FAMINE IN CHINA

There is no complete record of periods of famine in China, but there is no dispute that there were many–although few that were countrywide. From early in China's history the development of physical and social infrastructure would have helped to minimize the effects of famine: irrigation canals and dikes were built to counteract the vagaries of the weather, and administrative measures were adopted to ensure reserve supplies of essential food items and to establish systems of food and seed rationing and distribution. Nevertheless, famine was plausibly one of the factors slowing the long-run increase of China's population to barely perceptible levels until the seventeenth century.

The faster rate of population growth observed over the subsequent two centuries occurred despite the destruction wrought by rebellions, banditry, invasion, and civil war. These events ended with the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949, and the pace of growth rose markedly: China's population doubled in the following half-century. Yet it is during this period that the most destructive famine of China's history occurred, the famine of 1958–1961, associated with the policy known as the Great Leap Forward.

Scale of the 1958–1961 Famine

One of the key programs of the new Communist regime was a far-reaching and comprehensive land reform. Peasants were organized in mutual aid teams,

FIGURE 1

and teams in turn were grouped into production cooperatives. In 1957, Mao Zedong embarked on the Great Leap, a radical industrialization program with the declared objective to overtake Great Britain in industrial production in 15 years. Labor-intensive development activities would make up for the lack of capital. Heavy industry would be given priority over the agricultural sector, and the agricultural production system would be transformed with modern technology. The peasant cooperatives were grouped into still larger collective units, termed People's Communes.

The results were catastrophic. Both industrial and grain production fell for three consecutive years, 1959–1961, and the standard of living dropped sharply. There were widespread food shortages and then famine. The crisis affected the whole country, but with varying severity across different regions. The demographic consequences were increased mortality, reduced fertility, a halting of population growth, and a surge in rural-to-urban migration.

China's death rate increased from 10.8 per thousand in 1957 to 25.4 in 1960, a rise of about 130 percent, then fell back to its pre-crisis level by 1962. In total, an estimated 29 million persons died as a direct result of the famine during the period 1958–1961. Twelve million of these (40%) were under the age of 10 years.

The birth rate decreased from 34.0 per thousand in 1957 to 18.0 in 1961, a drop of nearly 50 percent, then rebounded to 37.0 per thousand in 1962. The drop in births was the result of factors such as postponement of marriage, spousal separation, reduced fecundity, and increased spontaneous abortions and stillbirths. During the crisis period, there were about 33 million fewer births than there would have been under non-crisis conditions.

The combined effect of the increased death rate and the reduced birth rate was that the population growth rate during the crisis period decreased from 23.2 per thousand in 1957 to 4.6 in 1960. It rose again to 27.0 per thousand in 1962. (See Figure 1) Rural areas suffered most from the famine. There was considerable migration from affected rural areas to less affected areas, and particularly to the cities.

Causes of the 1958–1961 Famine

The main cause of the famine was an ill-conceived, over-ambitious development program that was carried out with insufficient means. Local cadres were not properly trained and lacked the experience to manage large agricultural production units. Collectivization of farming had weakened private incentives and sapped initiative, cutting the link between effort and reward. Cumbersome target-setting procedures and a four-tier administration (state, province, district, and commune), led to unrealistically high targets. To comply with the pressure to perform, cadres at various levels greatly overestimated or falsified output figures, for a time hiding the magnitude of the production failure from higher levels of the administration. Grain procurement by the government for export and to create reserve stocks thus continued and further aggravated the shortfall of grain supply at the local level. The crisis was deepened by natural disasters: drought, flood, excessive precipitation, plant diseases, and insect infestations affected many parts of the country, although some of these too were the consequence of faulty policies. Once the leadership became aware of the crisis, the Great Leap was swiftly abandoned. Subsequent changes in China's economic and administrative policies, notably the effective re-privatization of agriculture initiated by Deng Xiaoping in the 1970s, make repetition of a human-caused famine in China highly unlikely.

See also: Communism, Population Aspects of; Food Supply and Population.

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Alphonse L. MacDonald