Something like "with Great Power comes Great Folly" pretty well sums it up.

Sadly, the CCP does not have a monopoly on bad decisions like this one.....many countries have made similar blunders throughout history.

It's sayed that 20 to 40 million people were starved during the three years; and this is the largest famine in human history.
We should note that it happended in a unified country and there was no foreign invasion. It was totally the fault of the CCP, but they are still ruling China with abolute power. How do everyone think about this.

However, just a few weeks ago a mainland Chinese member of this forum argued that the death toll was grossly inflated by Western scholars with a biased agenda.

Sadly, there's still many people in mainland China who think that the starvation after the Great Leap Forward was tolerable and even necessary.
I thought they were crazy, or were deeply puzzled by the communist propaganda.

The University of Wisconsin's Maurice Meisner, whom many consider to be the dean of post-World War II Chinese scholarship, presents three related ways of looking at the alleged 20 million to 30 million deaths caused by the Great Famine begun in the late 1950s under Mao's tenure in The Deng Xiaoping Era and Inquiry into the Fate of Chinese Socialism 1978-1994 (New York, Hill and Wang, 1996). One, it was a horrible miscalculation. Two, it was the end of famines on this scale (famines had been occurring for the previous few centuries off and on in China about every generation or so). In other words, it brought this horrible historical pattern to an end. Or, three, it was a horrible miscalculation, while also afterward bringing this pattern of famine every generation of so to an end, thus saving millions from a similar fate.

It is now the common perception in the West that 30 millions starved to death as a result of Mao's launching of the Great Leap Forward. Is it true or is it again a result of manufactured history? An article from the Australia-China Review contains a noteworthy refutation of the widely accepted figures of tens of millions of deaths caused by the GLF. The following is excerpted from this article, "Wild Swans and Mao's Agrarian Strategy" by Wim F Werthheim, emeritus professor from the University of Amsterdam, one of the best-noted European China scholars:


But the figure amounting to tens of millions ... [lacks]any historical basis. Often it is argued that at the censuses of the 1960s "between 17 and 29 millions of Chinese" appeared to be missing, in comparison with the official census figures from the 1950s. But these calculations are lacking any semblance of reliability. At my first visit to China, in August 1957, I had asked to get the opportunity to meet two outstanding Chinese social scientists: Fei Xiao-tung, the sociologist, and Chen Ta, the demographer. I could not meet either of them, because they were both seriously criticized at that time as rightists; but I was allowed a visit by Pang Zenian, a Marxist philosopher who knew about the problems of both scholars. Chen Ta was criticized because he had attacked the pretended 1953 census. In the past he had organized censuses, and he could not believe that suddenly, within a rather short period, the total population of China had risen from 450 [million] to 600 million, as had been officially claimed by the Chinese authorities after the 1953 census. He would have [liked] to organize a scientifically well-founded census himself, instead of an assessment largely based on regional random samples as had happened in 1953. According to him, the method followed in that year was unscientific.

For that matter, a Chinese expert of demography, Dr Ping-ti Ho, professor of history at the University of Chicago, in a book titled Studies on the Population of China, 1368-1953, Harvard East Asian Studies No 4, 1959, also mentioned numerous "flaws" in the 1953 census: "All in all, therefore, the nationwide enumeration of 1953 was not a census in the technical definition of the term"; the separate provincial figures show indeed an unbelievable increase of some 30 percent in the period 1947-1953, a period of heavy revolutionary struggle. (p 93-94) My conclusion is that the claim that in the 1960s a number between 17 [million] and 29 million people was "missing" is worthless if there was never any certainty about the 600 millions of Chinese. Most probably these "missing people" did not starve in the calamity years 1960-61, but in fact have never existed.

Sadly, there's still many people in mainland China who think that the starvation after the Great Leap Forward was tolerable and even necessary.
I thought they were crazy, or were deeply puzzled by the communist propaganda.

If the figure is as great as what's mentioned then surely there would be more evidence, particularly photographs of people dying.

Below is excerpt fromHenry Liu's article in Asia Times ( http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/FD01Ad04.html) that somewhat debunk this figure.

The figure was derived from population statistics, where it was noted that the population had suddently shrink. This was then attributed to death from the great famine and became the basis for the 30 million death under Mao that has been used as great propoganda.

It can't be denied that many people died whenever there is famine. Infact it was not uncommon at all in China. However, the death rate should be less  in a unified and at peace China (in late50 and 60s) , than one that is infested with warlords, rampant corruption and the multitudes of problems when China was really the sick man of Asia.

Mao is revered by the peasants, but many of China's intellectuals and those from the former ruling class still hated him. That coulld be one of the reasons why the figures are still used to discredit him.

There is cause to suspect the 30 million figure because it use census data from before the Great Leap Forward which was known to be inflated.

However we know for a fact that many people did die from starvation, that numbers in the tens of millions is not without historical precedent, and the CCP's continued effort for coverup forty some years after the fact suggest the number of fatalities must have been quite large.