![]() ![]() Combining local data from various provinces, especially Sichuan, and the rigorous argumentation of Cao Shuji, who concluded in 2005 that 32.5 million premature deaths occurred, 4 Dikötter considers it necessary to add a dozen millions to that figure: a minimum of 45 million deaths, by the author’s calculations (p. 333). By way of conclusion, the last chapter offers a new tally of the number of deaths. A series of succinct but dense chapters (the book has 37) vividly depict – dare one say – survival strategies, repressive violence, the fate of the most vulnerable (children, women, the aged), the various ways in which people died, and the places where most deaths occurred: Xinyang (Henan), 3 Tongwei (Gansu), Guizhou, Anhui, Shandong, and Sichuan, not forgetting the laogai and laojiao victims. 4 Cao Shuji, Da jihuang: 1950-1961 nian de Zhongguo renkou (The Great Famine: China’s population 1959 (.)ģDikötter’s main contribution lies not so much in detailing the goings-on at the top, the broad outlines of which are known, but rather in describing and analysing local situations, enriched by raiding the contents of a dozen provincial archives that only recently became accessible.3 On what is conservatively (or euphemistically) called the “Xinyang incident” (more than a million (.).Convinced that he had found China’s Khrushchev, and fearing that Liu would denounce him later in a “secret speech,” Mao did all he could to prevent such a terrible eventuality: the book ends on this sinister foreboding of the Cultural Revolution. It was a sacrilege for which Mao would not pardon him: this chapter anticipates the epilogue, in which the author recalls the famous 7,000 Cadres Conference (January 1962) and the stormy encounter six months later in which Liu told a furious Mao, “History will judge you and me” (p. 337). That was the position he took subsequently: “The centre is the principal culprit, we leaders are all responsible” (p. 121). ![]() Unlike Mao, Liu resolved not to be misled by local authorities’ versions, and ended up learning from villagers that there had, in fact, been no drought in the region the previous year: the disaster was manmade ( renhuo), not a natural calamity. Chapter 16, which concludes the chronological section, contains the newest elements: it eloquently shows how then-president Liu Shaoqi finally took cognisance of the extent of the disaster in the spring of 1961, thanks to an investigation he undertook of his native village in Hunan and the surrounding area. I am against egalitarianism and left adventurism…” However, he took the latter path six months later. Ironically entitled “Dizzy with Success” – in reference to a famous article of 2 March 1930 in which Stalin called for the inevitable halt to collectivisation and dekulakisation, blaming it on local communist cadres’ excesses – Chapter 11 describes in detail the pre-Lushan period, when Mao had been so disturbed as to declare, “I now support conservatism. Instead, as the country plunged into catastrophe, tens of millions of lives would be extinguished through exhaustion, illness, torture and hunger” (p. 103). 2 Unlike Becker, Dikötter is careful with his sources: it is the work of a researcher and not just moving and well-meaning journalistic reportage.ĢWith non-experts in mind, the first two (of six) parts retrace major events of the Great Leap Forward disaster and famine, rightly stressing the crucial role of the Lushan Conference: “Had the leadership reversed course in the summer of 1959 at Lushan, the number of victims claimed by famine would have been counted in the millions. 2 For instance, David Bachman, Bureaucracy, Economy, and Leadership in China: The Institutional Origi (.)ġFrank Dikötter’s work, appearing half a century after the most murderous year (1960), will henceforth be the leading account on the “Great Famine.” Like Jasper Becker’s book, 1 Dikötter’s focuses on describing and conveying to the reader the stark effects of the famine at the local level, whereas a series of other good accounts have concentrated on analysing the decisions and political conflicts at the top of the Communist hierarchy.1 Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine, London, John Murray, 1996.
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