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Great Famine (1958–1962)

In 1958–1962 China suffered one of history's deadliest man-made famines. Great Leap Forward policies, excessive grain requisition, wasteful communal dining and cover-ups killed 30–45 million. Beijing never released a full toll, calling it the "three years of natural disasters."

Time

1958–1962 (1958 Great Leap Forward as prelude)

Place

Nationwide; worst: Sichuan, Anhui, Henan (Xinyang), Shandong, Gansu, Guizhou

Decision-makers

Mao Zedong (initiator); Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping (implementation); provincial chiefs (high requisitions)

Background: Great Leap Forward

In 1958 Mao launched the Great Leap Forward, vowing to "overtake Britain and catch America." Collectivization seized peasants' land and tools; communal dining halls served free food. That summer and autumn, localities launched "high-yield satellites" claiming tens of thousands of jin per mu — exaggeration swept China.

The famine machine started with a set of fabricated numbers. At the August 1958 Beidaihe meeting the Politburo first estimated that year's grain output at 600–700 billion jin, then raised it to 750 billion; researchers working from archives (notably Yang Jisheng) put actual output at just over 400 billion jin — the reported figure was nearly double reality. Requisition quotas were built on that fiction: in March 1959, the Shanghai conference ordered a national requisition of 135 billion jin based on 1958's supposed bumper harvest. In 1959 grain output actually fell 11%, yet requisitions rose 14.7% (per official statistics cited by researchers). The chain was complete: inflated targets forced inflated reports, inflated reports became requisition quotas, and requisitions emptied peasants' bowls.

Communal mess halls were another accelerator. "Free food" and "eat all you want" exhausted many communes' grain reserves within months, alongside staggering waste. When a hall closed its kitchen, famine arrived: in autumn 1959, 692 dining halls in Shangcheng county, Henan, stopped serving for over two months — more than 4,000 people starved soon after. The halls also cut off peasants' last self-help: grain belonged to the commune, keeping food at home or cooking privately was denounced as "embezzlement."

The "anti-concealment and anti-embezzlement" campaigns were the direct grain-grab mechanism. When quotas couldn't be met, cadres refused to admit crop failure and blamed peasants for "hiding grain." Militia searched homes door to door, dug for "cellar grain," and struggled alleged hoarders — beatings and detention were routine. A folk rhyme from Xinyang put it: "Cadres are like the King of Hell, the brigade like his palace; the living go in, the living don't come back." Food grain, seed grain and survival rations were seized together; many villages stopped cooking the day the requisition teams left.

Per-capita grain retained by peasants fell from 250 jin in 1957 to 174 jin in 1959–1960 (researchers' calculation from official statistics, via published sources). And the January 1958 household-registration regulations pinned peasants to their land — no free migration, no escape by famine flight. Grain seized, people immobilized, speech forbidden: the three conditions of famine were all in place. From 1959, famine spread.

Who decided

Mao Zedong launched the Great Leap Forward — the famine's root cause. Key decisions:

• Winter 1957–early 1958: denounced "opposition to rash advance" (targeting Zhou Enlai and Chen Yun's 1956 retrenchment), clearing the way for inflated targets. The January Nanning and March Chengdu conferences pressed the Leap.
• May 1958, 8th Congress 2nd Session: the General Line — "go all out, aim high, build socialism with greater, faster, better, more economical results"; Mao called to "smash superstition, liberate thought, dare to think, speak and act." Exaggeration mania followed.
• August 17–30, 1958, Beidaihe (the decisive meeting): steel target 10.7 million tons (double 1957), "take steel as the key link"; the resolution establishing people's communes nationwide — over 90% of farm households communized by late September; the Politburo estimated 1958 grain at 600–700 billion jin (60–90% above 1957), later raised to 750 billion — actual output was only 400 billion jin.
• Companion policies: communal mess halls ("eating from the big pot" — waste and overconsumption); backyard steel furnaces (90 million rural laborers by end-1958; "trees felled, ironware surrendered, labor exhausted"; mostly scrap iron; "much grain went unharvested, output collapsed").
• 1959 Lushan Conference (July 2–August 16): began correcting "left" errors until Peng Dehuai's July 14 letter criticizing them; Mao turned the meeting against the "Peng Dehuai anti-party clique," launching the anti-right-opportunist drive, which "worsened economic hardship and famine nationwide."

