The Geography of the Great Leap Famine

Abstract

This article presents a detailed map of the impact of the Great Leap famine, based on a comparison of the age cohorts recorded in the 2000 population census. The map is interpreted with reference to three historical features of the economic geography of early Communist China: the national grain procurement and distribution system, established to support the industrialization drive of the First Five-Year Plan; the logic of administrative macroregions, which led to the emergence of designated "grain surplus" and "grain deficit" areas; and the efforts of logistics experts to maximize the amount of grain transported along China's limited modern transport infrastructure. It is suggested that the radicalization of local party leaders, often considered to be a key cause of spatial variation in famine severity, was strongly conditioned by factors of economic geography.

Early life exposure to China’s 1959–61 famine and midlife cognition

“…Previous demographic research on the GLF famine suggests that these assumptions are reasonably met for the cohort-loss measure calculated from the 1% sample of the 1990 census. 26,27…”

Hard facts and half-truths: The new archival history of China’s Great Famine

“…He does not spare any of the Party leaders whose political fortunes in the post-Mao period were built on a selective denunciation of China's Maoist heritage. 33 The translators have done their work well, and have succeeded admirably in rendering the operational jargon and campaign slogans of the Great Leap era in plain English. Many examples are given of the crucial role in the formation and execution of the Great Leap programme played by Deng Xiaoping as head of the Central Party Secretariat, as well as Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, and other supposedly moderate members of the Central leadership team.…”

“…By the senior provincial Party secretaries I refer to the convenors of the six economic coordination regions: Ouyang Qin, Lin Tie, Ke Qingshi, Tao Zhu, Wang Renzhong, Li Jingquan, and Li Desheng. On the economic coordination regions and their convenors, see Anthony Garnaut, The geography of the Great Leap famine, Modern China , forthcoming.…”

Cultivating Decline: Agricultural Modernization Policy and Adaptive Resilience in the Yangzi Delta

“…Approximately 20-40 million people died from starvation (Becker 1996;Dikötter 2010;Smil 1999;Yang 2007). Agricultural Anhui Province, upriver from the central Delta industrial centers, was severely impacted, with birth rates dropping to 42% of their projected trend (Garnaut 2014).…”