No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Cold War Competition and Food Production in China, 1957-1962
Abstract
This article examines how Mao's grand strategy for Cold War competition inflicted a catastrophic agricultural failure in China and victimized tens of millions of Chinese peasants. It argues that Khrushchev's 1957 boast about the Soviet Union surpassing the United States in key economic areas inspired Mao to launch an industrialization program that would push the People's Republic past Great Britain in some production categories within fifteen years. Beginning in 1958 Mao imposed unrealistic targets on Chinese grain production to extract funds from agriculture for rapid industrial growth. Maoists placed relentless pressure on communist cadres for ruthless implementation of the Great Leap Forward. Contrary to Maoist plans, China's grain output in 1959-1960 declined sharply from 1957 levels and rural per capita grain retention decreased dramatically. Throughout China, party cadres' mismanagement of agricultural production was responsible for the decline in grain output, and the communist state's excessive requisition of grain caused food shortages for the peasants. But the key factor determining the famine's uneven impact on the peasantry in the provinces was the degree to which provincial leaders genuinely and energetically embraced Maoist programs. This is illustrated by a close examination of the Great Leap famine in Anhui Province.
... Grain output in Sichuan increased by 4.8 % in 1958, and reduced by 26.6 % in 1959 (see Table 6.1). It is also worth pointing out that the proportion of agricultural investment in total state investment declined from a double-digit percentage in 1952 to a single-digit throughout the rest of 1950s (Chen 2009). Considering the reduction in state investment, the growth achieved in 1958 was actually remarkable. ...
... Moreover, the government appealed to nationalism to justify its call for increasing production. Raising the production of iron and steel was depicted as the key to overcoming China's historic humiliation and restoring China to the ranks of the Great Powers (Chen 2009). Through the broadcasting system, Chairman Mao's words were passed on to people living in remote villages in Sichuan. ...
... In 1958, the Chinese leadership, especially Mao, might perceive the threat posed by both the United States and the Soviet Union (for the threat perceptions of the Chinese leadership, see Chen 2009;. The threat perceptions, however, might not be shared by the people. ...
This chapter discusses the existing literature on nationalist movements and lays out the theoretical framework. Existing theories highlight the role played by elites in nationalist movements and focus on their political and economic purposes, whereas the rationality of the mass participants remains unexplored. Students of nationalism usually attribute mass participation in nationalist movements to emotions. In contrast to the prevalent practice, I argue that a mass-based instrumentalist explanation for nationalist movements is both necessary and possible. I further contend that two factors—perception of foreign threats and domestic institutions—affect the choice that individuals make when they face nationalist mobilization by the state.
... Grain output in Sichuan increased by 4.8 % in 1958, and reduced by 26.6 % in 1959 (see Table 6.1). It is also worth pointing out that the proportion of agricultural investment in total state investment declined from a double-digit percentage in 1952 to a single-digit throughout the rest of 1950s (Chen 2009). Considering the reduction in state investment, the growth achieved in 1958 was actually remarkable. ...
... Moreover, the government appealed to nationalism to justify its call for increasing production. Raising the production of iron and steel was depicted as the key to overcoming China's historic humiliation and restoring China to the ranks of the Great Powers (Chen 2009). Through the broadcasting system, Chairman Mao's words were passed on to people living in remote villages in Sichuan. ...
... In 1958, the Chinese leadership, especially Mao, might perceive the threat posed by both the United States and the Soviet Union (for the threat perceptions of the Chinese leadership, see Chen 2009;. The threat perceptions, however, might not be shared by the people. ...
Nationalism is often viewed as a mysterious force that causes violent protests and destructive warfare. Students of nationalist movements ask why popular nationalism prevails and how popular nationalism propels state elites to pursue an aggressive foreign policy. They, however, tend to overlook the negative cases of nationalist mobilization, and seldom ask why in these cases state elites fail to rouse the masses to nationalist participation. This chapter attempts to explore the limits of nationalism by examining such a case—the New Life Movement (NLM). The NLM was launched by Chiang Kai-shek in Nanchang—the capital city of Jiangxi—on February 19, 1934. This chapter demonstrates that in 1934 people living in Jiangxi did not perceive a strong foreign threat. To facilitate the mobilization, state elites should have provided participants with economic payoffs and other forms of welfare services. However, the NLM was completely divorced from the public’s real needs, and hence lost its mass appeal. In addition, the restoration of pro-minority institutions further hurt peasant initiative and empowered the landlords at the expense of the state. Consequently, although the government devoted enormous resources to the movement, the NLM ended up in failure.
