Reviewing the history, we find that Chairman Mao—who was presumably
less extreme than his Cambodian imitators—was responsible for the
starving death of approximately 30 million people during the period of
his "Great Leap Forward." Under this wide-ranging economic plan,
officials responsible for food production were discouraged from
reporting their unmet (and impossible) quotas truthfully, while a
great deal of labor was diverted to a disastrous plan to get peasants
to refine steel in their backyards. Peasants were even encouraged to
melt down the farm equipment that may have saved their lives, since
agricultural productivity was considered a problem solved.
A few years later, party moderates critical of Mao's handling of the crisis were purged as part of the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution," an intense ideological upheaval that plunged China into a decade of anarchy. Millions were denounced, exiled, imprisoned, beaten, tortured, hounded to suicide, and otherwise murdered. In his new book, Scarlet Memorial, exiled journalist Zheng Yi has even documented the practice of officially sanctioned cannibalism in the southeastern Guangxi province. Jasper Becker, author of Hungry Ghosts, notes that during the Great Leap Forward, starving peasants would often mournfully exchange children because they could not bear to eat their own, but this latter occurrence of cannibalism simply represented yet another form of cruelty and disgrace, as well as a return to a pre-civilized custom long considered taboo.
[Ed.: Students of comparative genocide should note that although Mao killed far more people overall, Pol Pot killed citizens at a much higher rate—probably the highest national average of the 20th century.]
