Great Chinese Famine
The Three Years of Great Chinese Famine (simplified Chinese: 三年大饥荒; traditional Chinese: 三年大饑荒; pinyin: Sānnián dà jīhuāng), referred to by the Communist Party of China as the Three Years of Natural Disasters or Three Years of Difficult Period (simplified Chinese: 三年自然灾害; traditional Chinese: 三年自然災害; pinyin: Sānnián zìrán zāihài or simplified Chinese: 三年困难时期; traditional Chinese: 三年困難時期; pinyin: Sānnián kùnnán shíqī) by the government, was the period in the People's Republic of China between the years 1958 and 1961 characterized by widespread famine. Drought, poor weather conditions, and the policies of the Communist Party of China contributed to the famine, although the relative weights of the contributions are disputed due to the Great Leap Forward.
According to government statistics, there were 15 million excess deaths in this period. Unofficial estimates vary, but scholars have estimated the number of famine victims to be between 20 and 43 million. Historian Frank Dikötter, having been granted special access to Chinese archival materials, estimates that there were at least 45 million premature deaths from 1958 to 1962. The phrase "Three Bitter Years" is often used by Chinese peasants to describe this period.
Read more about Great Chinese Famine: Causes, Outcome, Political Movement, Further Perspectives
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“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
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