... 197-247;see too Goodman 1980), the extremism of party secretary li Jingquan was a key factor in determining the scale and duration of famine. this tallies with the findings of a recent study by Chen Yixin contrasting the role of province-level politics in anhui and Jiangxi "under the same maoist sky." in anhui another radical, Zeng Xisheng, a native of Hunan and friend of mao, diverted five million peasants from the land to over-ambitious irrigation projects, with disastrous consequences, while in neighboring Jiangxi a home-grown collective leadership did what they could to cancel the Great leap's excesses (Chen 2011; see too Chen 2009). So provincial boundaries mattered: anthony Garnaut's map of county-level diminution of 1958-62 cohorts with provincial boundaries superimposed highlights the role of borders. ...
... The booming economy and explosive population growth during the early 1960s might explain the high consumption of asbestos at that time. In the late 1950s and the early 1960s, Hong Kong began building massive public housing projects to accommodate the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees from mainland China after the Great Leap Forward (a political movement launched by Mao Zedong, the former chairman of the Chinese Communist Party) during 1958-1960 and the associated nationwide "Three Years of Natural Disasters" between 1958 and 1961 (Chen 2009). An urban renewal strategic study conducted by the Hong Kong Urban Renewal Authority (Planning and Lands Branch 2009) revealed that most buildings ≥ 30 old were in unsatisfactory condition and did not satisfy modern fire safety building design and installation requirements. ...
Inhaled asbestos fibers may contribute to three-fourths of malignant mesotheliomas diagnosed in men and almost 40% of cases diagnosed in women. Bans on the manufacture and sale of amphibole asbestos fibers are expected to reduce the incidence of mesothelioma, but the long latency period from initial exposure to clinical disease means that people exposed before bans were enacted will continue to develop asbestos-related mesotheliomas as they age. Tse et al. (p. 382) used historical data on asbestos consumption and mesothelioma diagnoses to predict future mesothelioma trends in Hong Kong. Asbestos use peaked during a construction boom in the early 1960s and subsequently declined by > 90% following a ban on the sale and import of crocidolite and amosite asbestos in 1996, whereas mesothelioma diagnoses in men increased from a single case in 1972–1976 to 63 cases in 2002–2006 (corresponding to crude incidence rates of 0.09 and 3.86 cases/million men, respectively). Assuming an average latency of 42 years, the authors predict that incidence rates will peak in 2009 and that diagnoses will peak in 2014. However, they caution that ongoing use of chrysotile asbestos and the release of asbestos fibers from older buildings during demolition or renovation may slow the projected decline. [corrected]
China and the United States have long histories of educating their populations. Currently, all children in both China and the United States are mandated to attend for a minimum of nine years, and schools are free for students. Although education in China and the United States may be accessible to all, do all groups have equal opportunities for success? While addressing this topic, some questions arise: What is the historical background of education and schools in each nation? What is the current status of literacy in both countries? Are there inequality in learning opportunities for children in China and in the United States? What are some possible reasons for unequal access to education?
Despite the disastrous famine, it would be misleading to label the outcome of the Great Leap Forward mobilization as a “complete failure.” This is not only because the initial stage of the mobilization (from November 1957 to the end of 1958) proved to be relatively successful, but also because extraction of resources by the state was carried out effectively. State accumulation of resources continued to increase while people were starving. This chapter attributes the mixed outcome to the public’s weak threat perceptions and the institutional change starting from 1952. This chapter maintains that the initial collectivization actually favored the interests of the poorer strata of the peasantry. Institutions only gained pro-state features after people’s communes were set up nationwide after August 1958. The institutional change accounts for the initial success of the mobilization and its failure later on.
This book presents a comparative historical analysis of state-led nationalist movements in Chinese history, which counters current claims that popular nationalism in present-day China is strong enough to sustain costly expansionist wars. Popular nationalism in China has been on the rise since the early 1990s to the concern of many observers. Some have even asked whether China will become another Germany. A comparative historical analysis of pre-war and wartime nationalist mobilization helps us better understand how individuals formulate their opinions under extreme conditions. It concludes that the public's weak perception of foreign threats, taken together with pro-minority domestic institutions, may significantly undermine the state's efforts at nationalist mobilization and thus limit its capability to pursue external expansion or other strategic goals.
