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Mao's Great Famine: The History Of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62

(People's Trilogy #1)

Frank Dikötter

3.97 · Rating details · 2,632 ratings · 273 reviews

Between 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell. Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up and overtake Britain in less than 15 years. The experiment ended in the greatest catastrophe the country had ever known, destroying tens of millions of lives. Access to Communist Party archives has long been denied to all but the ...more

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Hardcover, 448 pages

Published September 6th 2010 by Bloomsbury UK

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Sep 30, 2010 Anastasia Fitzgerald-Beaumont rated it it was amazing

In a recent blog on Liberia I alluded in passing to Joseph Conrad, specifically having his novella Heart of Darkness in mind. Have you read it? If you have you will recall the final words of Kurtz in his moment of epiphany shortly before his death - The horror! The horror!

Let me take you to another heart of darkness; let me take you to China in the middle of the twentieth century, to the time of the so-called Great Leap Forward. I’ve been reading Mao’s Great Famine by Frank Dikötter, a new ...more

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Aug 08, 2011 Mark rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history, really-loathsome-villains

This is one of those occasions when I almost wish the God i believed in was the vicious judgemental harsh one that some fundamentalists of all flavours seem to look to. This was brilliantly written but a really difficult wading through the horror and disgusting callousness of the Chinese regime at the time of the Great Leap Forward.

As I type this I went and found my copy of Billy Bragg's album 'Workers' playtime ' cos I wanted to check and yep lo and behold he has the image of happy communist This is one of those occasions when I almost wish the God i believed in was the vicious judgemental harsh one that some fundamentalists of all flavours seem to look to. This was brilliantly written but a really difficult wading through the horror and disgusting callousness of the Chinese regime at the time of the Great Leap Forward.

As I type this I went and found my copy of Billy Bragg's album 'Workers' playtime ' cos I wanted to check and yep lo and behold he has the image of happy communist chinese folk sitting around well nourished and smiling and one of the songs is ' Waiting for the great leap foward '...Billy hold your head in shame. This appaling destruction of, at a conservative estimate, 45 milion people in four year from 1958 -1962 came about as a direct result of Mao and his fellow leaders' crass stupidity coupled with violence, hypocrisy and inability to ackowledge the wisdom of centuries.

As i read the account it made me more and more horrified as you see men and women totally unaware of their interconnection with nature, society or history grabbing hold of a vision and riding roughshod over any opposition. Agriculture collectivised to such an extent that farmers and their experience are disregarded and theory trumps any kind of knowledge. Society and indeed any familial loyalty is collectivised and attempts to defend and protect the voiceless and vulnerable is punished and decried as ' rightist ' or counterrevolutionary.

The truly astounding thing was how totally uncaring the leaders were and tragically this did not just mean the main leaders in power but those under them down in a foul cascade throughout every level. The knock on effect of the need to save face at the highest point in government when confronted with leaders of other governments cascades down through the need to shine before superiors at the lower ambitious levels down to the lowest local brute who just enjoyed exercising power untrammeled by any form of human kindness.

The Great Leap Forward destroyed the countryside and its very sensitively balanced situation in which poverty was never far away prior to Mao but his inability to trust the wisdom of farmers, the imposition of ridiculous theories of agriculture, his removal of so many of the land workers to build dams and irrigation systems which were unthought through, badly designed, incorrectly placed and never maintained made the failure of crops and the death of so many inevitable. Added to that the desire, at all costs, to keep this failure secret meant China continued to export even when millions of its own people starved.

As I read I kept asking myself, how can such blind cruelty go ahead ? The over arching sadness is the realization that once we put ideologies before people, once I allow my dogma to deaden me to the effects it has this sort of monstrous catastrophe happens again and again. Did Mao and his cronies genuinely believe that a few deaths were worth the sacrifice. Cannon fodder as it were for this Great Leap Forward.
This is an extraordinariy harrowing book, all the more so because it is to an extremely major extent wholly man-made. I am pleased i have read it but still regret that the God I believe in will be far more merciful to Mao, Deng Xiaoping, Ke Qingshi then I would be to them or indeed they were to their own people ...more

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Jun 03, 2014 fourtriplezed rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: asia, history, china

It is hard to exaggerate the sheer chilling effect this book by Frank Dikötter can have. It has made me realise that the statement by Gordon Kerr in his primer A Short History Of China that the death tolls in China throughout its documented 4000 years of history are ........"often staggering, demonstrating not only a disdain for human life" and with that also providing a "vast and inexhaustible supply of manpower". In the end this book brings the disdain and inexhaustible supply into focus.

The It is hard to exaggerate the sheer chilling effect this book by Frank Dikötter can have. It has made me realise that the statement by Gordon Kerr in his primer A Short History Of China that the death tolls in China throughout its documented 4000 years of history are ........"often staggering, demonstrating not only a disdain for human life" and with that also providing a "vast and inexhaustible supply of manpower". In the end this book brings the disdain and inexhaustible supply into focus.

The book itself is in 6 parts with the first 2 parts "The Pursuit of Utopia" and "Through the Valley of Death" covering the history of The Great Leap Forward with the final 4 parts discussing the effects on all parts of Chinese life from the lowly peasant through to the political consequences. There is " An Essay on the Sources" that is a vital explanation of the research used to produce this history.

There have been and still are debates as to what Communism is. I, in a way, hardly care because after reading this book to my mind the Chinese Communist Party during the Great Leap Forward was attempting a form of State Corporatism that has had nothing comparable historically except maybe Stalinist USSR?

