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[[Jonathan Fenby]], author of the ''Penguin History of Modern China'' and China Director at the research service, Trusted Sources, praised Dikötter's "masterly book" and states that his "painstaking research in newly opened local archives makes all too credible his estimate that the death toll reached 45 million people."<ref>{{cite news | author=[[Jonathan Fenby|Fenby, Jonathan]] | url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/05/maos-great-famine-dikotter-review | title= Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikötter | newspaper=[[The Guardian]] | location=London | date=5 September 2010}}</ref>
[[Jonathan Fenby]], author of the ''Penguin History of Modern China'' and China Director at the research service, Trusted Sources, praised Dikötter's "masterly book" and states that his "painstaking research in newly opened local archives makes all too credible his estimate that the death toll reached 45 million people."<ref>{{cite news | author=[[Jonathan Fenby|Fenby, Jonathan]] | url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/05/maos-great-famine-dikotter-review | title= Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikötter | newspaper=[[The Guardian]] | location=London | date=5 September 2010}}</ref>


Jonathan Mirsky, a historian and journalist specializing in Asian affairs, said Dikötter's book "is for now the best and last word on Mao's greatest horror. Frank Dikötter has put everyone in the field of Chinese studies in his debt, together with anyone else interested in the real China. Sooner or later the Chinese, too, will praise his name." He also writes that "In terms of Mao's reputation this book leaves the Chairman for dead, as a monster in the same league as Hitler and Stalin - and that is without considering the years of the [[Cultural Revolution]] (1966-76), when hundreds of thousands more Chinese died."<ref>{{cite news | author=Mirksy, Jonathan | url=http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/mirsky_09_10.html | title=Livelihood Issues | magazine=[[Literary Review]] | date=September 2010}}</ref>
[[Jonathan Mirsky]], a historian and journalist specializing in Asian affairs, said Dikötter's book "is for now the best and last word on Mao's greatest horror. Frank Dikötter has put everyone in the field of Chinese studies in his debt, together with anyone else interested in the real China. Sooner or later the Chinese, too, will praise his name." However Mirsky also says that Dikötter is 'scornful' of the work of other scholars who had made similar findings, and is "dismissive of the book [[Tombstone]] (which he mistranslates as Wooden Tombstone), a sweeping, very informative investigation into the famine by the courageous Chinese journalist [[Yang Jisheng]]".<ref>{{cite news | author=Mirksy, Jonathan | url=http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/mirsky_09_10.html | title=Livelihood Issues | magazine=[[Literary Review]] | date=September 2010}}</ref>


The Indian essayist and novelist, [[Pankaj Mishra]], in ''[[The New Yorker]]'', offers qualified praise for the book, stating that the "narrative line is plausible" and that "Dikötter confirms the man’s reputation as sadistic, cowardly, callous, and vindictive." However he notes that Dikötter is "generally dismissive of facts that could blunt his story’s sharp edge", and that Dikötter’s "comparison of the famine to the great evils of the Holocaust and the Gulag does not, finally, persuade".<ref name="mishra"/> Mishra writes "A great many premature deaths also occurred in newly independent nations not ruled by erratic tyrants", asserting that democratic India has in fact killed far more people than Communist China. Mishra quotes the Indian economist [[Amartya Sen]]: “despite the gigantic size of excess mortality in the Chinese famine, the extra mortality in India from regular deprivation in normal times vastly overshadows the former.” Mishra emphasises Sen's point that China’s early lead over India in health care, literacy, and life expectancy, meant that: “India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame.”<ref name="mishra">{{cite news | url=http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/12/20/101220crbo_books_mishra?currentPage=all | title=Staying Power: Mao and the Maoists | author=[[Pankaj Mishra|Mishra, Pankaj]] | magazine=[[The New Yorker]] | date=20 December 2010}}</ref>
The Indian essayist and novelist, [[Pankaj Mishra]], in ''[[The New Yorker]]'', offers qualified praise for the book, stating that the "narrative line is plausible" and that "Dikötter confirms the man’s reputation as sadistic, cowardly, callous, and vindictive." However he notes that Dikötter is "generally dismissive of facts that could blunt his story’s sharp edge", and that Dikötter’s "comparison of the famine to the great evils of the Holocaust and the Gulag does not, finally, persuade".<ref name="mishra"/> Mishra writes "A great many premature deaths also occurred in newly independent nations not ruled by erratic tyrants", asserting that democratic India has in fact killed far more people than Communist China. Mishra quotes the Indian economist [[Amartya Sen]]: “despite the gigantic size of excess mortality in the Chinese famine, the extra mortality in India from regular deprivation in normal times vastly overshadows the former.” Mishra emphasises Sen's point that China’s early lead over India in health care, literacy, and life expectancy, meant that: “India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame.”<ref name="mishra">{{cite news | url=http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/12/20/101220crbo_books_mishra?currentPage=all | title=Staying Power: Mao and the Maoists | author=[[Pankaj Mishra|Mishra, Pankaj]] | magazine=[[The New Yorker]] | date=20 December 2010}}</ref>

