WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.379 Imagine, just for a moment, the sheer magnitude 00:00:02.379 --> 00:00:04.320 of the ambition we're looking at today. You're 00:00:04.320 --> 00:00:07.740 looking at a country, a vast, largely agrarian 00:00:07.740 --> 00:00:11.039 society, where the overwhelming majority of people 00:00:11.039 --> 00:00:13.359 are subsistence farmers working with hand tools. 00:00:13.759 --> 00:00:16.059 And you decide, you know, we're going to turn 00:00:16.059 --> 00:00:18.940 this into a world -class industrial superpower. 00:00:19.519 --> 00:00:21.980 Right. Which, I mean, that sounds like a fairly 00:00:21.980 --> 00:00:24.039 standard development goal for the 20th century. 00:00:24.800 --> 00:00:27.140 Everyone wanted to industrialize. They did. But 00:00:27.140 --> 00:00:29.379 here's the kicker. You decide you aren't going 00:00:29.379 --> 00:00:31.000 to do it in a century. You aren't even going 00:00:31.000 --> 00:00:32.640 to do in 50 years. You decide you're going to 00:00:32.640 --> 00:00:34.920 do it in roughly five years. Which is it's just 00:00:34.920 --> 00:00:36.759 sounds physically impossible. It sounds like 00:00:36.759 --> 00:00:39.939 science fiction. Exactly. But that's the premise 00:00:39.939 --> 00:00:42.280 we're unpacking for you today. We are taking 00:00:42.280 --> 00:00:45.859 a deep dive into one of the most ambitious and 00:00:45.859 --> 00:00:47.840 ultimately one of the most devastating social 00:00:47.840 --> 00:00:50.759 experiments in human history. The Great Leap 00:00:50.759 --> 00:00:55.079 Forward in China, running roughly from 1958 to 00:00:55.079 --> 00:00:57.960 1962. And I want to be clear right off the bat 00:00:57.960 --> 00:00:59.740 for everyone listening. This isn't just a history 00:00:59.740 --> 00:01:02.700 lesson about dates and maps. The mission for 00:01:02.700 --> 00:01:05.599 this deep dive is to investigate a really specific 00:01:05.599 --> 00:01:09.019 kind of terrifying dynamic. We're looking at 00:01:09.019 --> 00:01:12.019 what happens when high -level ideology completely 00:01:12.019 --> 00:01:15.239 steamrolls technical reality. It's essentially 00:01:15.239 --> 00:01:18.319 a case study in ignoring the experts. In a way, 00:01:18.379 --> 00:01:21.420 yeah. It's about this intense desire to defy 00:01:21.420 --> 00:01:24.079 the conventional understanding of time, as some 00:01:24.079 --> 00:01:26.420 of the historians in our sources put it. The 00:01:26.420 --> 00:01:28.400 leadership essentially decided that physics, 00:01:28.700 --> 00:01:31.920 economics, biology, they were all just suggestions 00:01:31.920 --> 00:01:33.980 that could be overcome with enough willpower. 00:01:34.359 --> 00:01:36.359 And we have a pretty heavy stack of sources for 00:01:36.359 --> 00:01:38.579 this one. We're pulling from government policy 00:01:38.579 --> 00:01:41.400 documents from the era, retrospective economic 00:01:41.400 --> 00:01:45.099 analyses, and some truly harrowing oral histories 00:01:45.099 --> 00:01:47.239 from survivors of the famine that followed. Yeah, 00:01:47.299 --> 00:01:49.219 it's a story that starts with genuine electric 00:01:49.219 --> 00:01:52.920 optimism, this huge dream of modernization. And 00:01:52.920 --> 00:01:55.340 it ends with a tragedy so massive, it's actually 00:01:55.340 --> 00:01:57.739 difficult for the human mind to comprehend. So 00:01:57.739 --> 00:02:00.859 let's set the stage a bit. It's the late 1950s. 00:02:00.859 --> 00:02:03.040 The People's Republic of China has been established 00:02:03.040 --> 00:02:06.200 for nearly a decade. But the vibe isn't, you 00:02:06.200 --> 00:02:10.520 know, we made it. The vibe is tension. Intense 00:02:10.520 --> 00:02:13.159 tension. Specifically with their big brother, 00:02:13.319 --> 00:02:15.979 the Soviet Union. The sources highlight that 00:02:15.979 --> 00:02:18.120 the Sino -Soviet relationship was really fracturing 00:02:18.120 --> 00:02:21.520 at this point. Mao Zedong realized China couldn't 00:02:21.520 --> 00:02:24.539 rely on Soviet technology or aid forever. He 00:02:24.539 --> 00:02:26.319 felt like they were being treated as a junior 00:02:26.319 --> 00:02:29.479 partner. Exactly. And he hated it. So the motivation 00:02:29.479 --> 00:02:32.159 here is total self -reliance. Self -reliance. 