I could no doubt real off the statistics on the death and destruction etc that Dikötter has researched but in the end I might bring to the attention of the reader strange little chapter called "Nature" in part 3 "Destruction". It seems to me that the Chinese have been "fighting" nature for many a long century from attempts to control the various floods and other natural events that blight all nations. During The Great Leap Forward the "fight" against nature was at times, to use a word from Dikötter, bizarre. Historically China had depleted it forest for various reasons such as need for firewood etc but The Great Leap Forward at the behest of Mao took it to a new level. "there is a new war: we should open fire on nature" he said and so they did. Forests were decimated, mountains levelled as backyard furnaces flourished in some egotistical attempt to outstrip British steel production. It reached a point that after the destruction of the forests that farmers took to felling their orchards to keep warm during the winters. The consequences of that are obvious. In the end drainage systems became blocked with mud and silt as the rains caused even more issues to the many thousands of square kilometres of barren lands and with that the villages and towns that suffered flooding and starvation. Hu Yoabang travelled heavily during 1961 and denied the effect of the rains as a cause of the devastation stating "the rainfall was basically normal".
Dikötter covers other areas such as the over use of pesticides, pollution, etc but the war on nature well and truly reached the heights of bizarre in 1958 with Mao's call to eliminate rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows. The war on sparrows reaches the point of being weirder than fantasy. Sparrows were targeted because they ate grain, the fruits of the labour of the masses, and so began a mass mobilisation to conquer them. For several days nests were attacked, sparrows shot out of the air with thousands of people banging drums etc forcing petrified sparrows to fall from the air from exhaustion. Shanghai reported that it had eliminated 1,367,440 of this pesky bird. Shanghai also eliminated 1,213,05 cockroaches for good measure. By April 1960 the realisation was that sparrows ate insects but it was then too late as they were now almost extinct. Insect infestation ruined crops and with that further famine. Locusts had a great time as well.

One of the consequences of The Great Leap Forward was the loss of reputation of Mao within the party. But he fought back with the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Dikötter has had access to various archives hence this book and The Tragedy of Liberation: A history of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957. Hopefully he writes a book on The Cultural Revolution as this would be an excellent trilogy on the Mao years.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone with interest in the astonishing and always fascinating history of the Middle Kingdom. ...more

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Nov 11, 2010 Praj rated it really liked it

One man’s utopia is another man’s dystopia. Utopia is a dream we aspire; an equilibrium that dignifies all human survival. When faultless notions embrace immorality and audacious obstinacy emitted from one solitary individual, an illusionary veil is fashioned camouflaging tyranny, torment and nightmarish endurance. On every occasion of my understanding Mao and his political explosion, I cannot help but to refer to my old frayed copy of Orwell’s 1984 blaring the ubiquitous caption:-"BIG BROTHER One man’s utopia is another man’s dystopia. Utopia is a dream we aspire; an equilibrium that dignifies all human survival. When faultless notions embrace immorality and audacious obstinacy emitted from one solitary individual, an illusionary veil is fashioned camouflaging tyranny, torment and nightmarish endurance. On every occasion of my understanding Mao and his political explosion, I cannot help but to refer to my old frayed copy of Orwell’s 1984 blaring the ubiquitous caption:-"BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU".

The Great Leap Forward or "China’s Economical Sputnik", whatever you may designate, was Mao’s calamitous infrastructure vehemently assembled on infinite human suffrage and radical collectivism. Mao reminds you of an overtly pushy anxious kid who would do anything just to get a pat on his back. The Great Famine paints a portrait of a murky hell endured by the Chinese for five uninterrupted years (1958-1962).The fact that one man can persuade a God-like authority to govern the free-will of individuals at the cost of their disintegrating corpses is enormously enraging. Mao’s obstinate pursuit to propel China into a superior industrial opulence uprooted the very essence of a country’s survival. A hallucination of profusion resulted not only in genocide but in cataclysmic damage to the agricultural, industrial and financial sectors of the country. Afflicted with starvation, dreadful diseases, disintegrated abodes and besmirched regulations; China became a mere crumb of existence laced with dreadfulness of boiling cadavers for fertilization purposes and impecunious villagers selling their offspring for a meager meal of steamed buns.

"Mass killings are not usually associated with Mao and the Great Leap Forward and China continues to benefit from a more favorable comparison with the devastation usually associated with Cambodia or the Soviet Russia."

Unofficial reports deduced a figure between 50-60 million deaths demarcating it to be communalist genocide. Amid the aftermath of the famine still claiming more lives Mao Zedong pronounced 'Cultural Revolution' in 1966.

Dikotter pens a transfixing and meticulous study of the demoralizing man-made tragedy that questions the authority of a single man and his right to vision himself as the redeemer beneath a garb of narcissist fanaticism and sycophancy.
...more

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Aug 13, 2011 Daisy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history, cultural, china, non-fiction

Been from China myself, this books is a masterpiece. It told me stories that was never been told to me when I was a student in China back in the 80s and 90s. All the characters described in the book such as Deng, Zhu, and Peng were described to us as heroes in Chinese schools. I truly believed it when Frank Dikotter said that in recent interviews, people who survived the great famine still blamed the Soviet Union for the whole disaster, it was what had been told to me in Chinese school. Even ...more

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Jul 19, 2012 Huma Rashid rated it really liked it

A very informative, well researched book about the effects of the disastrous Great Leap Forward, a supposed revolution in industry and agriculture dreamt up by the fuckwit known as Mao Zedong.

It's long and dense, but a valuable, compelling read. The author focuses way more on the politics and political hierarchy of the times, at the expense of more personal stories from on-the-ground, in-the-trenches, but attempts to make up for that in the last part of the book.

