In late 1959, Chinese officials in the provinces began to investigate wild rumors that people were eating one another. Most of the officials must have already known that Mao Zedong’s call for a “Great ...

The economic fallout from Mao’s reign was disastrous. Two in three peasants had lower incomes in 1978 than during the 1950s. After the failure of the Great Leap Forward, peasants in an increasing ...