00:02:32.539 --> 00:02:35.139 But on steroids. He didn't just want to catch 00:02:35.139 --> 00:02:37.240 up to the West. He wanted to leapfrog them entirely. 00:02:37.520 --> 00:02:40.240 He famously set this goal to catch up with and 00:02:40.240 --> 00:02:42.419 surpass the United Kingdom in industrial output 00:02:42.419 --> 00:02:45.840 in just 15 years. Which, again, for a country 00:02:45.840 --> 00:02:47.719 that was still mostly farming with hand tools, 00:02:47.879 --> 00:02:51.360 is bold. Bold is putting it mildly. To achieve 00:02:51.360 --> 00:02:53.539 this, the party theorists came up with a strategy 00:02:53.539 --> 00:02:56.229 they called walking on two legs. I've always 00:02:56.229 --> 00:02:57.370 found that name kind of interesting. It sounds 00:02:57.370 --> 00:02:59.550 practical. Like you need two legs to move forward. 00:02:59.569 --> 00:03:01.349 Don't leave anyone behind. That's the marketing 00:03:01.349 --> 00:03:04.129 side of it, sure. But the economic reality was 00:03:04.129 --> 00:03:07.330 very distinct. Walking on two legs meant developing 00:03:07.330 --> 00:03:09.789 heavy industry and light agriculture simultaneously. 00:03:10.469 --> 00:03:12.949 It meant trying to develop the urban centers 00:03:12.949 --> 00:03:16.210 and the rural countryside at the exact same time. 00:03:16.330 --> 00:03:18.330 But usually in economic development, you focus 00:03:18.330 --> 00:03:20.629 capital on one area, generate a surplus, and 00:03:20.629 --> 00:03:22.210 then fund the other. You build the factories 00:03:22.210 --> 00:03:24.389 and then you modernize the farms. Precisely. 00:03:24.729 --> 00:03:27.789 That's the slow, conventional way. But China 00:03:27.789 --> 00:03:30.830 didn't have the capital money or machinery to 00:03:30.830 --> 00:03:33.830 do that. So the core belief of the Great Leap 00:03:33.830 --> 00:03:36.330 was that they could substitute capital with labor. 00:03:36.509 --> 00:03:38.330 Like if you don't have a bulldozer, just use 00:03:38.330 --> 00:03:40.409 a thousand people with shovels. That's exactly 00:03:40.409 --> 00:03:43.530 it. They believed the sheer volume of human labor, 00:03:43.689 --> 00:03:46.849 fueled by revolutionary enthusiasm, could bend 00:03:46.849 --> 00:03:49.550 the curve of economic growth. They thought human 00:03:49.550 --> 00:03:51.990 spirit could literally replace machinery. The 00:03:51.990 --> 00:03:54.189 sources mention a slogan that really captures 00:03:54.189 --> 00:03:57.169 this energy. It goes, go all out, aim high, and 00:03:57.169 --> 00:03:59.689 build socialism with greater, faster, better, 00:03:59.770 --> 00:04:02.969 and more economical results. It's catchy. But 00:04:02.969 --> 00:04:04.969 if you've ever managed any kind of project, you 00:04:04.969 --> 00:04:06.789 know about the project management triangle, right? 00:04:06.930 --> 00:04:09.210 You can have it fast, good, or cheap. You pick 00:04:09.210 --> 00:04:11.909 two. And this slogan is essentially saying, pick 00:04:11.909 --> 00:04:15.770 all four. Right. Faster and better and more economical 00:04:15.770 --> 00:04:19.779 usually don't coexist in reality. But the ideology 00:04:19.779 --> 00:04:22.519 dictated that if we work hard enough, logic just 00:04:22.519 --> 00:04:25.540 doesn't apply. And this brings us to the first 00:04:25.540 --> 00:04:28.540 massive structural change, the people's communes. 00:04:28.560 --> 00:04:30.860 This is where the daily life of the average person 00:04:30.860 --> 00:04:33.579 gets completely rewritten. Completely overturned. 00:04:33.579 --> 00:04:37.019 By 1958, private ownership was essentially abolished. 00:04:37.240 --> 00:04:39.379 And we aren't just talking about land. We are 00:04:39.379 --> 00:04:41.860 talking about everyday life. Households were 00:04:41.860 --> 00:04:44.600 merged into these massive communes. An average 00:04:44.600 --> 00:04:48.610 commune might hold 5 ,000 families. 5 ,000 families 00:04:48.610 --> 00:04:50.949 living as one single unit. Effectively, yes. 00:04:51.110 --> 00:04:53.449 They worked together, lived in shared spaces, 00:04:53.649 --> 00:04:56.110 and crucially, they ate together. The sources 00:04:56.110 --> 00:04:58.410 detail the establishment of communal canteens. 