It's well written enough, but A very informative, well researched book about the effects of the disastrous Great Leap Forward, a supposed revolution in industry and agriculture dreamt up by the fuckwit known as Mao Zedong.

It's long and dense, but a valuable, compelling read. The author focuses way more on the politics and political hierarchy of the times, at the expense of more personal stories from on-the-ground, in-the-trenches, but attempts to make up for that in the last part of the book.

It's well written enough, but suffers due to occasionally awkward wording and usage issues. For example, the author repeatedly uses 'decimate' as a synonym for 'annihilate.' Decimate means to destroy every tenth part. If I decimate a plate of ten cookies, I only ate one. The author will spend an entire chapter talking about how many people died of the famine, and will end on a sentence about how the famine 'decimated' rural towns, which causes the reader to think all of a sudden, "Eh, no big deal," despite the fact that all evidence points to the fact that this was a very big deal. Random word flubs like that would often take me out of the book, and I'd have to force myself back in.

If this book can be distilled down to a few bullet points, the salient points the author keeps hitting again and again:

- Mao thought he was some sort of demi-god that knew everything about everything
- Mao was, in fact, a galloping, raging idiot of a nutsack
- Fuck Mao Zedong
- No, seriously, fuck Mao Zedong
- The big ideological problem was that he took the "People's Army" and made that a reality on every stage of society, every single rung of the ladder, so that farmers toiling in the fields were also 'soldiers,' and that kind of useless rhetoric is quite socially, culturally, and politically damaging in both the long and short run
- Fuck Mao Zedong
- The environment was plundered to the point that it's a miracle that it recovered at all
- Fuck Mao Zedong
- The Great Famine wasn't just a famine: it was a collapse of virtually every sector of the economy. It wasn't that people ran out of food. The food was often there. But distribution failed. Inflation ran rampant. Corruption soared. Beaurocracy placed a stranglehold on ordinary government mechanisms. All resources, not just foodstuffs, became scarce or seriously defective. Ancient cultural rites and religions, anything that held the society together and was traditionally used to keep destructive forces like violence at bay, were systematically wiped out. All of this was ignored at the top, or explicitly encouraged at the top.
- Mao had a hard on for making things rough for Russia because Stalin used to treat Mao like the little nutsack that he was.
- No, seriously, fuck Mao Zedong, may he rot in hell forever, if you believe in hell.

The End.

Also, read this book. I highly recommend it. You will come away knowing more than you ever wanted to about this dark time in China's history, and how much Mao Zedong sucks. ...more

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Aug 07, 2013 Nick Lincoln rated it really liked it

Shelves: economics, politics, historical

I'll keep this brief. When cuddly old Uncle "Wedgie" Benn dies and the eulogies pour forth, remember him as an life-long apologist for Mao, the biggest of the socialist mass-murderers of the 20th century.

Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot et al pale by comparison to Mao. Read this book and try to comprehend what this moron did to 45 million of his own people.

Given the grim subject matter it's a "good" read - depressing but never grinding. It's essential for anyone interested in the evils of the big state ...more

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Jun 10, 2013 Magnuslu rated it did not like it

Unfortunately, this is a totally confusing ramble about statistics. The information would better be presented in tables and graphs rather than in prose. The other part of the book is about quotes or not by far too many people. Again, we get lost, especially those of us who only know a couple of the names in Chinese politics of the time. I stopped reading it more or less halfway through. I'm sure I caught most of the gist of the story, but spared myself endless tons of rice and other produce.

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Feb 18, 2019 Dmitri rated it liked it

Shelves: china

This is the least compelling volume of Frank Dikotter's recent trilogy on the years of communist rule in China from 1945-1976. The three works are undoubtably required reading if you are interested in the period, and are limited to English (as I am). This book notably won a prestigious Samuel Johnson Award for best non-fiction writing in 2011. Many of its more entertaining parts are excerpted from "The Private Life of Chairman Mao", a fascinating memoir written by Mao's personal doctor.

Dikotter This is the least compelling volume of Frank Dikotter's recent trilogy on the years of communist rule in China from 1945-1976. The three works are undoubtably required reading if you are interested in the period, and are limited to English (as I am). This book notably won a prestigious Samuel Johnson Award for best non-fiction writing in 2011. Many of its more entertaining parts are excerpted from "The Private Life of Chairman Mao", a fascinating memoir written by Mao's personal doctor.

Dikotter is a modern historian in the sense that he employs 'scientific methods' of statistics and economics in his research and writing. His deep dives into provincial archives and local interviews result in stark conclusions about the Great Leap Forward, a disastrous attempt to boost factory and farm output during 1958-'62. He claims 45 million people died, mainly from starvation due to collective farming initiatives gone awry. His accounting is not entirely original or controversial (see "Tombstone" by Yang and "Hungry Ghosts" by Becker).

This is certainly an important and professional work of history, but it is hindered by two problems in my estimation. The first is that Dikotter, while correct about the abject failure of Mao's plan, can see only evil in its goals. Misguided efforts at agricultural and industrial reform become cynical exercises in political infighting and power consolidation. Attempts to address poverty and underdevelopment, tragically flawed, were made merely to seize wealth and overthrow social order.

Paradoxically perhaps, Mao's dream to achieve communism may have been an altruistic one. Did Mao plan to kill his own people? This is inevitably a central question that must be asked. The answer for Dikotter is that Mao saw mass death as collateral damage in his struggle to fulfill Marxist destiny. This follows a trend in recent western histories of Mao as a monster on the scale of Hitler or Stalin. Although similar in raw numbers of fatalities, in methods or aims the comparisons are less apt.