Detailed timeline: four phases

Phase 1: Launch and exaggeration (1958). Communes, backyard furnaces, "yield satellites." Inflated output; requisitions rise.

Phase 2: High requisitions and "anti-concealment" (1959–1960). After Lushan, the anti-rightist drive silenced disaster reports. 1960 requisitions peaked; rations seized bare. The Xinyang Incident: over a million starved in Henan's Xinyang prefecture while chief Lu Xianwen covered up and kept requisitioning.

Phase 3: Famine peak (1960–1961). Winter 1960 to spring 1961 was the deadliest. Cannibalism was reported in Sichuan, Anhui, Henan, Shandong, Gansu (mostly oral history, unverified). In January 1961, the 9th Plenum ordered "readjustment," beginning correction.

Phase 4: Aftermath (1961–1962). Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai led retrenchment, dissolving communal halls. At the 1962 Seven Thousand Cadres Conference, Liu said "30% natural disaster, 70% man-made"; Mao made a self-criticism. The famine ended.

Who executed

Provincial "exaggeration" secretaries:

• Wu Zhipu (Henan): among the most zealous satellite-launchers; chiefly responsible for the Xinyang tragedy. With Henan's actual 1959 output at 21 billion jin, Wu requisitioned against an estimated 45 billion. Removed in 1961 under Liu Shaoqi.
• Zeng Xisheng (Anhui): chiefly responsible for Anhui's famine; later removed (exact date unverified).
• Shu Tong (Shandong), Zhang Zhongliang (Gansu), Gao Feng (Qinghai): removed or transferred in 1961 under Liu Shaoqi.

Exaggeration — the requisition's numerical basis: on June 8, 1958 People's Daily published the first yield "satellite" (2,105 jin/mu in Suiping, Henan); satellites grew ever larger (36,900 jin/mu in Macheng, Hubei; 45,217 in Pixian, Sichuan — night-time fraud). August 27's "How bold the people, how productive the land" editorial crowned the frenzy.

Anti-concealment — the grain-grab mechanism: requisitions were layered atop fabricated yields, and militia house-to-house searches for "hidden grain" swept the worst-hit regions — in Xinyang alone, more than 10,000 were arrested in the searches (see the Xinyang section below for the full chain).

The Xinyang Incident (1959–1960)

Xinyang is the best-documented local famine of the period — and the clearest case of the cover-up–blockade–scapegoat chain. In 1958 Henan's actual grain output was 28.1 billion jin; the provincial committee trumpeted 70.2 billion. In 1959 Xinyang prefecture actually produced 3.258 billion jin (down 46.1%), but reported 7.2 billion — and requisitions were assigned against the 7.2 billion. In March 1959 the central Shanghai conference set the national requisition at 135 billion jin on the basis of 1958's supposed harvest; that figure was the last straw for Xinyang. (Figures via published Party-history materials and the Chinese Wikipedia "Xinyang Incident" entry.)

In late October 1959, 692 communal dining halls in Shangcheng county stopped serving; 16,686 fell ill, 1,766 fled, 4,656 died. In Gushi county, 7 communes and 289 brigades reported 33,832 ill and 8,177 dead. Then Huangchuan, Guangshan, Luoshan, Xixian, Xincai, Pingyu and Shangcai followed with mass edema and abnormal deaths. Grassroots cadres beat peasants to force grain delivery; above them, every level worked to keep the lid on.

In November 1959, prefectural party chief Lu Xianwen drove back from Huangchuan and saw with his own eyes the corpses by the roadside, crowds stopping his car to beg for grain, children abandoned by their parents. He ignored it all and ordered public security to "eliminate the outflow of people within a time limit": villages sealed, no famine flight; urban workplaces forbidden to take in rural arrivals. His line: "It's not that there's no grain — there's plenty of grain. Ninety percent of the problem is ideological."

The blockade was total: county-town gates guarded with guns, checkpoints on highways, roving patrols along borders; all mail inspected, the post office barred from sending letters to Beijing or Zhengzhou — 12,000 letters were seized in the period. Hu Xiuyu, deputy secretary of the Xinyang county supervision commission, twice wrote anonymously to the central leadership about starvation; both letters were forwarded back to the county committee. She was struggled against in round after round, branded a "right opportunist," stripped of all Party and government posts, and sent to labor reform. Xu Xuefu, a soldier and Party member from Shangcheng home on leave, saw the horror and reported it three times in person to prefectural leaders — only to be criticized and threatened. On March 5 and 9, 1959, he sent two urgent telegrams to Zhou Enlai from the county post office; both were delivered to the desk of Wang Hanqing, the county's first Party secretary. Wang exploded — "rightist thinking, rightist speech" — and ordered Xu "detained at once, his backers investigated, Xu Xuefu arrested." The telegrams weren't sent until March 28.