00:04:58.529 --> 00:05:00.550 The idea being to just get rid of the home kitchen 00:05:00.550 --> 00:05:04.069 entirely. Yes. The state wanted to free people, 00:05:04.189 --> 00:05:07.449 especially women, from domestic labor, like cooking 00:05:07.449 --> 00:05:09.990 and cleaning, so that absolutely everyone could 00:05:09.990 --> 00:05:12.290 be on the production line. You eat in canteen, 00:05:12.430 --> 00:05:14.449 you work in the fields or the factories, and 00:05:14.449 --> 00:05:16.490 you get paid in work points rather than cash. 00:05:17.019 --> 00:05:18.860 It sounds like they were trying to turn the entire 00:05:18.860 --> 00:05:22.399 country into one giant factory floor. That's 00:05:22.399 --> 00:05:24.540 a really great way to put it. And speaking of 00:05:24.540 --> 00:05:27.399 factories, we have to talk about the most iconic 00:05:27.399 --> 00:05:30.399 and maybe the most confusing image of this era. 00:05:30.939 --> 00:05:33.680 The backyard furnaces. This is the part that 00:05:33.680 --> 00:05:35.560 always stops me in my tracks when I read about 00:05:35.560 --> 00:05:38.120 it. The leadership wanted to double steel production 00:05:38.120 --> 00:05:42.060 in a single year, 1958. But they didn't have 00:05:42.060 --> 00:05:44.519 the steel mills to actually do it. So in the 00:05:44.519 --> 00:05:46.819 spirit of walking on two legs, they decentralized 00:05:46.819 --> 00:05:49.300 steel production. If you don't have a modern 00:05:49.300 --> 00:05:51.279 blast furnace, you build a small clay furnace 00:05:51.279 --> 00:05:53.240 right in your backyard. And when we say you, 00:05:53.319 --> 00:05:55.040 we mean farmers, people who know how to grow 00:05:55.040 --> 00:05:58.920 wheat, not smelt iron. Correct. Millions of peasants 00:05:58.920 --> 00:06:01.379 were diverted from farming to man these furnaces. 00:06:01.839 --> 00:06:04.480 The sources say the sky was lit up at night for 00:06:04.480 --> 00:06:07.120 miles because of the fires from millions of these 00:06:07.120 --> 00:06:09.490 small kilns. It must have looked incredible, 00:06:09.610 --> 00:06:12.410 but economically it was a disaster waiting to 00:06:12.410 --> 00:06:14.569 happen. Well, yeah, because here is the technical 00:06:14.569 --> 00:06:18.529 snag. To make steel, you need iron ore and fuel. 00:06:18.990 --> 00:06:21.269 Where were they getting the raw material for 00:06:21.269 --> 00:06:23.829 this? Often they simply didn't have it. But remember 00:06:23.829 --> 00:06:26.410 the immense pressure here. You must meet the 00:06:26.410 --> 00:06:29.430 quota. Everything is about the quota. So the 00:06:29.430 --> 00:06:31.930 sources describe people literally melting down 00:06:31.930 --> 00:06:34.029 their own possessions. Like what kind of possessions? 00:06:34.370 --> 00:06:37.040 Everything. cooking pots, door handles, bicycles, 00:06:37.439 --> 00:06:40.019 even agricultural tools. Wait, they were melting 00:06:40.019 --> 00:06:42.540 down their hose and plows to make steel? Yes. 00:06:42.839 --> 00:06:44.199 While they were also supposed to be increasing 00:06:44.199 --> 00:06:46.959 agricultural output. The irony is tragic. They 00:06:46.959 --> 00:06:50.060 were destroying the very tools of food production 00:06:50.060 --> 00:06:53.480 to create steel. And the result is just heartbreaking. 00:06:53.759 --> 00:06:56.779 The nation did technically produce 10 .7 million 00:06:56.779 --> 00:06:59.319 tons of steel that year. The quota was technically 00:06:59.319 --> 00:07:02.730 met. But the records show. that about 3 million 00:07:02.730 --> 00:07:06.649 tons of it was basically useless slag. They called 00:07:06.649 --> 00:07:09.370 it native iron. Because these backyard furnaces 00:07:09.370 --> 00:07:11.629 couldn't get hot enough or remove impurities, 00:07:11.870 --> 00:07:14.910 the metal was brittle. It cracked. It was totally 00:07:14.910 --> 00:07:17.829 useless for construction or industry. So you've 00:07:17.829 --> 00:07:19.889 destroyed the pots and pans, you've melted the 00:07:19.889 --> 00:07:22.209 farming tools, you've burned down forests for 00:07:22.209 --> 00:07:25.329 fuel, and you have a huge pile of useless rubble 00:07:25.329 --> 00:07:28.230 to show for it. Exactly. And