Famines are becoming smaller and rarer, but optimism about the possibility of a famine-free future must be tempered by the threat of global warming. That is just one of the arguments that Cormac Ó Gráda, one of the world's leading authorities on the history and economics of famine, develops in this wide-ranging book, which provides crucial new perspectives on key questions raised by famines around the globe between the seventeenth and twenty-first centuries. The book begins with a taboo topic. Ó Gráda argues that cannibalism, while by no means a universal feature of famines and never responsible for more than a tiny proportion of famine deaths, has probably been more common during very severe famines than previously thought. The book goes on to offer new interpretations of two of the twentieth century's most notorious and controversial famines, the Great Bengal Famine and the Chinese Great Leap Forward Famine. Ó Gráda questions the standard view of the Bengal Famine as a perfect example of market failure, arguing instead that the primary cause was the unwillingness of colonial rulers to divert food from their war effort. The book also addresses the role played by traders and speculators during famines more generally, invoking evidence from famines in France, Ireland, Finland, Malawi, Niger, and Somalia since the 1600s, and overturning Adam Smith's claim that government attempts to solve food shortages always cause famines. Thought-provoking and important, this is essential reading for historians, economists, demographers, and anyone else who is interested in the history and possible future of famine.
This article shows that when the Great Leap Forward programs of the aggressive Maoist state pushed Chinese villages into starvation, the villagers had to fall back on consanguinity to hold on to their solidarity and fend off external coercion. When this consanguinity and the traditional style of kin leadership broke down, the consequences in many villages were fatally disastrous.
The Great Leap Forward disaster, characterized by a collapse in grain production and a widespread famine in China between 1959 and 1961, is found attributable to a systemic failure in central planning. Wishfully expecting a great leap in agricultural productivity from collectivization, the Chinese government accelerated its aggressive industrialization timetable. Grain output fell sharply as the government diverted agricultural resources to industry and imposed an excessive grain procurement burden on peasants, leaving them with insufficient calories to sustain labor productivity. Our analysis shows that 61 percent of the decline in output is attributable to the policies of resource diversion and excessive procurement.
Aroused by the unexpected magnitude of excess deaths estimated by Western demographers, recently there has been a revival of interest in the causes of the Great Chinese famine of 1958-61. Depending on the underlying assumptions and methodologies employed, the excess deaths of this famine are estimated to range from a minimum of 16.5 million to as many as 30 million. With a population of roughly 660 million in 1958, the year marking the origin of this famine, 30 million amounted to a loss of close to 5% of the country's population. Moreover, the loss of lives of this magnitude occurred within an incredibly short period of time; within 2 years the country's death rate was doubled from slightly below 12 per thousand in 1958 to 25 per thousand in 1960, making it "the worst famine in human history." The remainder of this article is organized as follows. The next section provides an account of China's Great Leap Forward, the context within which the famine occured. Specifically, we focus on the main elements of this institutional change to provide the necessary background for motivating the empirical analysis. The exact hypotheses are then spelled out in Section III, which ends with a detailed discussion of the proxies used in the empirical tests. In Section IV we specify our method for estimating these hypotheses and introduce the data sources. The estimation results are then presented and discussed in Section V. Section VI provides a brief conclusion.
Food availability decline and Sen's entitlement are two leading approaches in understanding causes of famine. Previous research based on case studies has given independent support to each approach. This paper analyses the Chinese famine of 1959-61 by considering jointly the urban bias and the decline in food availability as causes. We find that both factors contributed significantly to the increase in death rates during this famine. To our knowledge, this paper is the first econometric study to assess the importance of famine causes using the entitlement approach.
The Chinese famine of 1958–1961 is characterized not only by its great magnitude but also by the uniqueness of its causes. In this article we present evidence that conventional reasons; including FAD and entitlement failure, fail to offer plausible explanations for the tragedy because of the obvious contradiction between food availability and excessive deaths during the famine period. Our thesis is that the famine is caused by consumption inefficiency, a result of the free food supply in the communal dining system in the famine period. This causal factor is unique and unprecedented in the famine history and theory. Yet the thesis is consistent with a basic economic precept: if property rights for food in a society are not defined, food consumption will be inefficient. This inefficiency mades the previously barely adequate food supply in China inadequate, causing a large-scale famine.