Famine in China

Famine in China has been a periodic occurrence in the history of the country for thousands of years due to the climatic conditions . They were caused by droughts and floods . The fight of the Chinese against these natural disasters occupies a large place in the history of China . It was an essential task of the emperor to use the possibilities of the central authority to alleviate local famines. This task consumed a significant amount of the Chinese government's capacity. Based on inner peace and productive agriculture , however, the population doubled between 1760 and 1860 from 200 million to 400 million people. From the beginning of the 19th century, agriculture was less and less able to feed the ever-growing population with the scarce cultivation areas for grain. China became the “land of famine” and the central power of the emperor fell apart. For the 100 years of the second half of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, the number of starvation deaths is estimated at 100 million. The number is very uncertain because of the non-existent population statistics. Perhaps the greatest, but also the last, famine in China occurred during the Great Leap Forward in 1959 to 1961.

history

Famine in ancient China

In China, famine has been an ongoing problem for thousands of years. From the Shang and Tang dynasties (16th – 11th centuries BC) to the founding of the new China, the chroniclers described the catastrophes that recurred regularly. Due to the location of China, there have always been and are areas where the rain does not occur. Particularly in northwest China there have been repeated famines while central China is climatically much more stable.

In the 2000 years from 108 BC Until 1911, famines are listed in Chinese historiography in 1828. The period from 1470 to 1990 counts 40 years with severe floods and 134 years with severe droughts.

It was China's task for the emperors to support hunger areas that could no longer help themselves, and if necessary to transport and distribute food from other areas. An emperor's reputation depended on how he did it. National starvation disasters occurred when the drought areas became too large, especially when larger areas were flooded by rivers overflowing at the same time, resulting in additional crop failures or when the central government did not adequately fulfill its task. If an emperor could not prevent famines, he lost reputation and legitimacy. It was said that he had lost Heaven's mandate.

growth of population

Until the middle of the 17th century, China's population was fairly constant at just over 100 million, a quarter of the world's population. Then in the 18th century there was a strong increase in population. While around 200 million people lived in China in 1750, by 1850 there were already around 400 million. While around 1750 the population had about 26  ares of land, by 1850 it was only 12 ares. Due to the small amount of cultivated land per inhabitant, feeding the population became a constant struggle. Large parts of the population were already living below the subsistence level in good times. As soon as a harvest was not good, the food situation of the population changed from “just enough” to “famine”.

Many people who could no longer be fed emigrated to climatically less favorable areas. In the 18th century, despite the ban on immigration, they migrated to Manchuria or they settled up the great rivers. The southern and southwestern provinces were populated by Hanchinese up to the ridges of the hills . In this process, the previously significant forest was almost completely lost. Overuse and deforestation caused severe ecological damage and China became the country with the most massive soil erosion and the most violent floods of the modern era. In addition, a further expansion of the arable land became more and more difficult as the population continued to grow. Population pressure increased further in the 19th century. Migration waves reached as far as Tibet and Xinjiang .

China's population in millions
0500	1000	1500	1600	1700	1800	1900	2000
60	80	110	110	140	300	500	1300

The period from 1740 to 1820

The period of the Qing Dynasty from 1740 to 1820 is considered to be "the golden age of avoiding famine". At that time, the state made great efforts at the level of the central government as well as at the level of the provincial government and the city and municipality level to mitigate the effects of droughts and floods.

Even the emperors of earlier times suspended the tax on crop yields in areas with major crop failures and granaries were built to store supplies for bad years. The system of granaries was expanded under the Qing emperors. Each province was obliged to store grain. In the event of crop failures, taxes were first canceled in the affected areas and the province's local grain supplies distributed. In climatically problematic areas, the grain reserve held for crop failures was up to 8% of an annual harvest. If this was not enough, the state was required to buy grain from other parts of the country, transport it to the famine areas and distribute it there. To avoid speculation with grain, the grain price was set by the state. The quantities of grain distributed by the headquarters could far exceed that of the local government. During the Zhili famine (1743/44), grain deliveries to the central government were 7.5 times the local supplies. The government at the time managed to feed two million people for eight months with grain that had been far away.