The second problem is the book is not that engaging, unless you can become absorbed by superficially presented statistics and economic data. Any account of the 20th century's greatest man-made disaster would be incomplete without these, but should also explore the historical context in a more comprehensive way. In this regard Dikotter adopts a reductionist approach where all is due to Mao.

The 'people' primarily play a role as the victims of Mao's paranoid delusions, goaded by the stick and the ladle. Although seen as unprincipled slackers and saboteurs, they are also cunning and cruel ideologues, as argument demands. Ironically they are accused again of the same fabricated crimes once obtained by forced confessions, and now culled from the archives of a discredited totalitarian state.

The question of how a nation of 650 million (and their leaders) came under the command of a purported madman is left largely unresolved. The answer might be found in desperation to transcend war and poverty, rather than cowering before coercion and conformity. It is worth noting that the other two volumes on the Communist Revolution ('45-'57) and particularly the Cultural Revolution ('62-'76) both offer more insightful examinations of their respective periods. ...more

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Nov 14, 2018 Steve rated it it was amazing

This book makes a significant contribution to the knowledge of the common man, viz. me. Like Anne Applebaum's work on the Soviet Union, Mr. Dikötter has undertaken revealing, comprehensive research on a subject little understood in the popular conscience and done so in an eminently readable form. The naïve among us, I suppose, imagine the human condition to be rather tame; after all, do we not live in a world of modernity, happiness and constant, unremitting forms of entertainment? Mao's Great ...more

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Apr 26, 2017 Leftbanker rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, economics-politics

I suppose that you can throw communism into the same pot as laws and sausages as far as things you don’t want to know about how they are made. You have to wonder about the collective damage done to the Chinese psyche when your omnipotent leader starves 35 million of his subjects to death simply to make a point in his argument. The logic involved in Mao’s Great Leap Forward is about a million times more Orwellian and anything George Orwell could have conceived in his darkest hour.

The bottom line ...more

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Jan 02, 2012 Chip rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, history

3.5 rating. Well written, interesting, and worth the read. However, it struck me as an expanded magazine article - it could have been much shorter without losing much. Or, perhaps better said, I think it could/should have had both more breadth and depth. E.g., it seems lacking in comparison to other books recently read - Clark's Iron Kingdom (re the history of Prussia) and The Emperor of All Maladies (a "biography" of cancer), both of which are, admittedly, superb.

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Aug 22, 2011 Huw Evans rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: chinese, history, top-shelf

This is a book about the effects of slavery at all levels of a totalitarian regime. In 1958 Chairman Mao effectively fell out with Stalin and determined that the People's Republic of China would become self sufficient, no matter what the cost. He became a slave to the idea that the population would take the Great Leap Forward willingly. He was aware that there would be suffering but felt that it would be worth the human cost.

The entire population were enslaved into the GLF resulting in the This is a book about the effects of slavery at all levels of a totalitarian regime. In 1958 Chairman Mao effectively fell out with Stalin and determined that the People's Republic of China would become self sufficient, no matter what the cost. He became a slave to the idea that the population would take the Great Leap Forward willingly. He was aware that there would be suffering but felt that it would be worth the human cost.

The entire population were enslaved into the GLF resulting in the displacement of whole populations to achieve Mao's dream. The natural cycle of farming was destroyed, farm implements were melted down to export iron and steel and an already weak infrastructure disintegrated almost completely. Middle ranking party cadres effectively had total control of their minions and were too scared to report factual failures so invented fictional successes. They had carte blanche to reach impossible targets and became the masters of life and death. Millions died of starvation, hundreds of thousands were killed for being incapable of work. The elderly, women and children were singled out because they were less productive. In the face of such destruction it is incredible that the Chinese people survived at all.

When I was in China, eight years ago, our supervisor was a delightful elderly lady called Maureen. She was the daughter of two doctors who were labelled Rightist during the GLF and she was sent into the mountains to dig railway tunnels and lay track. She would give no details, which I had assumed was due to political concerns.

Dikotter is an objective reporter of Chinese history, which is only just coming to the attention of the rest of the world. His style is understated and scholarly which makes the horrific suffering of the Chinese people all the more barbaric. He comments rather than blames.

Personally I found this book almost as emotionally exhausting to read as If This Is a Man / The Truce and I could only read it in small chunks. Fortunately the chapters are individually short and I was able to intersperse other lighter reads without losing the thread. His research is meticulous and he has access to PRC data on a scale only dreamed of by Langley! However, he demeans his work by making trite and unsupported statements (e.g. "Genocide, after allo, is only made possible with the advent of the modern state" p298) that detract from the overall excellence of his work. ...more

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Jun 14, 2017 Tam rated it really liked it

Shelves: history

When I picked up this book, I was planning to read, probably, 10 pages per night. That sounds about right, I thought I could deal with the anger and the sadness generated from 10 pages of writing. It turns out that it was harder.

It's almost strange that it's so hard. After all, Dikotter writes with such a calm, almost neutral voice. I myself couldn't keep calm as the horror plays out. Perhaps all of us know the general idea of the Great Leap Forward: collectivization, collapse of farming, When I picked up this book, I was planning to read, probably, 10 pages per night. That sounds about right, I thought I could deal with the anger and the sadness generated from 10 pages of writing. It turns out that it was harder.

