The
Great Chinese Famine (
Chinese: äøå¹“大鄄č;
lit. 'three years of great famine') was a period between 1959 and 1961 in the
history of the People's Republic of China (PRC) characterized by widespread
famine.
[2][3][4][5][6] Some scholars have also included the years 1958 or 1962.
[7][8][9][10] It is widely regarded as the deadliest famine and one of the greatest
man-made disasters in human history, with an estimated death toll due to starvation that ranges in the tens of millions (15 to 55 million).
[note 1] The most stricken provinces were
Anhui (18% dead),
Chongqing (15%),
Sichuan (13%),
Guizhou(11%) and
Hunan (8%).
[1]
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Launching the movement in May 1966 with the help of the
Cultural Revolution Group, Mao charged that
bourgeois elements had infiltrated the government and society with the aim of restoring capitalism. Mao called on young people to "
bombard the headquarters", and proclaimed that "to rebel is justified". The youth responded by forming
Red Guards and "rebel groups" around the country. A selection of Mao's sayings were compiled into the
Little Red Book, which became a
sacred text for
Mao's personality cult. They held "
denunciation rallies" against
revisionists regularly, and
grabbed powerfrom local governments and CPC branches, eventually establishing the
revolutionary committees in 1967. The committees often split into rival factions and became involved in armed fights known as "
violent struggles", to which the
army had to be sent to restore order. Mao declared the Revolution over in 1969, but the Revolution's active phase would last until at least 1971, when
Lin Biao, accused of a
botched coup against Mao, fled and
died in a plane crash. In 1972, the
Gang of Four rose to power and the Cultural Revolution continued until Mao's death and the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976.
The Cultural Revolution was characterized by violence and chaos. Death toll claims vary widely, with
estimates of those perishing during the Revolution ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions. Beginning with the
Red August of Beijing,
massacres took place nationwide, including the
Guangxi Massacre, in which massive
cannibalism also occurred;
[1][2] the
Inner Mongolia incident; the
Guangdong Massacre; the
Yunnan Massacres; and the
Hunan Massacres. Red Guards destroyed
historical relics and artifacts, as well as
ransacking cultural and religious sites. The
1975 Banqiao Dam failure, one of the world's greatest technological catastrophes, also occurred during the Cultural Revolution. Meanwhile, tens of millions of people were persecuted: senior officials, most notably Chinese president
Liu Shaoqi, along with
Deng Xiaoping,
Peng Dehuai, and
He Long, were purged or exiled; millions were accused of being members of the
Five Black Categories, suffering
public humiliation, imprisonment, torture, hard labor, seizure of property, and sometimes execution or harassment into suicide; intellectuals were considered the "
Stinking Old Ninth" and were widely persecutedānotable scholars and scientists such as
Lao She,
Fu Lei,
Yao Tongbin, and
Zhao Jiuzhang were killed or committed suicide.
Schools and universities were closed with the
college entrance exams cancelled. Over 10 million
urban intellectual youthswere sent to the
countryside in the
Down to the Countryside Movement.
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