HVK Archives: HUNGRY GHOSTS - Mao's Secret Famine (Excerpts) - Part IV of IV
HUNGRY GHOSTS - Mao's Secret Famine (Excerpts) - Part IV of IV - Organiser
Jasper Becker
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Mon, 17 Mar 97 22:11:33 EST
HUNGRY GHOSTS - Mao's Secret Famine (Excerpts)
Part IV of IV
Author : Jasper Becker
ILLUSTRATIONS
Plate 1. The famine in the Ukraine in 1932-3 was to presage an
even greater disaster in China during the Great Leap Forward:
I. Collecting the emaciated corpses of Ukrainian famine victims
for cremation
II. On the streets of Kharkov, the capital of the Ukraine,
pedestrians pay scant attention to the starving
Plate 2. At the height of the Great Leap Forward peasants all over
China were marshalled into massive labour-intensive projects:
I. members of the Gangkou commune in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province,
march off to work behind red flags. This photograph was taken in
the autumn of 1959 when the slogan was 'Go all out and continue
the Great Leap Forward and defeat rightism'
II. Peasants in Guangdong province at work on the Xinxihe
reservoir. Armies of such peasants built reservoirs in every
country in China but most collapsed within a few years
Plate 3. China's propaganda boasted of miraculous agricultural
yields:
I. Close planting of wheat reputedly produced a crop so dense that
children could stand on top of it. This picture from China
Pictorial was, like so many others, a fake - the children are
standing on a bench hidden beneath the grain. Nevertheless, as the
photograph below shows, China claimed she had outstripped even
America in wheat production.
Plate 4. The men responsible for the worst excesses during the
Great Leap Forward included:
I. Chen Boda, the editor of Red Flag. The son of a wealthy
landlord, he became the most influential ultra-leftist thinker
around Mao and his ideas inspired both the Great Leap Forward and
the Cultural Revolution
II. Li Jingquan, the Party Secretary of Sichuan province. Under
his leadership between 7 and 9 million people starved to death in
a province famous for its agricultural surpluses. He was never
criticized for his actions but lost power during the Cultural
Revolution
Plate 5. I. A rare photograph of Zeng Xisheng, Party Secretary of
Anhui province. Up to a quarter of the population of Anhui
perished during the famine but Zeng lost power in 1962 for
pioneering reforms which saved many more lives
II. Henan province was the pace-setter during the Great Leap
Forward and its Party Secretary Wu Zhifu was Mao's devoted
follower. Under Wu's leadership millions starved, especially in
the Xinyang prefecture, but Wu's crimes were never publicly
condemned
Plate 6. I. Mao inspects an experimental field in the famous Seven
Li commune in Xinxiang country, Henan province, in 1958. It was
here he declared: 'this name, the People's Commune, is great'
II. Among the alleged scientific successes of the Great Leap
Forward was the creation of giant vegetable. Here peasants parade
a giant pumpkin
Plate 7. I. In Anhui Mao Zedong shows his approval for an
innovation intended to help triple steel output - the backyard
furnace. City-dwellers had to melt down whatever metal objects
they could find to make steel
II. Peasants in even the remotest regions had to do the same in
much larger furnaces. This propaganda photograph shows crude
smelters built near Xinyang in Henan province. Party documents
later described what happened in Xinyang as a 'holocaust'
Plate 8. I. The most hated part of the communes were the communal
kitchens. This propaganda photograph of a village communal canteen
shows peasants eating together the reality was much harsher
II. The communes were run as militarized units and were intended
to be effective both in war and in peace. In some places this was
taken literally to mean arming the peasants. Here members of the
Dongjiao commune near Zhengzhou, Henan province, work with their
weapons close at hand
Plate 9. I. As part of the Great Leap Forward's attempt to wipe
our all pests in a massive public hygiene movement, sparrows were
exterminated. Here peasants parade the bodies of those killed
during a single day
II. All over the country peasants were inspired to create homemade
tools and machines as part of the promised mechanization of
agriculture. Since the steel produced in the backyard furnaces was
useless, all these devices were made out of wood, like this truck
built in Gaotang county in Shandong province. It was powered by a
kerosene engine
Plate 10. I. The Great Leap Forward was, above all, an attempt to
master nature. Nothing was impossible if the masses were
mobilized to perform extraordinary feats of manual labour. To
symbolize this peasants painted murals on their houses. This one,
entitled 'Making the mountains bow their heads and the rivers give
way, was painted in the Spring Flower commune near Xi'an in
Shaanxi province
II. one of the greatest of these senseless endeavours was the
construction of the Red Flag Canal in Henan province. To divert
water to a poor region, peasants spent years constructing a
channel through mountains and along steep hillsides using the most
primitive tools
Plate 11. I. The slightest opposition to Mao's policies led to
condemnation as a rightist. In this scene Zhang Bojun, Chairman of
the Democratic Party of Peasants and Workers, is condemned as a
rightist at a public meeting. His party was a remnant of
political parties which had existed before 1949 but which were
allowed to continue to give an impression of tolerance
II. In the communes, peasants were made to work day and night and
often slept in the fields. These peasants from Xianyang county in
Henan province are engaged in deep ploughing which Mao believed
would create bigger and better crops. In some places, furrows
twelve feet deep were dug
Plate 12. Those who benefited from the Great Leap Forward included
I. Hua Guofeng, who later became Mao's successor after denying
that peasants were starving in Mao's home county
II. Zhao Ziyang, who first reported that the peasants were hiding
grain - under Deng Xiaoping he later became General Party
Secretary and launched the rural reforms
III. Hu Yaobang, who was promoted after inspecting Mao's home
county and lying about what he saw there - he later regretted his
actions and in 1979, after Deng Yiaoping made him General Party
Secretary, he began to dismantle the communes;
IV. Kang Sheng, one of the few to die while still in' favour - he
implemented Mao's purges before 1949 and after, and gave his
enthusiastic backing to the Great Leap Forward
Plate 13. The chief victim of the Great Leap Forward was Marshal
Peng Dehuai
I. who presented a private letter to Mao during the Lushan summit
in mid-1959 that criticized the Great Leap Forward
II. The blurred photograph below was taken during the Lushan
summit when Mao attacked Peng as a rightist
Plate 14. Two of the men who helped end the famine and earned
Mao's hatred:
I. President Liu Shaoqi and his wife Wang Guangmei, photographed
setting an example during the famine by picking wild fruit and
grasses in the wooded hills of Wenquan near Guangzhou
II. Zhang Wentian, one of those who spoke out at the Lushan summit
in support of Peng Dehuai and who had evidence of the famine in
Anhui
Plate 15.I. The tenth Panchen Lama of Tibet was one of the very
few who dared to speak out during the famine. His report came
close to accusing the Party of attempted genocide against the
Tibetans. Soon after his report was delivered he was imprisoned
and did not regian the trust of the Communist Party until shortly
before his death in 1989
II. The writer Deng Tuo was among the first victims of the
Cultural Revolution. Deng had written a history of famine relief
in China which was republished in 1961 when he and a small group
of intellectuals openly ridiculed Mao and his catastrophic
policies
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