There were also other measures to alleviate famine. For example, the state was able to support grain transports from third parties, “soup kitchens” could be set up and job creation projects could be launched to prevent emigration from the affected areas.

This system required strong central government influence across China. It had to be checked that each province performed its own tasks in the grain storage, the traffic routes, especially the Kaiserkanal as the main artery, had to be kept functional and the central government had to recognize in good time how the grain harvest was developing in the different parts of the country. Central government spending on this system was substantial. The Beijing government spent 7 percent of the budget on starvation prevention.

19th century

Famine is an integral part of Chinese history, but the situation deteriorated during the 19th century with the dissolution of state power, wars and uprisings.

The Qing Dynasty had its own bureaucracy devoted to preventing famine. The main tasks were the creation of supplies, maintenance of the transport routes (e.g. the Kaiserkanal ), securing the dikes, transport and distribution of food supplies and enforcement of the set prices. With the dissolution of the central authority in the second half of the 19th century, the state was less and less able to meet these tasks. The dikes were insufficiently maintained and the Kaiserkanal silted up. In 1855 the Yellow River burst its banks and shifted its river bed. The mouth came from the provincial Juansu to Shantung , where they had already been to the 1128th The Yellow River now flowed unpaved through West Shantung, which increased North China's susceptibility to disasters. People lived in constant fear of their crops being destroyed by floods. General poverty grew with the loss of outlets for domestic products, especially cotton yarn, as a result of the penetration of Western products into China. The wars lost against the European invaders and the uprisings that resulted from the impoverishment of the population (e.g. Taiping uprising ) led to the state being unable to enforce and control. Gangs and raids by robbers spread in several provinces, and the silting up of the Great Canal made transporting food from central China to the north significantly more expensive. The government was able to moderate the famine from 1867 to 1868, but the famine from 1877 to 1879 in northern China was a catastrophe with over ten million deaths. The Boxer Rebellion in 1900 was also triggered by a famine from 1898 to 1900 and the overthrow of the monarchy by the drought of 1906 and the flood of 1911 when the Yangtze overflowed its banks.

China after the imperial era

From 1911 to 1949 there was no longer any central power , only warring parties and warlords. There was no more state support for the population against environmental disasters, but destruction and plundering by various armies with simultaneous further population growth and little arable land. It was not only a time of war, but also a time of rampant famine.

Thomas Heberer describes the misery of that time using the following example from Sichuan in the 1930s:

“In the 1930s, a cholera epidemic broke out in Sichuan, the most populous province. A French doctor who was then active in the provincial capital presented a proposal to the military governor of Sichuan to contain the epidemic. However, he rejected the aid plan and replied to the doctor's astonished question about the reasons: 'Do you know that Sichuan is the most fertile area in the entire empire? Not an inch is wasted, the farmers have two harvests a year and plant their rice fields up to the top of the hills; when the water falls, they plant their vegetables in the river bed to try the possibility of another harvest. However, even in good harvest years, the rice, the grain, the vegetables are not enough to feed the people, who multiply in enormous proportions every year. The population is too dense, the famine inevitable; I am not going to take the measures you were kind enough to explain to me for the sole reason that they would save 100,000 or 200,000 lives ... If cholera spreads, it will create the inevitable gaps in the overpopulated province and thereby the Giving survivors the opportunity to eat and live. ' This example makes the dilemma of the population explosion clear: Disasters and wars, epidemics and famine, droughts and floods were considered to be 'natural cleansing' of the population. "

China, with more than 20 percent of the world's population but only 7 percent of the world's arable land, was no longer able to feed the population with what was available at the time.

Heberer describes the situation of the people in those days with a quote from two American journalists from the 1940s:

“They live in such indescribable poverty that an American reader, if this everyday poverty were put on paper, would not believe the printed lines. In China, half of all people die before they turn 30. Hunger, humiliation and violence characterize the entire continent. Corpses on the streets are commonplace. In Shanghai, the morning picking up of child laborers' bodies in front of factory gates has become routine.

