There is probably no country that has suffered greater famine than China. From 1958 to 1961, the dictator Mao Zedong tried to show the superiority of his brand of communism by a ‘Great Leap Forward’ of forced industrialization. Remaining private land and even cooking utensils were confiscated and agricultural workers were diverted to steel making and public works projects. As a result, around forty million people are estimated to have starved to death, and life expectancy collapsed by twenty years. Even after this disaster, food was scarce in China because the collective farms stifled work and
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