China's Agricultural Crisis and Famine of 1959-61: A Survey and Comparison to Soviet Famines

Dennis Tao Yang

Working Papers from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Department of Economics

Abstract: China?s Great Leap Forward (GLF) of 1958-61, a campaign of unprecedented mobilization efforts to achieve rapid industrialization, ended as a catastrophe. National grain production collapsed and a widespread famine claimed millions of human lives. This paper reviews a growing economic literature on this historical crisis. While multiple causes are hypothesized, empirical findings suggest that the collapse of grain production was primarily attributable to a systematic failure in central planning, involving the diversion of agricultural resources to industry and excessive grain procurements that precipitated malnutrition among peasants and decimation of labor productivity. The resulting decline in grain availability, as well as urban bias in China?s food distribution system, became the main culprits of the enormous famine. In light of the Chinese experience, this paper also explores the role of defective planning in the Soviet famines of 1931-3 and 1947.

Keywords: central planning; food supply; famine; urban bias; China; USSR (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-cna, nep-dev, nep-his and nep-tra
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations View citations in EconPapers (2) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
ftp://repec.econ.vt.edu/Papers/Yang/Survey-CES-Yang-VT.pdf First version, 2007 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vpi:wpaper:e07-4

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Department of Economics
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Djavad Salehi-Isfahani ().