Beating, whipping, torture and humiliation of rural residents by officials and gendarmes is part of the government authority in Asian countries. These people live on what they can wrest from the depleted soil. If they have the weather against them, nothing can save them from starvation. "

The last major famine before the founding of the People's Republic of China was in Henan in 1943, with an estimated 5 million deaths. Minor famines followed from 1946 to 1948.

There was a decade of marked improvement after the founding of the People's Republic of China, but from 1959 to 1961 there was famine during the Great Leap Campaign . The famine was one of the worst, but it was also the last famine in China. In 1981 food ran out again, but famine could be avoided. In China today, despite continued droughts, hunger is no longer an acute problem.

Great famines from 1900 to 1950

It is difficult to pinpoint the greatest famines of the last century. There were very many, and the information on the number of victims varies widely. Without a precise analysis of which information best reflects reality, three different lists of famines in the last century by official organizations are given below. They come from NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, USA), Stephen Devereux, University of Sussex, and the Reuters Foundation.

NOAA victim information
1907	over 24 million dead
1928-1930	over 3 million dead
1936	5 million dead
1941-1942	over 3 million dead

Victims information from Stephen Devereux
1920-1921	500 thousand dead
1927	3–6 million dead
1929	2 million dead
1943	5 million dead

Reuters Foundation victim information
1927	3–6 million dead
1929	2 million dead
1943	5 million dead

Obviously the details differ from each other. It is surprising that the two great famines of 1907 and 1936 are often omitted from listings. They are among the great famines of the last century. The figure of 24 million deaths in the 1907 famine appears suspiciously high, but it is usually used in this famine. One problem is that until the 1960s there were no statistics, at best rough estimates of the population. In any case, the fall of the emperor in 1911 was preceded by a great famine.

Famines of the 1920s

Although Marshal Chiang Kai-shek of the Kuomintang officially ruled China in the 1920s and 1930s , hardly more than five provinces in the south and east of the country listened to his command without contradiction. In the remaining areas, especially in the north, powerful warlords ruled . There were also hundreds of local sub-commanders who controlled their own areas of power.

Although rural China was mostly poor, the warlords forced high taxes out of their subjects. A new rich layer was formed alongside abject poverty. Droughts, floods and the ravages of civil war led to famines that claimed millions of lives in the north around the end of the 1920s. The American Edgar Snow , later Mao biographer, who traveled through northern China in 1929, reported on the great hunger:

“As far as the eye could see, only petrified dead earth, the few trees gray, without leaves, beneath them lay dying people. The peasants crawled into the cities with swollen bodies and died in the streets. Skeletons, barely able to move, piled the bodies in piles. Emaciated young girls, often still children, were carted to brothels in ox wagons, where they brought in three or five marks, rarely more. There was human flesh in the markets. "

Today 2 million people are estimated to have died of starvation and the main reason for the disaster was only partly the weather. There have always been droughts in China. In ancient China, a strong emperor would have been responsible for maintaining the traffic routes (e.g. the Imperial Canal as the main artery) and for bringing food from fertile central China to the hungry areas. The emperor's reputation would have been at stake. In 1929, however, there was no strong central authority, there were only local warlords, and there was no help for the starving. It was the same situation as the famines in the northwest in 1927 and 1920–1921.

The 1943/44 famine in Henan

The Henan Famine was one of the great famines of the last century. Three to five million deaths are estimated. The famine was described as an eyewitness by the American reporter Theodore H. White.

In 1940 and 1941 the harvest was poor and food reserves were depleted. In the winter and spring of the year almost no rain fell and almost no grain could be harvested. The government initially did not react to this and tried to collect the normal amount of grain as a tax, so that many farmers were left with nothing. In this way the government drove the province into complete disaster. People starved to death while begging in the streets.