Revision as of 09:36, 4 January 2011

Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–62
Cover of the first edition.
Cover of the 2010 first edition.
AuthorFrank Dikötter
LanguageEnglish
GenreHistory
PublisherWalker & Company (hardcover, US)
Bloomsbury Publishing (hardcover, UK and softcover, US)
Publication date
6 September 2010
Media typePrint (Hardback)
ISBN0802777686

Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–62, is a 2010 book by Frank Dikötter, Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong and Professor of the Modern History of China from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

Based on recently released Chinese provincial, county and city archives, the book constructs what Andrew J. Nathan, Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Columbia University writing in Foreign Affairs, describes as "the most detailed account yet"[1] of the experiences of the Chinese people during the Great Chinese Famine of 1958–62, which occurred under the Communist regime of Mao Zedong. The book supports an estimate of "at least" 45 million premature deaths in China during the famine years.[2] Dikötter calls the Great Famine "The worst catastrophe in China’s history, and one of the worst anywhere …"[2]

The author's research behind the book was funded by, in the UK, the Wellcome Trust, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the Economic and Social Research Council, and in Hong Kong, the Research Grants Council and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation.[3]

Background

The first chapter of the book, entitled "The Pursuit of Utopia", explains how the Chinese Communist Party's Great Leap Forward program, intended to achieve the rapid modernization of Chinese industry and agriculture, instead led to the catastrophe of the famine. According to one reviewer, the chapter summarizes:

… Mao's hubristic and utterly impractical plans for remaking China in the image of communist paradise. These include mass mobilization fueled by revolutionary ardor alone, the expropriation of personal property and housing to be replaced by People's Communes, the centralized distribution of food, plans to leapfrog Britain in 15 years and outdo Stalin by "walking on two legs” (referring to development of both agriculture and industry), and regimenting and militarizing the entire society.[4]

The following chapters detail "the attempt to reach these goals, the absurdities their failure resulted in, and the blood price paid by the Chinese people in the process."[4]

Key arguments of the book

On a website providing exposure for the book, Dikötter detailed his key arguments. First, he states that the famine lasted at least four years (early 1958 to late 1962), not the three sometimes stated. And after researching large volume of Chinese archives, Dikötter concluded that decisions coming from the top officials of the Chinese government at Beijing were the direct cause of the famine.

Beijing government officials, including Zhou Enlai and Mao, increased the food procurement quota from the countryside to pay for international imports. According to Dikötter, "In most cases the party knew very well that it was starving its own people to death." Mao was quoted as saying in Shanghai in 1959: “When there is not enough to eat people starve to death. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.”

In their attempts to survive, Chinese people resorted to hiding, stealing, cheating, pilfering, foraging, smuggling, tricking, manipulating or otherwise outwitting the government. There were reports of armed assaults on granaries or trains. Overall, Dikötter estimates that there were 45 million premature deaths, not 30 million as previously estimated. Some two to three million of these were victims of political repression, beaten or tortured to death or summarily executed for political reasons, often for the slightest infraction.

Because local communist cadres were in charge of food distribution, they were able to withhold food from anyone of whom they disapproved. Old, sick and weak individuals were often regarded as unproductive and hence expendable. Apart from Mao, Dikkötter accuses several other members of the top party leadership of doing nothing about the famine. While famine was ravaging the country, free food was still being exported to allies, as well as economic aid and interest-free or low-interest loans.

In addition to the human suffering, some 30% to 40% of all rural housing was demolished in village relocations, for building roads and infrastructure, or sometimes as punishment for political opponents. Up to 50% of trees were cut down in some provinces, as the rural ecological system was ruined.[5][2]

Response to the book

Orville Schell, former Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, praised Dikötter's research in Chinese archives, which enabled him to unveil "the shroud on this period of monumental, man-made catastrophe" and document how Mao's "impetuosity was the demise of tens of millions of ordinary Chinese who perished unnecessarily in this spasm of revolutionary extremism."[6] Simon Sebag-Montefiore, author of Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, called the book "a gripping and masterful portrait of the brutal court of Mao."[6]