In February 1960 the Ministry of Internal Affairs sent a section chief to inspect Xinyang; the previously suspended Zhang Shufan was reinstated to accompany him to Xixian and Huaibin. "Everywhere was desolation, lamentation filled the air." Asked whether people were starving to death, Zhang said yes, "and not a few" — estimating 200,000 to 300,000. The section chief rushed back to Beijing; the ministry reported to State Council secretary-general Xi Zhongxun, who reported to Dong Biwu, secretary of the Central Supervision Commission. Around the same time the Health Ministry received a telegram from the Gushi county committee and a provincial medical team: more than 50,000 dead. The lid on Xinyang cracked — but provincial chief Wu Zhipu still wanted it covered. In April 1960 he told Lu Xianwen: some people died in Xinyang, "just sum up the lessons, write the center a self-criticism report, don't have ideological misgivings. Don't investigate — the death question can't be investigated clearly; the more you investigate, the more there are. Just have the county secretaries give an estimate." In July the provincial committee convened an enlarged Xinyang prefectural meeting at Jigongshan; Lu made a self-criticism, and Ma Longshan, the Guangshan county party secretary, was arrested and prosecuted "to answer to the center."

Dong Biwu sent Li Jian and Li Zhenghai to investigate for three months; the verified starvation toll was over 700,000. On October 21, 1960, an investigation report by four cadres of the Organization Department and the Supervision Commission was forwarded by Li Fuchun to Mao; on October 26 Mao instructed: "Ask Liu and Zhou to read it today and discuss handling this afternoon." A central work team followed, headed by Wang Congwu (deputy secretary of the Supervision Commission) with Xu Zirong (vice minister of public security) and An Ziwen (deputy head of the Organization Department) as deputies. They found whole villages "without a trace of human life"; Guangshan county alone had starved 200,000. On January 13, 1961, Xinyang's final report to Beijing put the toll at 1,070,321 dead between November 1959 and October 1960 out of a population of 8,086,526 — 13.2 per thousand; seven counties exceeded 100 per thousand: Guangshan 235, Shangcheng 209, Xixian 204, Zhengyang 196, Xincai 183, Huangchuan 168, Gushi 147.

What makes Xinyang exceptional is that every link — fabrication, high requisitions, house searches, mail interception, the punishment of truth-tellers, and finally a county secretary sacrificed "to answer to the center" — is on record in archives and witness accounts. It proves the famine was not a "natural disaster" but a disaster manufactured by a smoothly running political machine. (Figures and narrative in this section mainly via the Chinese Wikipedia "Xinyang Incident" entry and published Party-history materials.)

Worst-hit regions

Sichuan — Li Jingquan; estimated 8–10 million dead (disputed, unverified). Sichuan, the fabled "land of abundance" once said to "know neither flood nor famine," recorded the highest provincial toll in most studies. Yang Jisheng's Tombstone ranks it first among the worst-hit provinces — though some researchers argue the Sichuan figures are overstated. The dispute is unresolved; this page marks it unverified and presents it as contested.

Anhui — Zeng Xisheng; estimated 4–6 million dead. Zeng was famous for "high targets": yield satellites in 1958, continued high requisitions in 1959. Fengyang was among Anhui's worst-hit counties — and it was Fengyang's Xiaogang village where, in 1978, 18 farming households risked everything to sign a secret household-contracting pact, the starting point of China's rural reform. The origin of "contracting to households" was precisely the place that had starved hardest. On April 23, 1961, the Anhui Public Security Department reported to the provincial committee on "special cases": 1,289 cannibalism incidents since 1959 — Fuyang 302, Bengbu 721, Wuhu 55, Lu'an 8, Anqing 2, Hefei-area 201 — the great majority in winter 1959 and spring 1960. Every commune in Bo county saw cannibalism; former Bo county cadre Liang Zhiyuan recalled over 200,000 dead out of 710,000 rural residents. (Via published sources.)

