Frank Dikötter | Mao’s Great Famine – The History of China’s Catastrophe, 1958-1962

　　In 1958, Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, believed that China had vast resources and hundreds of millions of laborers. He led the whole country to frantically invest in the Great Leap Forward, mobilizing farmers to simultaneously transform agriculture and industry, aiming to transform the backward economic situation into a communist society with extremely abundant material wealth, and attempting to surpass the United Kingdom within fifteen years. Farmers were deprived of their jobs, homes, land, property, and livelihoods. Food was collectively distributed, and people lived in people’s communes. This Great Leap Forward plunged the Chinese people into a human hell from 1958 to 1962.

　　This book records how the Chinese Communist Party caused the most serious destruction of property in human history. In addition to describing the famine, it also reveals many details of the disaster, detailing how Mao Zedong established his own prestige on the verge of a collapsing social and political system. As the disaster unfolded, Mao Zedong cruelly打击 (attacked) those who criticized him to maintain his irreplaceable position as the leader of the Communist Party of China. The book examines in detail how the Great Leap Forward unfolded, the reasons behind it, and identifies several key turning points; from agriculture, industry, trade, and housing, to the extent of environmental destruction, and finally, how the grand blueprint was transformed in the struggle for survival of the people, and its unforeseen consequences.

　　This is the first book written by a Western scholar based on a large number of declassified archives in recent years by the Chinese Communist Party, revealing new evidence. The author, Frank Dikötter, is a chair professor in the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong, who has studied China for many years. He made a breakthrough summary, raising the death toll from the Great Famine from the late 1950s to the early 1960s from more than 30 million to at least 45 million, and determined that Mao Zedong was fully responsible for this largest man-made disaster in history. The book also includes many precious historical photos.