George Mason University Law School professor Ilya Somin called the book "excellent", and wrote that "Dikötter’s study is not the first to describe these events. Nonetheless, few Western intellectuals are aware of the scale of these atrocities, and they have had almost no impact on popular consciousness. This is part of the more general problem of the neglect of communist crimes. But Chinese communist atrocities are little-known even by comparison to those inflicted by communists in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, possibly because the Chinese are more culturally distant from Westerners than are Eastern Europeans or the German victims of the Berlin Wall. Ironically, the Wall (one of communism’s relatively smaller crimes) is vastly better known than the Great Leap Forward — the largest mass murder in all of world history. Hopefully, Dikötter’s important work will help change that."[7]

Jonathan Fenby, author of the Penguin History of Modern China and China Director at the research service, Trusted Sources, praised Dikötter's "masterly book" and states that his "painstaking research in newly opened local archives makes all too credible his estimate that the death toll reached 45 million people."[8]

Jonathan Mirsky, a historian and journalist specializing in Asian affairs, said Dikötter's book "is for now the best and last word on Mao's greatest horror. Frank Dikötter has put everyone in the field of Chinese studies in his debt, together with anyone else interested in the real China. Sooner or later the Chinese, too, will praise his name." However Mirsky also says that Dikötter is 'scornful' of the work of other scholars who had made similar findings, and is "dismissive of the book Tombstone (which he mistranslates as Wooden Tombstone), a sweeping, very informative investigation into the famine by the courageous Chinese journalist Yang Jisheng".[9]

The Indian essayist and novelist, Pankaj Mishra, in The New Yorker, offers qualified praise for the book, stating that the "narrative line is plausible" and that "Dikötter confirms the man’s reputation as sadistic, cowardly, callous, and vindictive." However he notes that Dikötter is "generally dismissive of facts that could blunt his story’s sharp edge", and that Dikötter’s "comparison of the famine to the great evils of the Holocaust and the Gulag does not, finally, persuade".[10] Mishra writes "A great many premature deaths also occurred in newly independent nations not ruled by erratic tyrants", asserting that democratic India has in fact killed far more people than Communist China. Mishra quotes the Indian economist Amartya Sen: “despite the gigantic size of excess mortality in the Chinese famine, the extra mortality in India from regular deprivation in normal times vastly overshadows the former.” Mishra emphasises Sen's point that China’s early lead over India in health care, literacy, and life expectancy, meant that: “India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame.”[10]

Misrepresentation of famine image on book cover

Adam Jones, political science and genocide studies professor at UBC Okanagan, criticised Bloomsbury Publishing and Dikötter for using a cover photograph on their editions of the book of a starving child that was actually from a Life magazine depiction of a 1946 Chinese famine, well before the events described in the book took place. [11]

Jones accepted a bloggers point that it was unlikely that Dikötter would have been unaware of the deception, because in an interview with Newsweek magazine, Dikötter had stated that, to his knowledge, no 'non-propaganda' images from the Great Leap Forward had ever been found. [12]

The Walker & Company edition of the book has a different cover, which features a 1962 image of Chinese refugees to Hong Kong begging for food as they are deported back to China.[12]

See also

References

  1. ^ Nathan, Andrew J. (3 November 2010). "Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–1962". Foreign Affairs.
  2. ^ a b c Dikötter, Frank (December 15, 2010). "Mao's Great Leap to Famine". International Herald Tribune.
  3. ^ "Frank Dikötter". Frank Dikötter home page. Retrieved 1 January 2011.
  4. ^ a b Robertson, Matthew (21 November 2010). "Mao's Utopia a Medley of Death and Destruction". The Epoch Times.
  5. ^ Dikötter, Frank (20 October 2010). "Cover interview of October 20, 2010". Rorotoko.com. Retrieved 21 November 2010.
  6. ^ a b "Frank Dikötter: Advance Praise and Synopsis". Frank Dikötter Home Page. Retrieved 22 November 2010.
  7. ^ Somin, Ilya (17 December 2010). "Frank Dikötter on Mao's Mass Murders". The Volokh Conspiracy.
  8. ^ Fenby, Jonathan (5 September 2010). "Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikötter". The Guardian. London.
  9. ^ Mirksy, Jonathan (September 2010). "Livelihood Issues". Literary Review.
  10. ^ a b Mishra, Pankaj (20 December 2010). "Staying Power: Mao and the Maoists". The New Yorker.
  11. ^ Jones, Adam (7 October 2010). "Misrepresenting a famine image". Genocide Studies Media File.
  12. ^ a b Fish, Issac Stone (26 September 2010). "Greeting Misery With Violence". Newsweek.
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