It's almost strange that it's so hard. After all, Dikotter writes with such a calm, almost neutral voice. I myself couldn't keep calm as the horror plays out. Perhaps all of us know the general idea of the Great Leap Forward: collectivization, collapse of farming, industry, service, deterioration of life and nature, great man-made famine, people died, a lot. Some estimation of total death tolls is given, argued over in history. Yet all of that is so abstract, until one actually digs into the matter, until this book.

I feel like almost every line in this book is taken from sources, and at times I was overwhelmed by the number of statistics and of the anecdotes given. In fact, half of the book is dedicated to detailing the sources, so this is indeed a shorter book than you expected. Dikotter is able to categorize the great volume of information into clear and concise writing, giving reader the medium-sized overall picture, and presenting side by side many personal stories to encourage us to experience at a more human level. I said `medium-sized' because given the current state of access of archives in China, it is impossible to get to the complete big one. At first I was frustrated, I was demanding more from the author, hoping for coverage in other provinces, until he discusses the limit of sources at the end. So potential readers, be patient.

I was laughing bitterly at the end when some local leaders were finally arrested, accused, and taken down by the party. Sure they were responsible, they were the perpetrators, yet they are not the roots of the problem, it is the system that allows such behaviors to emerge. There are leaders that try to feed their people as much as possible, there are firms inflating numbers to provide for their workers, but more prevalent are the disgusting stories, such as ones in Gansu (Cam Túc) and Sichuan (Tứ Xuyên) and many other places where humans were treated like dirt, tortured, beaten, humiliated, starved to death.

I chatted with a Chinese friend a while ago. He kinda defended Mao, saying the flaw is mostly in the system. There was this lack of information, every one from the lowest level would mess with reports and data. Mao didn't know. He perhaps had good intentions, he was partly responsible, but not all. Fuck that. Mao created the system. He created a terror-based power in the highest level of the government, and it transmitted to all the lower levels. He knew and heard some voices but deliberately ignored and refused to accept evidence, until all became too visible. And once all was out, he blamed imaginary enemies, those rightists and counter-revolutionaries, blamed local leaders, and he let others clear the mess for him. Fuck that man. That person in power isn't pursuing greatness for Chinese, he was pursuing the glory for an abstract Zhonghua and for himself, his pride too delicate, his image in front of the international leaders too important. And I was thoroughly disappointed with all the other politicians in the period, except for perhaps Peng Dehuai (Bành Đức Hoài), even with Liu Shaoqi (Lưu Thiếu Kỳ) despite his comeback and resistance to Mao later on, and feel so disgusted with Deng Xiaoping and Zhou Enlai. Fuck them all. They are all so far removed from real people, looking at China from so much distance, being aware of some problems but often deliberately (consciously or unconsciously) chose to ignore the signs. They are so steeped in the one and only problem, how to stay in power, and if Mao represents power, how to stay in his favor. Was it because the country so big and the population so large, tens, hundreds, thousands, hundred thousands, then even millions of deaths don't sound that bad to them anymore?

It's a fucking sick story where one cannot take revenge for the dead. Well, no, actually historians are our heroes. But it's still very painful. ...more

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Jun 29, 2011 Skedatt rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction

Like most of my reviews, this is a personal response.

Despite the fact that the author uses admittedly "soft" sources (341) (due to the difficulty in accessing state archives that are not available to the public) it is a chilling account of what happened during this time.

Being a young mother, it was particularly difficult to read about the effects on the children, the women, and the elderly. The fact that women were forced out of the home and forced to leave their children in state run child ...more

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Mar 17, 2014 Steve Cunningham rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Gruesome, horrifying, meticulously researched and eminently readable. Stalin is often (mis?)quoted as saying that "a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic"; his disciple Mao Zedong may have taken this literally, presiding over a bureaucratic regime so wholly, shockingly, wilfully corrupt and incompetent that the margin for error of those who died in the great Chinese famine is in the region of 15 million people (between roughly 30 and 45 million deaths). As a work of ...more

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Jun 16, 2013 Wai Chim rated it it was amazing

I read this...and want to puke. But because the contents of this books are so enlightening and powerful and the story of this tragic time is so gripping. It's a non-fiction book but the way it's presented you feel like you've been thrown into a real story. And all you can do is ask "why?"

I'm so glad that this books has finally been made possible. It's fresh and recent but because of the intense secretness of the official archives, the whole tragedy risks being erased from modern memory.

Everyone ...more

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Sep 29, 2015 Josh Steimle rated it it was amazing

Holy...

This is not a good book to read if you're in need of cheering up. Also not good reading for when you're training for a 70K trail run, or doing anything physical, as you'll find your performance dragged down significantly.

If you need evidence of the pain and suffering a small group of people can do when given a monopoly on violence, or in other words, the power of government, this is a stark example.

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Jul 16, 2011 Carolyn rated it it was amazing

A well-researched book, even considering how difficult it still is to get information about this famine out of China. It very clearly describes the workings of Mao's inner circle in the first half of the book and the second half details the results of the failed communal experience. If you ever wondered why Communism doesn't work, read this fascinating, heartbreaking book. It should be required reading in colleges. (which will never happen.)

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Sep 27, 2012 Zeke rated it did not like it

Shelves: marxism, dishonest, fiction, history, non-fiction

Discrediting Mao has become an industry for a reason. As late stage capitalism metastasizes, imperialist armies rush out across the globe, and we accelerate past the global warming tipping point, the 21st century ruling class must inoculate us against remembering and calling upon the successes of socialism in the 20th century. The latest book produced by this well funded project is Mao’s Great Famine, by Frank Dikötter. It is more a collection of selected anecdotes than a legitimate analysis, Discrediting Mao has become an industry for a reason. As late stage capitalism metastasizes, imperialist armies rush out across the globe, and we accelerate past the global warming tipping point, the 21st century ruling class must inoculate us against remembering and calling upon the successes of socialism in the 20th century. The latest book produced by this well funded project is Mao’s Great Famine, by Frank Dikötter. It is more a collection of selected anecdotes than a legitimate analysis, loose with data and weak on context, failing to discuss the famines recurrent in China in recent centuries. An example of the methods used is the photo of the starving child on the original book cover. This picture is from the 1946 famine in capitalist Nationalist China, not from the Great Leap Forward.

