| FAQ |
| Why was there a famine during the "Great
Leap Forward"? |
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Per capita grain production
declined sharply by 30% in 1960 and 28% in 1961 - as compared to the reference period of
1956/57. |
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This nationwide
decline in food availability was not primarily caused by natural disasters, but was the
result of policy measures for the Great Leap Forward. These measures included the forced
extraction of labor for the village industry, which caused agricultural labor
shortages during the harvest periods. |
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The
industrialization program of the Great Leap Forward caused a huge increase in the non-agricultural
labor force. The number of people working in state and collective enterprises grew from 31
million in 1957 to 52 million in 1958 - a 20 million increase in a single year (Peng,
1987). These workers could no longer produce their own grain, but depended on the state
distribution system (which explains, why state grain procurement in these years sharply
increased). |
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A failure in grain distribution
between provinces contributed to the crisis. There were substantial inequalities in per
capita grain output between provinces, which were not balanced despite much higher
procurement of grain by the state during the crisis period. Lack of timely information,
organizational chaos, deficient transportation infrastructure and bad logistics
contributed to the failure in state-organized grain distribution. |
| (see also: Ashton et al., 1984; Banister, 1987) |
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Revision 2.0 (First revision published in 1999)
- Copyright © 2011 by Gerhard K. Heilig. All rights reserved. (First revision: Copyright © 1999 by IIASA.) |
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