The Great Leap Forward. Mao Zedong
The Great Leap Forward is not officially considered to be an act of genocide by the United Nations nor any of its member nations, largely because it was not a focused attempt at eliminating any one ethnic, religious, or racial group. Nonetheless it was an act of official government policy which through its implementation led to the death of between 18 and 55 million people.
Mao implemented the Great Leap as a means of creating an industrial society and collectivist agriculture. From 1958 through 1962, the period of the Great Leap Forward, the Chinese economy shrank despite increased forced labor. The Great Chinese Famine of 1959-61 was a result of the Great Leap Forward, which also saw numerous mass killings, terror activities, coercions, and directed violence.
One historian, Frank Dikotter, estimated that 2.5 million Chinese of differing ethnicities were either tortured to death or beaten to death by security forces or local militias. With private farming banned by the government, even the growing of a few vegetables in a garden could be considered an act of treason against the state. On collectivist farms the smuggling of crops and the reporting of false harvest numbers were both crimes. Even as China struggled with famine it maintained its grain exports as a means of saving face. In Xinjiang province, which held a largely Uyghur population, nearly 1 million died. Deaths attributed to suicide rose to what some have estimated to be 3 million.
Armed rebellions occurred in many Chinese provinces and although none were serious enough to threaten the authority of the Central Government, they led to local unrest and many additional deaths. Trains shipping food were often robbed, as were grain storage facilities and food warehouses.
By 1962 the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward were openly attacked within the Communist Party, and changes were made to policy to bring about economic progress. An accurate estimate of the deaths which can be attributed to the Great Leap Forward is nearly impossible, but it is clearly many multiples of millions.