During the Great Leap Forward planning and political errors, drought, and the Soviet assistance pull-out resulted in starvation and many deaths. Much of the newly retrieved data on this tragedy actually originated from teams Mao sent out to determine what was happening and how to fix it. But Mr. Dikötter's methods in compiling this and other data is dishonest and immoral. For example, Cormac Ó Gráda, a leading scholar of famine and professor of economics at University College Dublin, lays out (in his 15 March 2011 China Study Group review) how Dikötter uses an unrealistic low 'normal' mortality rate of 1 percent in order to maximize his death count. Ó Gráda says the 10 per thousand adopted by Dikötter is "implausibly low", and goes on to say that "The crude death rate in China in the wake of the revolution was probably about 25 per thousand. It is highly unlikely that the Communists could have reduced it within less than a decade to the implausibly low 10 per thousand adopted here (p. 331). Had they done so, they would have “saved” over 30 million lives in the interim! One can hardly have it both ways." In other words, in addition to deaths from starvation, Dikötter effectively includes a huge number of deaths from diseases, accidents, violence, and age. This all in an effort to pump up the old original falsely developed figures of 30 million etc. into a new lie of 43 million!

Using the same methodology of manipulating population numbers and stirring in anecdotes about failed projects, people mis-behaving, and so forth could be applied to the New Deal Dust Bowl era in the US to say "FDR killed millions!". As Indian economist Amartya Sen has said: “compared with China’s rapid increase in life expectancy in the Mao era, the capitalist experiment in India could be said to have caused 4 million excess deaths a year since India’s independence…India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame, 1958-61”. As India's four million excess deaths per year has continued right up to the present day, it could be said capitalism has now killed 240 million there. But no one will fund the writing of that book. By contrast, Dikötter's book research was funded by five different foundations.

Even one, or a thousand or a million people dying of starvation is terrible. What kind of mind and what kind of agenda thinks it is not, and so has to keep on inflating it? Buried in the book are some assumptions and qualifiers to make the methods appear less dishonest. But one main purpose has been accomplished, which is to give the sound bite that talk show hosts can yell at people stuck in traffic: "Mao killed 43 million!".

In Mao's time, there were problems and errors from which lessons can be learned. But also during those decades, life expectancy in China more than doubled, and China achieved what capitalist U.S. never will: a universal, just, and fair health care system. Industry grew by more than 10 percent a year during the Cultural Revolution, and by the 1970's China had solved its historic food problem. This revolution saved untold lives. And it will only be a revolution that ultimately saves humanity.

For today? I support and recommend Bob Avakian's new synthesis of communism. It is a viable strategy for revolution today, learning from the great successes as well as errors of communist revolution in the 20th century, and providing a map forward to do even better. ...more

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Dec 19, 2012 Eric Li rated it liked it

While the book itself was okay, I'm really glad I read this book because it really makes me want to talk to my parents more about their experiences during this time period (I haven't had a chance yet but I'll be seeing them in a few days). So thank you Dikotter for that.

Onto the book itself, it feels a little too much like an academic writing. There are tons of numbers thrown in there and he explains how he got these numbers and addresses some of the possible biases for the numbers which While the book itself was okay, I'm really glad I read this book because it really makes me want to talk to my parents more about their experiences during this time period (I haven't had a chance yet but I'll be seeing them in a few days). So thank you Dikotter for that.

Onto the book itself, it feels a little too much like an academic writing. There are tons of numbers thrown in there and he explains how he got these numbers and addresses some of the possible biases for the numbers which honestly is not really what I care about.

In the beginning of the book he addresses the politics of the whole thing and how it got started from the Communist leader's perspective. Seeing Russia's progress made them want to appear powerful on the world stage. Mao tried to mobilize the people and force them to work on huge projects which dragged many of them away from food production and into irrigation projects. To replace the lost food production, they used "innovative" farming methods that didn't seem to work such as deep ploughing and planting a ton of seeds really close together with a lot of fertilizer. At first it was okay but the leaders kept on wanting to one up each other and take on massive projects that didn't make sense and they stated that their county had produced this much grain when it actually didn't. China kept on importing heavy machinery and industrial equipment while exporting raw resources at ridiculously low prices to appear like a strong nation. After a year or so it terribly backfired and the famine struck.

The second half of the book looks at more personal accounts and how everyday people dealt with the lack of resources. Dikotter doesn't really try to be graphic but some of the acts themselves are incredibly gruesome. He examines how vulnerable populations were affected and how the lack of food tore families apart.

Overall it was an interesting book but it was a little too much on the academic side for me. However each chapter is like 7 pages so it feels like you're making great progress which I like. Also I'm not sure what nationality is but Dikotter spells some words funny like edema is oedema. It made me chuckle. Anyways, if you're really into numbers and want to see a guy spell edema funny, this is the book for you. ...more

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Aug 27, 2013 Bou rated it really liked it

Shelves: english, downloaded, on-ereader, non-fiction, ebook

This is a book you won't find in Chinese libraries - it destroys the image of Mao Zedong as the benevolant leader of Communist China. It is a book full of tragedy, the so-called Great Leap Forward which took the lives of approximately 30 million Chinese people (some estimates even consider a death toll of 45 million) during the great famine which was caused.

