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The Three Years of Great Chinese Famine (), referred to by the Communist Party of China as the Three Years of Natural Disasters (), the Difficult Three Year Period () or Great Leap Forward Famine, was the period in the People's Republic of China between the years 1959 and 1961 characterized by widespread famine. Drought, poor weather, 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. However, the Chinese government at this time was taken over by market reformers who were strongly opposed to the Great Leap Forward.〔Ó Gráda, Famine: A Short History, p.95〕 Unofficial estimates vary, but scholars have estimated the number of famine victims to be between 20 and 43 million.〔Peng Xizhe (彭希哲), "Demographic Consequences of the Great Leap Forward in China's Provinces," ''Population and Development Review'' 13, no. 4 (1987), 639–70. For a summary of other estimates, please refer to ''Necrometrics'' ()〕 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.〔Dikötter, Frank. ''Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62.'' Walker & Company, 2010. p. 333. ISBN 0-8027-7768-6〕 Chinese journalist Yang Jisheng concluded there were 36 million deaths due to starvation, while another 40 million others failed to be born, so that "China's total population loss during the Great Famine then comes to 76 million." The term "Three Bitter Years" is often used by Chinese peasants to refer to this period. ==Causes== The great Chinese famine was caused by social pressure, economic mismanagement, and radical changes in agriculture in addition to weather conditions and natural disasters. Mao Zedong, chairman of the Chinese communist party, introduced drastic changes in farming which prohibited farm ownership. Failure to abide by the policies led to persecution. The social pressure imposed on the citizens in terms of farming and business, which the government controlled, led to state instability. Owing to the laws passed during the period and Great Leap Forward during 1958–1962, according to government statistics, about 36 million people died in this period.〔Jisheng, Yang "Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962". Book Review. ''New York Times''. Dec, 2012. March 3, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/books/review/tombstone-the-great-chinese-famine-1958-1962-by-yang-jisheng.html〕 Until the early 1980s, the Chinese government's stance, reflected by the name "Three Years of Natural Disasters", was that the famine was largely a result of a series of natural disasters compounded by several planning errors. Researchers outside China argued that massive institutional and policy changes that accompanied the Great Leap Forward were the key factors in the famine, or at least worsened nature-induced disasters. Since the 1980s there has been greater official Chinese recognition of the importance of policy mistakes in causing the disaster, claiming that the disaster was 30% due to natural causes and 70% by mismanagement.〔Yang, Jisheng, Edward Friedman, Jian Guo, and Stacy Mosher. Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. Print. p. 452-3〕 During the Great Leap Forward, farming was organized into communes and the cultivation of private plots forbidden. Iron and steel production was identified as a key requirement for economic advancement. Millions of peasants were ordered away from agricultural work to join the iron and steel production workforce. Yang Jisheng would summarize the effect of the focus on production targets in 2008: In Xinyang, people starved at the doors of the grain warehouses. As they died, they shouted, "Communist Party, Chairman Mao, save us". If the granaries of Henan and Hebei had been opened, no one need have died. As people were dying in large numbers around them, officials did not think to save them. Their only concern was how to fulfill the delivery of grain.〔Translation from ("A hunger for the truth: A new book, banned on the mainland, is becoming the definitive account of the Great Famine." ), chinaelections.org, 7 July 2008 of content from Yang Jisheng, ''墓碑 －－中國六十年代大饑荒紀實 (Mu Bei - - Zhong Guo Liu Shi Nian Dai Da Ji Huang Ji Shi)'', Hong Kong: Cosmos Books (Tian Di Tu Shu), 2008, ISBN 9789882119093〕 Along with collectivization, the central government decreed several changes in agricultural techniques based on the ideas of Soviet pseudoscientist Trofim Lysenko. One of these ideas was close planting, whereby the density of seedlings was at first tripled and then doubled again. The theory was that plants of the same species would not compete with each other. In practice they did, which stunted growth and resulted in lower yields. Another policy (known as "deep plowing") was based on the ideas of Lysenko's colleague Terentiy Maltsev, who encouraged peasants across China to eschew normal plowing depths of 15-20 centimeters and instead plow extremely deeply into the soil (1 to 2 meters). The deep plowing theory stated that the most fertile soil was deep in the earth, and plowing unusually deep would allow extra strong root growth. However, in shallow soil, useless rocks, soil, and sand were driven up instead, burying the fertile topsoil and again severely stunting seedling growth. Additionally, in the Great sparrow campaign, citizens were called upon to destroy sparrows and other wild birds that ate crop seeds, in order to protect yields. Pest birds were shot down or scared from landing until dropping in exhaustion. This resulted in an explosion of the vermin (especially crop-eating insects) population, which had no predators to thin it down. These radically harmful changes in farming organization coincided with adverse weather patterns, including droughts and floods. In July 1959, the Yellow River flooded in East China. According to the Disaster Center, the flood directly killed, either through starvation from crop failure or drowning, an estimated 2 million people, while other areas were affected in other ways as well. Frank Dikötter argues that most floods were not due to unusual weather, but to massive, poorly planned and poorly executed irrigation works which were part of the Great Leap Forward.〔 In 1960, an estimated 60% of agricultural land in northern China received no rain at all. The Encyclopædia Britannica yearbooks from 1958 to 1962 also reported abnormal weather, followed by droughts and floods based on Chinese government sources. This included of rain in Hong Kong across five days in June 1959, part of a pattern that hit all of Southern China. As a result of these factors, year over year grain production dropped in China. The harvest was down by 15% in 1959. By 1960, it was at 70% of its 1958 level. There was no recovery until 1962, after the Great Leap Forward ended. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Great Chinese Famine」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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