crucially, you've 00:07:28.230 --> 00:07:30.670 taken the labor force away from the fields right 00:07:30.670 --> 00:07:33.410 during the harvest. Which leads us to the other 00:07:33.410 --> 00:07:36.449 leg of the strategy. If you are pulling millions 00:07:36.449 --> 00:07:38.550 of people away from farming to play blacksmith, 00:07:38.810 --> 00:07:42.209 how on earth do you feed the country? You need 00:07:42.209 --> 00:07:45.050 the fields to be magically hyperproductive. You 00:07:45.050 --> 00:07:47.500 need a miracle. And so the leadership turned 00:07:47.500 --> 00:07:49.399 to some very questionable science to try and 00:07:49.399 --> 00:07:52.339 get one. Enter Trofim Lysenko. Now, this is a 00:07:52.339 --> 00:07:54.459 name that comes up in history books as a massive 00:07:54.459 --> 00:07:57.100 warning label for politicized science. He was 00:07:57.100 --> 00:08:00.060 a Soviet agronomist, right? Yes, and his theories 00:08:00.060 --> 00:08:03.920 were ideologically very convenient. Lysenko rejected 00:08:03.920 --> 00:08:07.000 Mendelian genetics, the Western idea of genes 00:08:07.000 --> 00:08:10.279 and DNA. He believed the environment was abs— 00:08:10.490 --> 00:08:12.689 absolutely everything. He actually argued that 00:08:12.689 --> 00:08:14.730 plants of the same class wouldn't compete with 00:08:14.730 --> 00:08:17.089 each other because they were comrades. Wait, 00:08:17.170 --> 00:08:20.850 he applied Marxist class theory to plants? He 00:08:20.850 --> 00:08:23.850 did. And the Chinese leadership, desperate for 00:08:23.850 --> 00:08:27.069 higher yields, adopted this wholesale. This led 00:08:27.069 --> 00:08:29.389 to a widespread practice called close cropping. 00:08:29.639 --> 00:08:32.000 The logic being, if plants are comrades, we can 00:08:32.000 --> 00:08:34.080 plant them super close together and they'll just 00:08:34.080 --> 00:08:36.240 share the sunlight. Exactly. They planted seeds 00:08:36.240 --> 00:08:39.159 three, four, even five times denser than normal. 00:08:39.259 --> 00:08:40.679 They thought the plants would work together. 00:08:40.919 --> 00:08:43.559 But biology doesn't care about ideology. No, 00:08:43.580 --> 00:08:45.860 it doesn't. Plants compete for light, water, 00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:48.340 and nutrients regardless of their class. When 00:08:48.340 --> 00:08:50.679 you plant wheat that densely, it suffocates. 00:08:50.820 --> 00:08:53.120 The crocs simply rotted in the fields. It was 00:08:53.120 --> 00:08:55.399 a total failure. And didn't they also try something 00:08:55.399 --> 00:08:58.639 called deep plowing? Yes. The theory was that 00:08:58.639 --> 00:09:01.179 if you plowed two or three feet deep, you'd encourage 00:09:01.179 --> 00:09:05.259 massive root systems. In reality, they just buried 00:09:05.259 --> 00:09:07.919 the fertile topsoil and brought up useless clay 00:09:07.919 --> 00:09:10.419 and rocks and gravel. They effectively destroyed 00:09:10.419 --> 00:09:13.000 the soil fertility. It's a cascading series of 00:09:13.000 --> 00:09:15.159 errors. But there's one more detail in the sources 00:09:15.159 --> 00:09:18.100 that really highlights just how broken the ecological 00:09:18.100 --> 00:09:22.200 understanding was. The Four Pests Campaign. Ah, 00:09:22.240 --> 00:09:25.769 yes. The war on nature. The government identified 00:09:25.769 --> 00:09:29.049 four pests to be completely eliminated. Rats, 00:09:29.110 --> 00:09:32.230 flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows. Sparrows. The 00:09:32.230 --> 00:09:34.769 bird. Specifically, the Eurasian tree sparrow. 00:09:35.070 --> 00:09:37.970 The logic was simple enough. Sparrows eat grain 00:09:37.970 --> 00:09:40.299 seeds. Therefore, sparrows are stealing from 00:09:40.299 --> 00:09:42.299 the people. If we kill the sparrows, we'll have 00:09:42.299 --> 00:09:44.600 more grain. So they mobilized the entire population 00:09:44.600 --> 00:09:47.539 to hunt birds. It was total war. People banging 00:09:47.539 --> 00:09:49.940 pots and pans for days to keep the birds flying 00:09:49.940 --> 00:09:52.340 until they just dropped dead from sheer exhaustion. 