The Great Leap Forward starts with the bidding between China and Russia. Kruschchev boosts that Russia will overtake the United States in 15 This is a book you won't find in Chinese libraries - it destroys the image of Mao Zedong as the benevolant leader of Communist China. It is a book full of tragedy, the so-called Great Leap Forward which took the lives of approximately 30 million Chinese people (some estimates even consider a death toll of 45 million) during the great famine which was caused.

The Great Leap Forward starts with the bidding between China and Russia. Kruschchev boosts that Russia will overtake the United States in 15 years and Mao, who does not want to be the underdog, boosts that China will catch up with or overtake the United Kingdom in 15 years. All conservatism is swept aside, everybody who voices criticism is being purged and millions of Chinese peasants are set to work on large irrigation works, or at little furnaces to increase steel production. Meanwhile, the crop is rotting in the fields. Chinese provincial leaders - out of fear of being labelled as rightist - boost that their provinces will create bumper harvests. When the state takes its share, nothing is left for the peasants, resulting in famine and death.

Frank Dikötter offers a tale of personal people in various chapters, including the impact on agriculture, industry, trade, housing and nature. Also, Dikötter explains the impact on various peoples like children, women and the elderly, which are ruthlesly impacted by the chosen few. All food is being distributed in canteens, and the manager of the canteens holds absolute power - everybody who is to old or sick to work gets no food, resulting in mass starvation.

This is not a fun book, the tales are harrowing and it shows chairman Mao in a negative light, blaiming him (and only him) to be the cause of the disaster. Something that you will not find in the ' official' communist history.

4 stars because (in my eyes) Frank could have explained more about the political background of all Chinese communist leaders who were involved in the Great Leap Forward and explain a little bit more about the political system at that time. But besides that, this book will definitively explain everything you need to know about the starvation during the Great Leap Forward. ...more

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Aug 07, 2014 Alberto rated it liked it

Disappointing.

Dikotter did a lot of research for this book. He gets 5 stars for that. But the presentation of the material thematically makes it difficult to follow. If I were looking for a GENERAL indictment of communism or Maoism, I could think of no better collection of facts than this book (although he often devolves into sadomasochistic descriptions of the various atrocities that humans are capable of inflicting on each other). However, that's not what I was expecting from this book. I ...more

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Mar 14, 2017 Desirée Whittington rated it it was amazing

A horrific subject, well researched and clearly organized. I would most definitely recommend this read if you would like a comprehensive and thorough look at the famine and its terrible effect on millions of people under Mao Zedong.

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Oct 31, 2018 Aaron Million rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history

When most people hear about or think of flagrant human rights abuses or evil regimes in the 20th century, what comes to mind – understandably – is Hitler's Nazi Germany, Stalin's brutal purges in the 1930s and 40s, the Khmer Rouge, or the ethnic cleansing in 1990s Bosnia. What doesn't tend to come to mind, but is equally as appalling and horrible, is Mao's “Great Leap Forward” from 1958-1962 in China. Reading Frank Dikotter's intense and well-researched book after eating is probably not When most people hear about or think of flagrant human rights abuses or evil regimes in the 20th century, what comes to mind – understandably – is Hitler's Nazi Germany, Stalin's brutal purges in the 1930s and 40s, the Khmer Rouge, or the ethnic cleansing in 1990s Bosnia. What doesn't tend to come to mind, but is equally as appalling and horrible, is Mao's “Great Leap Forward” from 1958-1962 in China. Reading Frank Dikotter's intense and well-researched book after eating is probably not recommended. Multiple times while reading this book, I had to stop and think about what I had just read and try to imagine the awful suffering inflicted upon millions of people, most of them innocent of any wrong-doing. Their only mistake was in being Chinese citizens and thus subject to Chairman Mao's radical decisions and immoral rule.

Dikotter's writing is lucid and detailed, despite many records being either still off-limits to scholars or destroyed altogether. That makes the sheer magnitude of what happened even more difficult to comprehend because the world still knows only a fraction of what occurred. But the part we do know is more than enough to know that atrocities were committed on a daily basis, and peoples' lives were destroyed or ended in horrifying ways. Some examples of this in the book: On page 173, Dikotter writes of dead bodies being used “to fertilize the land...An elderly lady who had been buried only days earlier was stripped of her clothes, her naked body dumped by the roadside.” On page 256, writing about pregnant women being beaten and forced to work: “In one district in Sichuan alone twenty-four women miscarried after being compelled to work in the fields. Chen Yuanming, who objected, was kicked between her legs by the cadre in charge and crippled for life.” Writing about the treatment of elderly people on page 264, Dikotter states: “Abuse was rife. Some of the elderly were beaten, even those with only a few meager possessions were robbed, and others were put on a slow starvation diet.”It would be little to no exaggeration to say that almost every page of this book contains something like the above.

Reading about that type of behavior makes me wonder how could Mao and his minions be so evil and apathetic to inflict such punishment on Chinese citizens. Only someone who is truly despicable would first create a collectivization program, which is what this was supposed to be, and then be immune to the extreme suffering that it caused. Mao had local Communist party cadres take control of everything. Literally everything. People were forced to give up all of their earthly possessions, were forced to relocate to fields, and work in communes for the government. The people got little to no food, as the system was so riddled with mismanagement and corruption that much of it rotted. The produce that was not ruined was given to high party officials and, even more incredibly, exported to other countries. Yes, China was starving its own people, but still at times exported food elsewhere. And at the center of all of this was Mao Zedong, party chairman. His rule was virtually unquestioned, his whims were orders and had to be obeyed, his thoughts ruined the lives of millions.

