Historian Frank Dikötter is the author of a trilogy on the history of communism in China. This is the second volume and covers the years 1958-1962, the years of the Great Leap Forward and a devastating famine in which 45 million Chinese lost their lives. It is exceedingly well-researched and -documented, with a heavy reliance on provincial archives which were only recently opened at the time of his writing. It provides a very thorough and scholarly assessment and is a nice counterbalance to the journalistic history, Hungry Ghosts by Jasper Becker. Although the two books have few discrepancies, they approach the topic differently.

The first half of the book is a chronological step-by-step analysis of the Great Leap Forward and how it caused the massive famine. The second half of the book is organized by topic: agriculture, industry, housing, children, women, the elderly, accidents, disease, gulags, violence, etc. The last chapter discusses how the total number of deaths has been calculated and by whom. The epilogue discusses the author's sources, an important addition for those interested in the methodology. There is a 13 page bibliography and extensive endnote citations. The book won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction.

Despite it's scholarly nature, I found Mao's Great Famine compelling reading. Only twice did I find myself skimming due to dense statistical analysis. I would recommend it not only for it's authority on the subject, but for its readability. I intend to purchase the other two volumes of Dikötter's trilogy: Volume 1 on the Chinese Revolution and Volume 3 on the Cultural Revolution ( )

Een grondig onderzoek in veel archieven naar de 'Grote sprong voorwaarts'. Vanwege de stompzinnige communistische ideologie van machtsgeile klungelaars werden miljoenen mensen op beestachtige wijze de dood ingejaagd.

Naïef kinderachtige plannen van Mao en zijn kliek zorgden voor een ramp die het leven kostte aan naar schatting 45 miljoen mensen. De bevolking werd bovendien bewust uitgehongerd en onderworpen aan martelingen allerhande.

Erg is dat de verantwoordelijken en hun opvolgers nog altijd de teugels in handen hebben. Dit boek is alleszins een grote en terechte aanklacht tegen een van de grootste zo niet de grootste misdaad tegen de mensheid.

Het boek geeft eveneens een uitstekende bibliografie. ( )

This book chronicles the Great Leap Forward which in terms of casualties rivals the two world wars as the biggest man-made disaster in all of history. The author explains quite clearly just how dysfunctional Mao's communist dictatorship was. The party leadership had absolutely no grasp of how economic production could in practice be increased. Even worse, only a few of them (very slowly) came to understand the extent of their ignorance and the damage their absurd policies had wrought on the people. The mad dash for impressive statistics had no basis in reality. Massive amounts of grain were still being exported when the population was beginning to starve. Communist collectivization destroyed all work incentives, leaving violent coercion as the only means of getting anything done. And what was done usually made no economic sense whatsoever. Crops rotted in the fields while malnourished people dug canals and reservoirs. Tools and utensils were melted down to "produce" iron which was of such worthless quality that it had to be discarded immediately.

The general history of this period has been told many times before. What separates this account from previous ones is that the author has perused a huge number of detailed and even personal accounts of these years, especially in the countryside which suffered the most. Many chapters of this book are in fact nothing more than an extended list of stories about human suffering. This certainly brings home the extent of the catastrophe more vividly than a mere death toll, but I still thought the listing was a bit excessive. I would have preferred a shift in emphasis towards how the party machine guided this mad destruction. Nevertheless, this book is certainly worthwhile for anyone who wants to understand the realities of modern Chinese history.

Local and Provincial Archives Provide Many Anecdotes that Support Statistics

Frank Dikötter's "Mao's Great Famine" is one of three definitive and very detailed statistical analyses of the Great Famine, including Jasper Becker's 1996 book "Hungry Ghosts" and Yang Jisheng's 2012 book "Tombstone." Whereas Becker brought interviews and gumshoe reporting to the table (as well as being one of the first academics to put the blame solely on the Communist Party) which Yang expanded upon (though the English translation is supposedly half of the original Chinese), Dikötter brings an exhaustive look at statistics and reports contained in regional and provincial party archives.

In the first section of the book, Dikötter gives a background on communism in China as it led to the famine. He focuses on the rivalry between China and the Soviet Union. The stage for the famine was set, according to Dikötter, when China pushed away from the Soviets. Collectivization and absurd top-down agricultural practices began. The Great Leap Forward began a well-documented campaign against nature that ultimately led to failed harvests, as well as the campaign to remove practical tools from private citizens. In the second section of the book, the spiral toward famine is described: trading grain for industrial equipment from Eastern Europe, mismanagement of food stores, and the misrepresented inflation of grain production at all levels of the communist hierarchy, from local cadres to provincial governors. The third section develops the first and second sections with local archival evidence.

The fourth section gives more clear indictments of members of the communist party. While local cadres live moderately well, higher-ups at the provincial level feast away, stealing and skimming grain in order to further their own careers. Signs of famine are clear, as Liu Shaoqi - the hero soon-to-be ostracized national leader of Dikötter's book - reports at national meetings.

The fifth section begins the description of the horrors inflicted on the people of China. Mostly anecdotes from local archives, this section offers heartbreaking stories of the children, women, and elderly who suffered. The sixth section continues to detail the impact of the famine. It gives gruesome statistics and anecdotes about depopulated villages, cannibalism, and disease. We also learn of the Communist Party's attempts to justify the famine that they oddly refuse to acknowledge, saying that deaths are inevitable in such a "Great Leap Forward."

Throughout the book, Dikötter offers statistics and numbers to back his claims, often to the detriment of the reader who might not understand what 100,000 tons of grain looks like. These statistics are no doubt useful, but they are also easy to criticize, not knowing where they came from or whether they are reliable. The book includes an excellent index. Readers will struggle with the references, which in the case of the useful anecdotes are cited from regional archives, none of which can be further examined by the reader.

Dikötter makes the case that Mao and the Chinese Communist Party was directly responsible for the famine. The case is hardly disputable. While non-political famines have occurred in Chinese history, there is clear evidence in this case that more than 30 million people died as a result of inhuman policies. Dikötter puts the number at 45 million. While academics may quibble about the number, there is little doubt that this catastrophe was made by humans. ( )

Well, this pretty well establishes Mao Ze Dong’s place in history as the greatest mass murderer ever. ( )