00:09:52.539 --> 00:09:54.840 They destroyed nests, broke eggs. They nearly 00:09:54.840 --> 00:09:57.139 drove the bird to extinction in China. Which, 00:09:57.240 --> 00:09:59.179 in a vacuum, sounds like it would save some grain. 00:09:59.460 --> 00:10:03.039 Short term, maybe. But again, biology bites back. 00:10:03.679 --> 00:10:06.340 Sparrows don't just eat grain. They eat insects. 00:10:07.379 --> 00:10:09.980 Specifically locusts. Oh, no. With the natural 00:10:09.980 --> 00:10:12.620 predator wiped out, the following year saw a 00:10:12.620 --> 00:10:16.299 massive, devastating swarm of locusts. They ate 00:10:16.299 --> 00:10:18.360 absolutely everything. The ecological balance 00:10:18.360 --> 00:10:21.779 wasn't just disturbed. It was obliterated. So 00:10:21.779 --> 00:10:25.059 let's recap the situation by 1959. You have labor 00:10:25.059 --> 00:10:27.960 diverted to useless steel. You have bad planting 00:10:27.960 --> 00:10:30.779 techniques killing the crop yield. You have locusts 00:10:30.779 --> 00:10:33.600 swarming because you killed the birds. This is 00:10:33.600 --> 00:10:37.070 a recipe for famine. It is. But. And this is 00:10:37.070 --> 00:10:38.950 the part that is crucial for understanding the 00:10:38.950 --> 00:10:41.470 mission of this deep dive. The leadership didn't 00:10:41.470 --> 00:10:43.570 realize how bad it was. How is that even possible? 00:10:43.710 --> 00:10:45.190 If people are hungry, how does the government 00:10:45.190 --> 00:10:47.889 not know? This brings us to the information bubble. 00:10:48.110 --> 00:10:50.070 We have to look at the political incentive structure. 00:10:50.330 --> 00:10:52.509 There's a culture of terror. Local officials 00:10:52.509 --> 00:10:54.409 knew that if they reported a failure to meet 00:10:54.409 --> 00:10:56.590 the quota, they would be labeled rightists or 00:10:56.590 --> 00:10:58.909 counterrevolutionaries. They'd be purged. So 00:10:58.909 --> 00:11:01.070 they just lied. They lied on a massive scale. 00:11:01.190 --> 00:11:03.370 The sources call this phenomenon... Launching 00:11:03.370 --> 00:11:05.549 satellites. Launching satellites. It was the 00:11:05.549 --> 00:11:08.049 specific term for reporting incredibly high, 00:11:08.169 --> 00:11:10.710 exaggerated -to -production figures. It became 00:11:10.710 --> 00:11:14.090 a competition. If one commune reported 5 ,000 00:11:14.090 --> 00:11:16.889 pounds of grain, the next one would report 10 00:11:16.889 --> 00:11:20.009 ,000, just to look more loyal. Even if the field 00:11:20.009 --> 00:11:23.529 only produced 1 ,000. Exactly. And here is where 00:11:23.529 --> 00:11:26.529 the math turns deadly. The state calculated how 00:11:26.529 --> 00:11:29.840 much grain to take as tax. Based on those reported 00:11:29.840 --> 00:11:32.700 numbers, not the actual harvest. Oh, I see where 00:11:32.700 --> 00:11:35.000 this is going. If the state thinks you have 10 00:11:35.000 --> 00:11:37.379 ,000 pounds. And they tax you 30%. They take 00:11:37.379 --> 00:11:39.620 3 ,000 pounds. Right. But if you only actually 00:11:39.620 --> 00:11:41.940 produce 3 ,000 pounds. They take everything you 00:11:41.940 --> 00:11:44.059 have. They take everything. They swept the granaries 00:11:44.059 --> 00:11:46.620 clean, genuinely believing the peasants still 00:11:46.620 --> 00:11:48.740 had plenty left over because the report said 00:11:48.740 --> 00:11:51.259 so. The state warehouses were filling up while 00:11:51.259 --> 00:11:53.220 the villages were left with absolutely nothing. 00:11:53.480 --> 00:11:55.620 Did no one at the top try to stop this? Surely 00:11:55.620 --> 00:11:58.879 someone saw the discrepancy. Some tried. The 00:11:58.879 --> 00:12:01.539 most tragic example in the sources is the Lucian 00:12:01.539 --> 00:12:05.700 Conference in 1959. Marshall Pang DeWay, who 00:12:05.700 --> 00:12:08.559 was a genuine war hero, wrote a private letter 00:12:08.559 --> 00:12:11.460 to Mao. Was he aggressive about it? No, that's 00:12:11.460 --> 00:12:14.759 the thing. He was fairly polite. He validated 00:12:14.759 --> 00:12:17.299 the great achievements, but suggested there was 00:12:17.299 --> 00:12:19.580 some petty bourgeois fanaticism causing errors. 00:12:19.899 --> 00:12:22.120 He was trying to be the voice of reason, pointing 00:12:22.120 --> 00:12:24.440 out that maybe the numbers were a bit off. And 00:12:24.440 --> 00:12:26.779 how did Mao take this constructive criticism? 