There is a point in the middle, and also at the end, where the book becomes clogged with statistics. It is understandable why Dikotter uses them so liberally, as they help to tell the story of the destruction of the land and its people. But reading stat after stat does get overwhelming, and the stats at times run together. It is difficult not to come away with, at minimum, a strong disgust for Mao, Zhou Enlai, and the other party functionaries who were in power and could have either kept this entire fiasco from starting, or stopped it sooner. After reading this, I do not think they were any better than Hitler or Stalin. When most of the pages of the book refer to people being brutally beaten, tortured, starved, or killed, it is difficult to think otherwise. There is even a short chapter on cannibalism.

This is a worthwhile read, but the pure essence of the subject matter makes it a difficult one. Trying to comprehend the sheer scope of the humanitarian disaster is an exercise in futility as I would suspect that only someone who has been through those types of experiences would be able to relate. While Dikotter does not mention this, I have to think that one of the hardest things for the citizenry to deal with was a lack of hope; they did not know when, or if, this awful experiment would ever end. If you have any interest in 20th century Chinese history, human rights atrocities, or Mao, you may want to add this book to your reading list. But keep in mind that you will finish it by questioning how people can be so cruel towards others.

Grade: B- ...more

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Sep 08, 2019 Praachi Misra rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book was a difficult read. It is not something one can gallop through. It is superbly researched, and written in a factual style, rightly overcoming the inclination to embellish or catastrophise.

However, the horror cannot be unseen. Every few pages, I had to put the book down to try and grasp the enormity of the violence and chaos unleashed during the 'Great Leap Forward'. Social structures that had existed for centuries took only a decade to crumble completely. Here, I look at the period ...more

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Aug 27, 2018 Sotiris Makrygiannis rated it really liked it

Shelves: internet, audio-book

A must read in order to understand modern China. Mao's giant leap forward cost around 30 million people but created 500 million in the decade ahead. From cannibalism of humans, cannibalism of animals, eating mud cakes and plastic rise, the extent of this sounds like Europe in middle ages.
When you see Chinese, remember those are the kids of parents that had almost nothing to eat and that affected their body structure and the characteristics of the next generations.
How can you blame 1? You ...more

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Dec 31, 2017 Ronald Chan rated it did not like it

My view on this book can be summed up by what Han Dongping said about it in "Remembering Socialist China, 1949-1979":

"Frank Dikötter, the author of Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, won the 2011 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, Britain's most prestigious book award for non-fiction. It is also rumoured that he received a $2 million scholarship for writing his book. But one of my friends in Malaysia alerted me that the front cover of his book used a My view on this book can be summed up by what Han Dongping said about it in "Remembering Socialist China, 1949-1979":

"Frank Dikötter, the author of Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, won the 2011 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, Britain's most prestigious book award for non-fiction. It is also rumoured that he received a $2 million scholarship for writing his book. But one of my friends in Malaysia alerted me that the front cover of his book used a picture from Life magazine of 1946. This friend wrote to Dikötter about this. Dikötter answered saying that he used the picture of the famine of 1946 in China because he could not find any pictures of the Great Leap Forward famine. Such is the academic honesty of anti-Mao scholars in the West. Because they could not find any authentic pictures, they resort to fake pictures. And yet they are able to get away with such dishonesty.

Frank Dikötter also claimed that he had documents to prove that Chairman Mao was willing to starve half of the Chinese people to death so that the other half could have more than enough to eat. My friend challenged him to produce the document. Dikötter said that he had an agreement with the source of the document not to show the document to anybody. But under pressure, he agreed to let my friend in Hong Kong to see the document. It turned out that the document was a speech by Chairman Mao at a meeting discussing the investment planned in industrial projects. China had planned to launch over one thousand industrial projects in 1960. Chairman Mao said in the speech that he would rather cut the number of investment projects by half so the Government would have enough money to quickly complete the remaining half of the projects. But Dikötter interpreted Chairman Mao’s words to mean that he was willing to starve half the Chinese population in order that the other half have more than enough to eat. Dikötter claimed that he was a China specialist. I wonder if he was able to read and understand Chinese text, or he was in fact a linguistic genius who could read into the Chinese language something that was not there in the first place."
(http://www.rupe-india.org/59/han.html) ...more

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Aug 03, 2011 Richard rated it liked it · review of another edition

There is a great deal to commend in Dikötter's chronicle of The Great Leap Forward. The work undertaken in sifting through what must have been mountains of (often misleading) statistics and reports to produce a damning indictment on the madness which savaged a population, stands as a testament to the author's academic excellence. One would expect it to take a place as one of the key works on the period, to be used by academics in the seemingly futile attempt to comprehend the scale of suffering ...more

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Jan 20, 2013 Steve Mclellan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This book represents an overview of one the most shocking man-made cataclysms in world history. In this book we see how one autocratic leader took the idea of the 'Great Leap Forward' in order to propel onward his ambition for China to be a major industrial nation. In the process of trying to realize his dream, Mao instigated the destruction of forty-five million people's lives. The way in which the history in this book has been researched, its attention to detail gives new life to all the ...more

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About Frank Dikötter

Frank Dikötter

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Frank Dikötter is the Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong and Professor of the Modern History of China on leave from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Born in the Netherlands in 1961, he was educated in Switzerland and graduated from the University of Geneva with a Double Major in History and Russian. After two years in the People's Republic ...more