China's Great Leap Famine of 1959-61 resulted in 30 million deaths, making it easily the worst famine in human history. In this analysis, the author presents historical documents to provide a comprehensive treatment of the political causes and consequences of the Great Leap Famine.

China's Great Leap Famine of 1959-61 resulted in 30 million deaths, making it easily the worst famine in human history. Yet unlike the Cultural Revolution - that other massive catastrophe of Mao's rule - the Great Leap Forward has received scant scholarly attention. This is partly because victims of the ensuing famine were inarticulate farmers and partly because many key players in that inglorious era are members of the current elite who tightly guard the archives. Despite these impediments, the author has marshalled an impressive array of historical documents to provide the first comprehensive treatment of the political causes and consequences of the Great Leap Famine. The Famine is important because it furnished the crucial historical motives for dismantling the rural collective institutional structure in post-Mao China two decades later and motivating tens of millions of ordinary Chinese to enact the reforms.

Introduction
Part I. Context: 1. The path to disaster
2. The political economy of the Great Leap famine
Part II. Catastrophe and Reform: 3. The Great Leap famine and rural liberalization
4. The Cultural Revolution interlude
5. Structural incentives for rural reform
6. The political struggle over reform
Part III. State and Rural Society Under Reform: 8. Rural industrialization, political empowerment, and state policy
Conclusions and reflections
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index.