Why did the Great Chinese Famine happen?

Also known as Great Leap famine, three years of natural disaster

Shows causes on the record, then each account's causes side by side.

Not a single settled cause.

2 links · 3 accounts · 1958–1962

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A connection is not evidence of wrongdoing.

Over time

Causes Great Leap Forward, according to Cormac Ó Gráda and Yang Jisheng 1958–1962
Causes Great Leap Forward, according to Communist Party of China 1958–1962
195819591960196119621963

Each account

A to Z, none ranked above another.

Named in 3 of the 3 accounts recorded here: Great Leap Forward

According to Communist Party of China

Great Leap Forward caused 1958–1962 Primary record 1 It was mainly due to the errors of the Great Leap Forward and of the struggle against “Right opportunism” together with a succession of natural calamities and the perfidious scrapping of contracts by the Soviet Government that our economy encountered serious difficulties between 1959 and 1961
The resolution speaks of economic difficulties in 1959-61 and names natural calamities and Soviet contract cancellations beside the Leap's errors.

According to Cormac Ó Gráda

Great Leap Forward caused 1958–1962 Scholarship & press 2 3
Ó Gráda writes of the policies that caused the famine, and not of intent: reckless miscalculation is not the same as deliberately starving millions. The Party's 1981 history gives a different mix of causes (next link).

According to Yang Jisheng

Great Leap Forward caused 1958–1962 Scholarship & press 2 3 a tragedy unprecedented in world history for tens of millions of people to starve to death and to resort to cannibalism during a period of normal climate patterns with no wars or epidemics.
Ó Gráda writes of the policies that caused the famine, and not of intent: reckless miscalculation is not the same as deliberately starving millions. The Party's 1981 history gives a different mix of causes (next link).

Proof 3 sources

Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People's Republic of China, Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (text on the Marxists Internet Archive), 27 Jun 1981. Primary record
It was mainly due to the errors of the Great Leap Forward and of the struggle against “Right opportunism” together with a succession of natural calamities and the perfidious scrapping of contracts by the Soviet Government that our economy encountered serious difficulties between 1959 and 1961
which caused serious losses to our country and people.
Great Leap into Famine (UCD Centre for Economic Research working paper WP11/03), University College Dublin, Jan 2011. Scholarship & press Archived copy
None of this absolves Mao from responsibility for the policies that caused the greatest famine ever. But reckless miscalculation and culpable ignorance are not quite the same as deliberately or knowingly starving millions
The role of the weather in 1959-61 remains contested.
Y. Y. Kueh found that droughts and flooding accounted for the bulk of the shortfalls in 1960 and 1961, although he also insisted ‘even without natural disasters, the agricultural depression was inevitable’
China: Worse Than You Ever Imagined (review of Tombstone and Mao's Great Famine), The New York Review of Books (text on ChinaFile), 22 Nov 2012. Scholarship & press
Finding no natural causes, Yang lays the deaths at the feet of China’s totalitarian Communist system and the refusal of officials at every level to value human life over ideology and self-interest.
a tragedy unprecedented in world history for tens of millions of people to starve to death and to resort to cannibalism during a period of normal climate patterns with no wars or epidemics.

How this answer is built

Lines on the record come first: sourced links that no one presents as their own account, each with its strongest source. Then every account recorded here gets its own column, A to Z, none ranked above another. A column quotes only that account's own words and shows the strength of its own sources. Disputed lines are listed apart, with the reason, and lines still being verified come last. Neither is counted. Withdrawn lines are never shown.

When a list is longer than the page shows, the links the public methodology ranks strongest stay (methodology 0.3), and the rest open in the explorer.

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