Xinyang, Henan — Wu Zhipu and Lu Xianwen; over a million dead. See the Xinyang Incident section. Wu was among the most zealous satellite-launchers; Lu covered up and blockaded. Xinyang's final January 1961 report put deaths at 1,070,321; Dong Biwu's investigators verified over 700,000. Xinyang's million is a million with file numbers.

Shandong — Shu Tong; estimated 2–3 million dead. Zhao Jianmin, then deputy provincial party secretary and governor, said in a speech: in the year and a half from winter 1958 to mid-1960, the province saw 650,000 abnormal deaths and 1.09 million flee; cannibalism — "23 cases with written documentation, a dozen more reported orally." (Zhao's speech, via published sources.)

Gansu — Zhang Zhongliang; worst in Tongwei and Dingxi. The barren Longzhong region starved first under high requisitions. Yanhuang Chunqiu ran an October 2008 piece, "The Tongwei Question — fifty years after the Great Leap," on Tongwei's cannibalism horrors. In November 2013 the Laogai Research Foundation in Washington released a set of internal Chinese investigation files showing 75 people eaten in Linxia and Hezheng, Gansu, 11 of them killed before being eaten. (Via published reports; original archives not seen.) Zhang was removed in 1961. Whether the center sent a work team to Gansu in 1960 is inconsistently reported in published sources — unverified here.

Guizhou — Qiannan and Qiandongnan; estimated ~2 million dead. In June 1960 Jiangkou county in the Tongren region was at the famine's peak: out of 100,000 residents, as many as 40,000 may have starved; the county head, witnessing the horror, opened the granaries on his own authority — then shot himself. For a grassroots cadre, enforcing the policy meant watching people starve; not enforcing it was a political risk; opening the granary was a capital offense. (Via online accounts, unverified.) In Meitan county, the county committee office reported that from 1959 to May 1960 "the whole county saw cannibalism — killing to eat, exchanging children to eat"; Yan Lebin, then working in the provincial public security department, personally saw a woman dismembering her starved child's body with a kitchen knife in 1961. "Who could bear to eat their own child?" she said. (Via published sources.)

Qinghai — Gao Feng. On May 13, 1960, the provincial Public Security Department reported to the provincial committee on public order in the Xining region: 300+ cannibalism cases in Xining city and Huangzhong county. (Via published sources.) Gao was removed or transferred in 1961.

Cannibalism: records in gazetteers & oral histories

What follows are recorded instances of cannibalism during the famine. A caution first: most come from oral histories, local gazetteers or leaked internal investigations; the official archives have never been systematically opened. This page marks them as mostly oral history and not fully verified — recording, not concluding.

• Anhui: the provincial Public Security Department's April 23, 1961 report counted 1,289 cases since 1959 (Fuyang 302, Bengbu 721, Wuhu 55, Lu'an 8, Anqing 2, Hefei-area 201), mostly in winter 1959–spring 1960. (Via published sources.)
• Qinghai: the provincial Public Security Department's May 13, 1960 report on Xining and Huangzhong recorded 300+ cases. (Via published sources.)
• Shandong: Zhao Jianmin's speech — 23 cases with written documentation, a dozen more reported orally. (Via published sources.)
• Gushi, Henan: 200 cases on record, per internal official investigations cited by researchers (original archives unverified).
• Linxia and Hezheng, Gansu: official investigation files released in Washington in November 2013 by the Laogai Research Foundation — 75 people eaten, 11 killed before being eaten. (Via published reports; Li Lei's memoir describes a Xiaomengou production team in Linxia eating 125 corpses and 5 living people — unverified.)
• Meitan, Guizhou: the county committee office described "killing and eating people, exchanging children to eat" across the county. (Via published sources.)
• Oral history: writer Yiwa (Song Lin) interviewed 200+ survivors in 2011 across Qin'an and Tongwei in Gansu and Yaozhou and Huxian in Shaanxi; her Looking for the Survivors of the Great Famine (2013) records 49 cannibalism cases and names 500+ victims. Yang Jisheng wrote its preface, calling the testimonies "irrefutable ironclad evidence of history."

These figures come from incompatible sources — police reports, gazetteers, personal memory — and cannot be reconciled into one statistic. Cannibalism was long taboo in famine narratives; what survives in the record is the minority that got written down. It is recorded here not for sensation but for what it establishes: when a society is driven to exchanging children to eat, "grain shortfall" no longer describes the catastrophe.

