Re: China's Great Leap Forward

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Alan G Isaac wrote:

>  but I fear you plan to
> wiggle out of even that by trying again to blame the weather.
> Do you agree that ex-president Liu once said that the famine
> was probably 70% man-made and 30% the result of natural
> causes?

This after I wrote in my previous post:

Reports of severe natural disasters in isolated places and of bad weather conditions
in larger areas appeared in the Chinese press in the Spring of  1959, after the
Wuhan Plenum in December 1958 already made policy adjustments  based on the
technical criticism of Peng Dehuai on the Peoples Communes initiative. In March,
1959, the entire Hunan region was under flood and soon after that the spring harvest
in South-west China was lost through drought.  The 1958 grain production yielded 250
million tons instead the projected 375 million tons,  and
1.2 million tons of peanuts instead of the projected 4 million tons. In 1959, the
harvest came to 175 million tons. In 1960, the situation deteriated further. Damaged
by drought  and other bad weather affected 55% of the cukltivated area. Some 60% of
the agricultural land in the
North received no rain at all.  The yield for 1960 was 142 million tons. In 1961,
the weather situation improved only slightly. In 1963, the Chinese press called the
famine of 1961-62 the most severe since 1879. In 1961, a  food storage program
oblidged China to import 6.2 million
tons of grain from Canada and Australia. In 1962, import decreased to 5.32 million
tons.  Between  1961 to 1965 China imported a total of 30 million tons of grain at a
cost of US$2 billion. (Robert Price, 'International  Trade of Communist China' Vol
II, pp 600-1). More would
have imported except US pressure of Canada and Austrailia to  limit sales to China
and US interference with shipping prevented China from importing more. Canada and
Australia were both anxious to provide unlimited credit to China for grain purchase,
but alas, US policy prevailed and millions starved in China.

University of Wisconsin's Maurice Meisner, who many consider to be the dean of post
WW II Chinese scholarship, presents three related ways of looking at the 20-30
million deaths caused by the Great Famine begun in the late 1950s under Mao's tenure
in his THE DENG XIAOPING ERA AND INQUIRY INTO THE FATE OF CHINESE SOCIALISM
1978-1994 (New York:
Hill and Wang, 1996).  One, it was a horrible miscalculation.  Two, it was the end
of famines on this scale (literally, that had been occurring for the last few
centuries off and on in China about every generation or so). In other words, it
brought this horrible historical pattern to an end.
Or, three, it was both.  Both a horrible miscalculation, while also afterwards
bringing this pattern of famine every generation of so to an end, thus, perhaps,
saving millions.

To play Alan Issac favorite game: please provide a cite for his claim: "ex-president
Liu once said that the famine was probably 70% man-made and 30% the result of
natural causes."

>  For example, do you agree that
> while her people starved the state granaries were often
> full, and indeed China exported grain during the famine?  Do
> you agree that in an attempt to meet centrally imposed
> quotas grain was seized from farmers ("peasants") who were
> facing famine.  Do you agree that in early 1959, the State
> Statistical Bureau was dismantled and replaced by "good news
> reporting stations" and that this delayed the needed
> response to a growing crisis.  (Just as China's current
> attempts to stifle the information flow surrounding the AIDS
> problem is contributing to that problem and, it follows,
> killing people.)  And do you agree that Mao himself saw the
> chaos of the GLF as his responsibility (e.g.,  "The chaos
> caused was on a grand scale and I take
> responsibility"---note the use of the word "caused").
>

Please provide cites for all the above allegations.
Speaking of AIDS, Ronald Reagan is the shining example of enlightened leadership.
Perhaps, Alan Isaac should read what Chomsky has to say about, Nixon, Bush, Reagan,
Bush policies.

> PS The following article by Jasper Becker
> may be of some interest in this discussion.
> (Of course Becker is a reporter, not an historian.)
> _

Becker is hardly a neutral reporter.  If Alan Isaac gets his information from
Becker, of the then British owned anti-China South China Morning Post in Hong Kong,
it is clear evidence of Isaac's intellectual objectivity.
As for Isaac's claim of backyard steel furnaces siphoning energy from argiculture,
it might help to notice that steel making was always halted during harvest and
spring planting times.

This case is closed.  I have most important things to do.


Henry C.K. Liu