Demographic Consequences of the Great Leap Forward in China's Provinces

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.Population Council is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Population and Development Review. In November 1957, at a meeting of representatives of Communist and Workers' Parties in Moscow, the late Chairman Mao Zedong proposed the goal for China of overtaking Great Britain in industrial production within 15 years. The Chinese Communist Party convened several important conferences in the early months of 1958.' A transformation of society was projected in which the masses were to be the driving force. The general line of the Party that guided the Great Leap Forward was "Going all out, aiming high and achieving greater, faster, better, and more economical results in building socialism. "2 Labor-intensive development was viewed as a solution to the problem of capital shortage; partial imbalances were to be taken in stride. Development processes were explained in political terms, and the impact of ideology on economic development was emphasized.Launched in the spring of 1958, the Great Leap Forward was China's alternative to Soviet-style development, an attempt to leap ahead in production by reorganizing the peasantry into large-scale communes and mobilizing society to bring about technological revolution in agriculture.As the Great Leap progressed, production targets were revised upward several times, reaching unrealistic levels. Heavy industry, especially steel production, was accorded high priority at the expense of agriculture and light industry. Residents in both urban and rural areas, young and old, were mobilized to increase iron and steel production. Millions of peasant laborers moved into cities to work in factories. In the countryside the formation of people's communes was praised as a "golden bridge" toward communist society.Unfortunately, nothing worked as expected. The practice of claiming nonexistent achievements became a "wind of exaggeration" that blew through the country. The "communist wind," which referred to impracticable attempts to establish a "communist society" by means of equal distribution, emerged POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW 13, NO. 4 (DECEMBER 1987) 639 640 Consequences of the Great Leap as a striking feature of the Leap.3 Much of the iron and steel that was made by backyard blast furnaces was useless. Foodgrain production declined considerably in three successive years, 1959-61, and industrial output fell subsequently. The standard of living also deteriorated sharply. The years 1959-61 are remembered as three bitter years in modern Chinese history. Faced with the collapse of the commune system, the leaders made extensive organizational changes, and in 1962 they decentralized the unit of labor management and income sh...

Does famine influence sex ratio at birth? Evidence from the 1959–1961 Great Leap Forward Famine in China

“…This effort, however, ended disastrously with a severe famine that lasted over 3 years and affected hundreds of millions of people [33,34]. It is difficult to pinpoint the exact beginning and ending dates of the famine because of the vast territory involved and the presence of significant regional variations in the famine impact.…”

Does Famine Have a Long-Term Effect on Cohort Mortality? Evidence From the 1959–1961 Great Leap Forward Famine in China

“…The goal of the Great Leap Forward was to accelerate the pace of industrialization and urbanization in China by mobilizing rural surplus labor to participate in labor-intensive non-agricultural productive activities, such as making iron and steel using backyard blast furnaces (Peng 1987). The results, however, turned out to be disastrous.…”

“…More than 10,000 Dutch people died directly from starvation, and many more died with malnutrition as a contributing factor (Stein 1975). As for the cause of the 1959-1961 Chinese famine, most scholars agree that a combination of natural disaster and policy mistakes, especially those during the Great Leap Forward in 1958, together led to the three-year famine that caused over 30 million excess deaths (Ashton et al 1984;Kung and Lin 2003;Lin andYang 1998, 2000;Peng 1987). …”

Three parts natural, seven parts man-made: Bayesian analysis of China’s Great Leap Forward demographic disaster

“…These same data were used by Peng (1987) and Lin and Yang (2000) in their Leap investigations. The data set includes annual crude birth rates, crude death rates, and net migration rates for 28 of China's 29 provinces and major cities (Tibet is excluded for lack of data) and covers the years beginning in 1955 and ending in 1982.…”