousand may even be too low, as it assumes a dramatic heretofore unprecedented drop in Chinese mortality over the years 1949-57. If Chinese mortality in 1957 had only been as low as 25 per thousand then that would still represent a dramatic gain over the preformances of Czarist Russia and pre-1949 China, while still being larger than each of the mortality rates which Banister assigns to 1958, 1959 and 1961.

Obviously the reason why Yang Jusheng uses the number of 1.047 percent as an estimate drawn from the Statistical Yearbook is because when such a steep underestimate of real mortality in China is cited, then followed by more realistic estimates for the later years, it allows one to dramatically raise the numbers of deaths occurring over an alleged "normal mortality rate." This is a very dishonest cut-and-paste method of generating false statistical results. Because of this all of the more special assertions made in this book which do not already have a general corroboration need to be treated with high skepticism. This book was put together with an agenda, and that shows.

Although this book can not and will not stand with sustained authority over the long haul, it may still be worth examining with a very critical eye. Probably the most notable thing about this book was that the author does confirm that an incredible decline in annual mortality was indeed brought about by the Chinese Revolution. He obviously doesn't mean to state it that way. But it would be unnecessary for him to assert that mortality in Sichuan was as low in 1958 as 1.517 percent if that were not the case. I can actually believe that death rates in Sichuan in 1958 may have really been higher than the national rate of 20.65 which Banister assigns to the year 1958. But again, even that number is far lower than the normal death rates of Czarist Russia and pre-1949 China.

There is undoubtedly a need for some methodical critique of the whole era which takes everything into account. Although the weather of 1960 definitely did play an important role in raising the death rate for 1960 above those of 1958-9, and although one does need to appreciate the real progress that was accomplished in the first decade after 1949 in order to see how the Chinese government became overambitious, but it was still acknowledged even within the Party that the whole thing had been badly handled. That much is undoubtedly true even when the distortions of capitalist restorationist propaganda are taken into account. But this book is just another distorting piece of propaganda.

I purchased this book because I felt compelled to learn some more of the history of the PRC during the tragic period of the Cultural Revolution. I am generally knowledgable but had not read any serious reports of the details of the great Chinese Famine. The book is a compilation & documentation of that tragedy, the players, actors & architects. It gave me some insight into how such a monumental horror could become a "reality". The author is a hero for erecting this testimonial- a historic tombstone. However, it is really not "a book" for reading -it is what the author had to do. The hope is that the people in China read it & KNOW it. I am satisfied to have read it, have learned much. My fear is that the lesson will be lost to the present & future generations of Chinese. The central "management" system is still in place in the hidden world of the central committee. It can certainly lead to new catastrophes. In the move to modern "greatness" there is little or no memory. I will send my copy to Chinese friends.

My mother was born in 1951. She survived but lost 3 brothers and sisters during the starvation around 1960. In Fengyang county, 40% population died of starvation. A lot of villages became ghost towns. My father in law said everything in his mind was about food at that time. For many years, his greatest hope was he can feel full someday.

But we have to chant the praises of the Chinese Communist Party is the only great, glorious and correct party. It starts from junior grade in elementary school.

The investigative reporter Yang Jisheng memorializes in his exhaustive book the thirty-six million Chinese peasants who were the agrarian powerhouse for grain, livestock and progeny. They died of starvation during the years 1958 to 1962 as Chairman Mao pushed forward his plan to turn China into a Communist nation as quickly as possible. Mao brooked no criticism and pragmatic party officials learned not to comment on the realities in the countryside. Land and tools were collectivized, communal kitchens were established destroying the family unit’s ability to survive. Rough and rudely idealistic cadre became the local enforcers searching for every bit of grain when once collected would lie in warehouses while local people stripped the bark off trees, gathered weeds and turned to cannibalism, feeding off the bodies lying along the roads or eating the dead in their own households. Manpower was reassigned to dig ditches or smelt steel leaving women and children to till the fields but they became too weak to do anything. Meanwhile party officials sent phony statistics exaggerating their production quotas. Party leaders who dared to tell the truth were punished. All who were in some kind of position of power never starved or went without.
The gruesome calamities were all man made by leaders in a totalitarian system and as the author says were and are prone to “historical amnesia” to the brutality of the deaths of so many to achieve the Party’s ideals. This book is a must read as a reminder of what did happen when a nation switch to “rightist” thinking and control. China as a miracle economic power celebrating forty years of progress must not forget the sacrifice of so many.

I am from China. This book is banned in China Mainland. I tried to get a Chinese Traditional edition, and I did that!!
There are statistical data in the book, but it the proof of the conclusion. Please read the stories, it would make you burst into tears.
It is not a tragedy of Chinese people only. It is a tragedy of the people all over the world. Mao thought himself "the last powerful emperor", and he really did that. The emperor start to build a spectacular grave for himself since the time he became an emperor. And Mao built many villas on Mt. Lushan and many great places, some of them are just used for him to have a rest in the noon. When tens of million people starved to death, millions tons of grain were exported to Africa. The Chinese people suffered so much from him. And nowadays, there are some foreigners, white or black, sing Chinese revolutionary "red" songs to flatter him, and they were well paid, even thousands dollars. Even only a few Chinese people have a clear knowledge of this history. Most of the people, still think as they were told by CCP, it is a nature diaster.