00:12:27.500 --> 00:12:30.580 He viewed it as a deep personal betrayal. He 00:12:30.580 --> 00:12:33.080 circulated the letter and absolutely destroyed 00:12:33.080 --> 00:12:36.580 Peng. Peng was purged, stripped of his position, 00:12:36.720 --> 00:12:39.279 and humiliated. And the message that sent to 00:12:39.279 --> 00:12:42.159 everyone else. Keep your mouth shut. If a war 00:12:42.159 --> 00:12:46.360 hero can't speak the truth, no one can. This 00:12:46.360 --> 00:12:49.039 cemented the silence. And that silence allowed 00:12:49.039 --> 00:12:51.659 the famine to fester for three solid years. We're 00:12:51.659 --> 00:12:53.460 arriving at the most difficult part of our deep 00:12:53.460 --> 00:12:56.519 dive today. The Great Chinese Famine. The scale 00:12:56.519 --> 00:12:58.960 is truly hard to wrap your head around. Estimates 00:12:58.960 --> 00:13:01.379 vary because the records are so incomplete. But 00:13:01.379 --> 00:13:03.620 a consensus figure among many historians is around 00:13:03.620 --> 00:13:06.559 30 million deaths. 30 million. That's the entire 00:13:06.559 --> 00:13:09.100 population of a decent -sized country just gone. 00:13:09.360 --> 00:13:12.240 It is widely considered the largest famine in 00:13:12.240 --> 00:13:15.899 human history in terms of absolute numbers. And 00:13:15.899 --> 00:13:18.080 the details in the sources, they're nightmare 00:13:18.080 --> 00:13:20.440 fuel. It wasn't just people running out of food. 00:13:20.559 --> 00:13:22.500 It was what they were forced to consume to stay 00:13:22.500 --> 00:13:24.419 alive. I read the accounts of what people were 00:13:24.419 --> 00:13:27.159 eating. It wasn't just rationing rice. No. When 00:13:27.159 --> 00:13:30.220 the grain was gone, they ate grass. Then tree 00:13:30.220 --> 00:13:33.700 bark. The author Jan Lianke, who survived this 00:13:33.700 --> 00:13:36.600 as a child in Henan province, recalls his mother 00:13:36.600 --> 00:13:39.320 teaching him which tree bark was edible and which 00:13:39.320 --> 00:13:42.000 would poison you. And the clay. I saw references 00:13:42.000 --> 00:13:44.679 to something called Guanyin soil. Yes. White 00:13:44.679 --> 00:13:47.299 clay. People ate it because it filled the stomach 00:13:47.299 --> 00:13:49.279 and stopped the hunger pangs for a moment. But 00:13:49.279 --> 00:13:51.460 the human body can't digest clay. It blocked 00:13:51.460 --> 00:13:53.720 their intestines and people died in agony from 00:13:53.720 --> 00:13:56.320 the blockage. It's a horrific way to go. There's 00:13:56.320 --> 00:13:58.460 also the mention of coal. Dan Lianke wrote about 00:13:58.460 --> 00:14:00.600 eating lumps of coal to appease the devil in 00:14:00.600 --> 00:14:03.080 the stomach. It shows the absolute level of desperation. 00:14:03.519 --> 00:14:05.419 And here is a fact that I found physically difficult 00:14:05.419 --> 00:14:08.480 to read. During the peak famine years, China 00:14:08.480 --> 00:14:11.899 remained a net exporter of grain. Wait. While 00:14:11.899 --> 00:14:14.220 people are eating coal and clay, the country 00:14:14.220 --> 00:14:17.559 is sending food out. Yes. Mao wanted to maintain 00:14:17.559 --> 00:14:20.440 face internationally and pay back debts to the 00:14:20.440 --> 00:14:24.139 Soviet Union to prove China's strength. The sources 00:14:24.139 --> 00:14:25.940 mentioned that when the Japanese foreign minister 00:14:25.940 --> 00:14:29.220 offered 100 ,000 tons of wheat secretly, so no 00:14:29.220 --> 00:14:31.860 one would know, China refused it. They refused 00:14:31.860 --> 00:14:34.940 aid. They refused it. The projection of success 00:14:34.940 --> 00:14:37.240 was deemed more important than the reality of 00:14:37.240 --> 00:14:40.139 survival. The ideology demanded that China be 00:14:40.139 --> 00:14:43.159 seen as strong and accepting aid would be admitting 00:14:43.159 --> 00:14:46.080 weakness. And inside the villages, the social 00:14:46.080 --> 00:14:49.019 fabric completely unraveled. It wasn't just passive 00:14:49.019 --> 00:14:51.519 starvation. The sources discussed these struggle 00:14:51.519 --> 00:14:53.440 sessions. This was the enforcement mechanism. 