The Great Chinese Famine was a famine that occurred between 1959 and 1961 in the People's Republic of China, with some scholars including 1958 or 1962. It is widely regarded as the deadliest famine and one of the greatest man-made disasters in history, with estimated starvation deaths ranging from 15 to 46 million, and newer estimates concentrated around 30 to 46 million. The worst-hit provinces were Anhui, Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou and Hunan.
Causes of the famine
The famine resulted from a combination of radical agricultural policies, social pressure, economic mismanagement and natural disasters such as droughts and floods. Under the Great Leap Forward, farming was organized into people's communes and private cultivation of individual plots was forbidden. Output targets set by regional leaders were appropriated by the state and distributed at its discretion, so food often failed to reach where it was most needed. Experts also point to unproven farming techniques, the Eliminate Sparrows campaign, and exaggerated reports of grain production.
Official reassessment
At the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference in early 1962, Liu Shaoqi, then President of China, attributed 30 percent of the famine to natural disasters and 70 percent to human error. After the start of reform and opening up, the Chinese Communist Party stated in June 1981 that the famine was mainly due to mistakes of the Great Leap Forward and the Anti-Right Deviation Struggle, along with some natural disasters and the Sino-Soviet split. The official name was also changed from Three Years of Natural Disasters to Three Years of Difficulty.