Calamity and Reform in China: State, Rural Society, and Institutional Change Since the Great Leap Famine

Front Cover
Stanford University Press, 1996 - History - 351 pages
China's Great Leap Famine of 1959-61 resulted in 30 million deaths, making it easily the worst famine in human history. Yet unlike the Cultural Revolution - that other massive catastrophe of Mao's rule - the Great Leap Forward has received scant scholarly attention. This is partly because victims of the ensuing famine were inarticulate farmers and partly because many key players in that inglorious era are members of the current elite who tightly guard the archives. Despite these impediments, the author has marshalled an impressive array of historical documents to provide the first comprehensive treatment of the political causes and consequences of the Great Leap Famine. The Famine is important because it furnished the crucial historical motives for dismantling the rural collective institutional structure in post-Mao China two decades later and motivating tens of millions of ordinary Chinese to enact the reforms.

 

Contents

The Political Significance of Decollectivization 2 The Rise
6
The Path to Disaster
21
Level of economic development and commune messhall
61
The Great Leap Famine and Rural Liberalization
71
The Cultural Revolution Interlude
98
Gross value of agricultural output GVAO and gross value
105
Index of procurement prices 195183
115
Structural Incentives for Rural Reform
121
Reform Euphoria Policy Myopia and Rising Rural Discontent
183
Contrasting growth patterns for rural industry and crop
184
Rural Industrialization Political Empowerment
213
Rural Enterprise Sector Under the Austerity Program
220
Interests Perceptions and Policy Change
226
Conclusion
234
Main Sources of Data for Analyses of the Great Leap Famine
257
Bibliography
311

The Great Leap Famine and brigade accounting rate 1981
139
The Political Struggle over Reform
144
Index
345

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About the author (1996)

Dali L. Yang is Professor and Chairman in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago.

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