00:14:53.860 --> 00:14:56.379 If you were suspected of hoarding grain, or if 00:14:56.379 --> 00:14:58.559 you were labeled a rich peasant, or even if you 00:14:58.559 --> 00:15:00.139 just looked like you weren't working hard enough, 00:15:00.320 --> 00:15:02.779 you were subjected to public humiliation and 00:15:02.779 --> 00:15:04.899 violence. They were turning on neighbors. It 00:15:04.899 --> 00:15:07.320 created a cycle of terror. You couldn't leave 00:15:07.320 --> 00:15:09.440 because you needed a travel permit. You couldn't 00:15:09.440 --> 00:15:11.759 complain or you'd be purged. And you couldn't 00:15:11.759 --> 00:15:14.360 eat. It was a prison with no walls. Eventually, 00:15:14.399 --> 00:15:17.379 though, the reality had to catch up. You can't 00:15:17.379 --> 00:15:19.679 fake production figures forever when 30 million 00:15:19.679 --> 00:15:23.240 people are missing. Exactly. By 1961 and 1962, 00:15:23.620 --> 00:15:26.200 the government had to backpedal. The numbers 00:15:26.200 --> 00:15:28.820 simply couldn't be ignored anymore. The population 00:15:28.820 --> 00:15:31.759 graph had literally inverted. This is where we 00:15:31.759 --> 00:15:34.460 see a shift in the leadership. Mao takes a step 00:15:34.460 --> 00:15:36.860 back. He steps back from the day -to -day management 00:15:36.860 --> 00:15:39.500 of the economy. He remained the chairman, the 00:15:39.500 --> 00:15:42.740 figurehead, but he let more pragmatic leaders 00:15:42.740 --> 00:15:45.899 like Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping take the wheel. 00:15:46.039 --> 00:15:48.019 And what did they do? They brought back sanity. 00:15:48.200 --> 00:15:51.059 They dismantled the communal canteens. They allowed 00:15:51.059 --> 00:15:53.179 peasants to have small private plots of land 00:15:53.179 --> 00:15:56.740 again. They stopped the backyard furnaces. Basically... 00:15:56.960 --> 00:15:58.940 They undid the leap. And the food supply recovered. 00:15:59.279 --> 00:16:02.019 It did relatively quickly once the policies changed. 00:16:02.200 --> 00:16:04.960 But the damage, the scars of this era lasted 00:16:04.960 --> 00:16:06.740 for decades. It wasn't something you could just 00:16:06.740 --> 00:16:08.820 fix. Let's talk about those scars. Beyond the 00:16:08.820 --> 00:16:11.620 staggering death toll, how did this reshape the 00:16:11.620 --> 00:16:13.919 society? Well, look at the Iron Women movement. 00:16:14.399 --> 00:16:16.659 Women had moved into traditionally male jobs 00:16:16.659 --> 00:16:18.759 because the men were drafted for steel projects 00:16:18.759 --> 00:16:21.379 or had died. It changed the gender dynamic in 00:16:21.379 --> 00:16:24.090 China permanently. but at a huge cost to the 00:16:24.090 --> 00:16:26.090 family unit, which had essentially broken down 00:16:26.090 --> 00:16:27.870 under the commune system. And what about the 00:16:27.870 --> 00:16:30.909 physical health of the survivors? There's a specific 00:16:30.909 --> 00:16:34.690 term in the medical literature, the 1959 birth 00:16:34.690 --> 00:16:37.490 cohort. The kids born during the famine suffered 00:16:37.490 --> 00:16:40.750 severe malnutrition in utero and infancy. Studies 00:16:40.750 --> 00:16:43.570 show that as adults, this generation was significantly 00:16:43.570 --> 00:16:46.330 stunted, estimated to be about three centimeters 00:16:46.330 --> 00:16:49.049 shorter on average than cohorts born before or 00:16:49.049 --> 00:16:52.440 after. The famine literally shrunk a generation. 00:16:52.679 --> 00:16:56.000 And ecologically. Massive deforestation. To fuel 00:16:56.000 --> 00:16:58.840 those backyard furnaces, they cut down huge swaths 00:16:58.840 --> 00:17:02.139 of trees. That led to severe soil erosion, which 00:17:02.139 --> 00:17:04.160 worsened floods and droughts in the years that 00:17:04.160 --> 00:17:06.619 followed. It created environmental instability 00:17:06.619 --> 00:17:09.140 that took decades to address. There is one more 00:17:09.140 --> 00:17:10.759 connection we need to make before we wrap up. 00:17:10.839 --> 00:17:13.339 You mentioned Mao stepped back. Did he stay back? 00:17:13.599 --> 00:17:16.460 Ah, this is the critical narrative thread. No, 00:17:16.480 --> 00:17:19.319 he didn't. Mao felt sidelined. He felt that Liu 00:17:19.319 --> 00:17:21.660 Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping were taking China down 00:17:21.660 --> 00:17:24.440 a capitalist road to fix the mess he created. 