The Political Economy of China's Great Leap Famine

Abstract

Indisputably, the Great Leap Famine of 1958-61 stands out in Chinese history as the most profound demographic catastrophe after six centuries of nearly uninterrupted population growth. As some 30 million, or 5 percent of a population of 660 million, were wiped out within a short period of three years, it was by far the deadliest famine in human history. However, until the demographic consequences of this catastrophe were fully revealed in the 1980s, the outside world assumed that China had solved its food problem following the founding of the People's Republic, when in fact the greatest famine in human history was just beginning to unfold.