GREAT CHINESE FAMINE

1958 – 1961

In the late 1950s, the Chinese people suffered from a catastrophic famine that killed around thirty million people (although, estimates range from ten million to as high as forty-seven million). According to the government and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the Great Famine was a culmination of natural disasters. The Yellow River, or Huang Ho, flooded in mid-1959, rendering millions of acres of agricultural land useless. This was followed by severe heat, droughts, more floors, typhoons, disease, and insect infestations. However, the famine may have been spurred by poorly executed government policies and human mismanagement. For instance, only 9.6 percent of the land was reported to be unusable by local officials in 1959, so it brings about the question: Why was this the worst year of the famine?

To testify the desperation of this period, there were multiple cases of cannibalism, in which parents strangled and devoured their own children. Sometimes, to avoid the guilt and shame of eating their own, parents would exchange children. Other starving peasants killed their children, elderly relatives, or spouses as an act of kindness to end their starving misery. Because China was isolated from the outside world during this era, any documentation or photographic evidence of the event were treated as state secrets.

 Even decades later, the aftereffects of the famine may have manifested in negative health outcomes; according to a cross-sectional study from the Chinese Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, survivors of the Great Chinese Famine from 1959 to 1961 are at increased risk for metabolic syndromes like Type 2 diabetes and hyperglycemia.