00:17:24.599 --> 00:17:27.500 He deeply resented it. So the Great Leap Forward 00:17:27.500 --> 00:17:29.819 actually sets the stage for the next disaster. 00:17:30.420 --> 00:17:33.559 Directly. The expert consensus across the sources 00:17:33.559 --> 00:17:36.059 is that Mao's insecurity after the Great Leap 00:17:36.059 --> 00:17:38.259 Forward motivated him to launch the Cultural 00:17:38.259 --> 00:17:41.839 Revolution in 1966. He wanted to regain absolute 00:17:41.839 --> 00:17:44.539 control and purify the party of the moderates 00:17:44.539 --> 00:17:46.680 who would fix the economy. So the tragedy of 00:17:46.680 --> 00:17:48.900 the famine is the prelude to the chaos of the 00:17:48.900 --> 00:17:52.200 Cultural Revolution. It's a lot to process. We 00:17:52.200 --> 00:17:54.200 started with this idea of a country trying to 00:17:54.200 --> 00:17:57.039 sprint toward the future, and instead they tripped 00:17:57.039 --> 00:17:59.380 and fell into a nightmare. It serves as a stark 00:17:59.380 --> 00:18:01.640 reminder. The mission of the Great Leap was to 00:18:01.640 --> 00:18:03.839 modernize, which is a rational goal. But when 00:18:03.839 --> 00:18:06.119 you remove the feedback mechanisms, when you 00:18:06.119 --> 00:18:08.140 punish the truth -tellers and replace technical 00:18:08.140 --> 00:18:11.099 expertise with political slogans, you lose the 00:18:11.099 --> 00:18:13.430 ability to correct course. It's the ultimate 00:18:13.430 --> 00:18:15.609 lesson in humility, I think. You can't just wish 00:18:15.609 --> 00:18:17.769 your way around the laws of economics or nature. 00:18:18.130 --> 00:18:21.349 No, you cannot. Ideology is powerful, but it 00:18:21.349 --> 00:18:24.349 cannot create calories out of thin air. So as 00:18:24.349 --> 00:18:26.910 we wrap up this deep dive, what is the big takeaway 00:18:26.910 --> 00:18:29.470 we should leave everyone with? I think we are 00:18:29.470 --> 00:18:32.750 left with the question of accountability in a 00:18:32.750 --> 00:18:35.410 closed system. You know, even after the famine, 00:18:35.430 --> 00:18:37.829 when the policies were rolled back, the party 00:18:37.829 --> 00:18:40.349 maintained the three red flags. The three red 00:18:40.349 --> 00:18:42.660 flags. The general line. the Great Leap, and 00:18:42.660 --> 00:18:45.079 the People's Communes. Even though they had caused 00:18:45.079 --> 00:18:48.160 this unmitigated disaster, the official line 00:18:48.160 --> 00:18:51.200 was that these flags were correct. They admitted 00:18:51.200 --> 00:18:53.940 to errors in implementation, blaming the weather 00:18:53.940 --> 00:18:57.099 or bad local officials, but the ideology itself 00:18:57.099 --> 00:18:59.819 was declared infallible. Which is terrifying. 00:19:00.099 --> 00:19:01.759 It means the system didn't actually learn the 00:19:01.759 --> 00:19:04.180 lesson. It suggests it didn't. And the provocative 00:19:04.180 --> 00:19:06.259 thought I want to leave you with is this. How 00:19:06.259 --> 00:19:08.660 does a system, any system, whether it's a country 00:19:08.660 --> 00:19:11.720 or a massive corporation, correct itself when 00:19:11.720 --> 00:19:13.539 the mission statement is considered more important 00:19:13.539 --> 00:19:15.920 than the reality on the ground? If the idea can 00:19:15.920 --> 00:19:18.259 never be wrong, then the people suffering under 00:19:18.259 --> 00:19:21.019 it must be the problem. And as long as that logic 00:19:21.019 --> 00:19:23.940 holds, history is always liable to repeat itself. 00:19:24.440 --> 00:19:27.460 That is a heavy thought to end on, but a profoundly 00:19:27.460 --> 00:19:31.700 necessary one. This was a tough topic, but understanding 00:19:31.700 --> 00:19:34.420 these historical moments is the only way to spot 00:19:34.420 --> 00:19:36.420 the patterns when they show up again in the world. 00:19:36.859 --> 00:19:39.019 Thank you for joining us on this deep dive into 00:19:39.019 --> 00:19:41.339 the Great Leap Forward. It's vital history. Thanks 00:19:41.339 --> 00:19:42.440 for listening. See you next time.