Scale & methodology

Lushan & Peng Dehuai (1959)

From July 2 to August 16, 1959, the Party's central leadership met at Lushan. The first half (July 2–August 1), an enlarged Politburo meeting, was actually correcting "left" errors — even Mao spoke of the Leap's shortcomings; the mood was "great achievements, not a few problems." The second half (August 2–16), the 8th Plenum, reversed course entirely. The turning point was July 14.

That day Defense Minister Peng Dehuai wrote Mao a letter (several thousand characters, conventionally called the "ten-thousand-word letter") laying out the "left" errors since 1958: politics-in-command overriding economic law, the exaggeration wind, "petty-bourgeois fanaticism." The tone was comradely; the content was a direct challenge to the Leap's general line. Mao was furious. On July 23 he told the conference the letter expressed "bourgeois wavering" — a "life-and-death struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie." The meeting swung from correcting the left to attacking the right.

What followed: the "Peng Dehuai–Huang Kecheng–Zhang Wentian–Zhou Xiaozhou anti-party clique" was crushed; the 8th Plenum passed its resolution; Peng was stripped of the defense ministry. Then the anti-right-opportunist campaign swept the country — localities hunted "little Peng Dehuais" (Wu Zhipu returned to Zhengzhou from Lushan in August and immediately began "ferreting out little Peng Dehuais level by level"); millions of grassroots cadres were branded "right opportunists" (exact figures unverified).

Lushan's consequence is written directly into the famine's history: after it, no one dared report disaster. Through the autumn and winter of 1959, requisition quotas climbed level by level while cadres watched villages starve rather than utter the word "shortage" — to say it was to be a "rightist." Xinyang's cover-up and blockade, the "anti-concealment" drives everywhere, all happened in the political climate Lushan created. The conference was the moment the famine changed from a "policy mistake" into something no one dared correct: by crushing one truth-telling marshal, it bought two years of collective silence nationwide.

Who opposed

Peng Dehuai — the only senior leader to openly oppose at the time; see "Lushan & Peng Dehuai" above. His fate says everything: the price of truth-telling was destruction, and after his destruction even the thought of truth-telling was uprooted.

Huang Kecheng, Zhang Wentian, Zhou Xiaozhou: purged alongside Peng for sympathy or support.

Grassroots truth-tellers: Hu Xiuyu (Xinyang) twice wrote anonymously to Beijing about starvation — struggled against as a right-opportunist, stripped of posts, labor reform (see the Xinyang section); Xu Xuefu of Shangcheng reported in person three times and twice telegraphed Zhou Enlai — denounced as "rightist" and ordered arrested.

Later correction (not contemporaneous opposition): Liu Shaoqi first said "30% natural disaster, 70% man-made" on May 31, 1961; at the January–February 1962 Seven Thousand Cadres Conference he expanded on the difficulties. But Liu never touched the "three red banners" (Mao's bottom line), and his correction was late-stage damage control, not opposition during the catastrophe. The 1981 Historical Resolution called the Leap a "grave mistake" with extremely restrained wording on Mao's own responsibility.

Conclusion: during 1958–1960, the only senior open opponent of the Leap was Peng Dehuai — immediately crushed, which deepened the disaster. No one questioned the commune, mess-hall, or high-requisition systems themselves. The honest entry for "who opposed" is: very few, and they paid with their downfall.

Impact

Mao weakened; Liu rises. After the famine Mao retreated; Liu Shaoqi's "readjustment" ("three freedoms, one contract") sowed the power struggle that became the Cultural Revolution.

"Man-made" consensus and taboo. The 1962 "70% man-made" verdict became Party consensus, yet open discussion remains taboo; Yang Jisheng's Tombstone is banned on the mainland.

Peasants' disillusionment. The famine destroyed faith in communes. The 1980s household-contract system's instant success traces to this.

Lasting demographic scar. Collapsing birth rates in 1960–1961 carved a "notch" in the population pyramid, felt for decades.

Videos

"Mao's Great Famine" documentary: the full record.

Famine footage and survivor accounts.

Related images (external links)

No verifiably licensed famine-site photos; external links used. News-agency images not embedded.

• Chinese Wikipedia
• English Wikipedia: Great Chinese Famine