The Geography of the Great Leap Famine

Abstract

This article presents a detailed map of the impact of the Great Leap famine, based on a comparison of the age cohorts recorded in the 2000 population census. The map is interpreted with reference to three historical features of the economic geography of early Communist China: the national grain procurement and distribution system, established to support the industrialization drive of the First Five-Year Plan; the logic of administrative macroregions, which led to the emergence of designated “grain surplus” and “grain deficit” areas; and the efforts of logistics experts to maximize the amount of grain transported along China’s limited modern transport infrastructure. It is suggested that the radicalization of local party leaders, often considered to be a key cause of spatial variation in famine severity, was strongly conditioned by factors of economic geography.