Theodore H. White described the government's further course of action as follows:

“The Chinese government did not see the famine coming, and when the famine broke out, it did not act until it was too late. Reports reached the Chongqing government in October 1942 . In November, two government inspectors visited Henan. When they returned, they reported that the situation in Henan was dire and that something needed to be done immediately. The government sent 200 million Chinese dollars in aid and sent an agent. It turned out, however, that money could not alleviate the misery, grain was needed. However, it was hopeless to try to get the required amount of grain through the damaged roads from central China. Across from Henan Province was Shensi Province, whose granaries were well stocked. A powerful government would have ordered grain to be brought from Shaanxi to Henan to avoid the worst. But the central government did not want to turn Shaanxi Province against it. Grain could have been brought in from Hubei Province , but the Hubei commander forbade it. "

The example of the famine in Henan also shows how a terrible famine developed from a local drought due to the failure of the central government, the egoisms of other provinces, the deterioration of the transport routes (roads, imperial canal) and the deterioration of state power through war.

The famine from 1959 to 1961

→ Main article : Great Chinese famine

In the famine of 1959 to 1961, the number of deaths is estimated at ten to over 40 million people. The numbers are very uncertain, as there was no exact census in the 1950s, only estimates that included political guidelines. The population size of 595 million found in the 1953 estimate was 100 million more than the previously assumed value. It is therefore not possible to determine exactly how many people really were “missing” after the famine.

Until 50 years ago, there were always areas in China where hunger prevailed. The following table shows people affected by famine in the 1950s and 1960s. Even before the famine of 1959 to 1961, 20 to 40 million people were affected by hunger every year.

Millions of people affected by famine
1954	1956	1957	1958	1959	1960	1961	1963
24.4	20.1	41.3	19.8	97.7	129.8	218.1	70.8

The table below shows grain production from 1953 to 1966. It is noteworthy that the 1962 harvest, when the famine was essentially over, was little different from the harvests of the worst famine years, 1960 and 1961. It is also higher than in the first year of famine in 1959. Since the supply of the population for a year always depends on the harvest of the previous year and large food supplies were common in China due to the uncertain weather, the famine of 1959 and 1960 is due to the harvest yields of these years not justified alone. Under Deng Xiaoping , the language was determined: "One third of the famine was due to the weather and two-thirds of it was political." The record yields from 1955 to 1958 led to neglect of the precautionary measures.

Grain supply in China from 1953 to 1966 in kilograms per person
1953	1954	1955	1956	1957	1958	1959
191	189	199	205	203	203	171

1960	1961	1962	1963	1964	1965	1966
148	152	160	164	179	181	195

Flood disasters

In addition to the droughts, there has been repeated major destruction in China from flood disasters with subsequent famine. One problem is that the large rivers, which are very watery and arrive in the Chinese lowlands from Tibet , have hardly any current for long stretches. The Three Gorges Dam is over 1500 km from the sea, but behind the Three Gorges Dam the Yangtze is only about 70 m above sea level. Due to heavy sediment deposits, the Yellow River has a river bed that is higher than the surrounding area. If the dyke breaks, all of the water pours into the lower surrounding area.

In the 1930s, there was constant flooding from the Yellow River. The worst in 1931, 1935 and 1938. The 1938 flood was deliberately caused by blowing up the levees by the Kuomintang Army under Chiang Kai-shek.

The worst floods followed by famine occurred in 1931, immediately following the great drought from 1928 to 1930. In 1931, all three of China's major rivers, the Yellow River, the Yangtze and the Huai He River, overflowed after prolonged rainfall the banks, and about 90,000 km² of land was flooded. It is estimated that around 150,000 people drowned, but over 3.5 million people died from the subsequent famine and epidemics.

In the 1990s there were still several floods, each with over 100 million people affected. The death toll was up to five thousand. Subsequent famines and epidemics no longer took place.

Recent developments

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the population has increased more than two and a half times, which has made feeding the population a constant problem despite all the improvements. Until the 1950s, the population could still be fed with the agricultural areas in the plain. Since the 1960s, wasteland and slopes have been increasingly developed, slopes have been terraced. More and more mountain meadows were turned into arable land, with the constant risk of soil erosion. Chinese scientists point to the new opportunities offered by industrial support for agriculture, but the situation remains tense.

First, the supply of grain to the population in the first four decades of the existence of the People's Republic of China is presented. It can be seen that per capita production increased only slightly from the 1950s to the 1970s. This meant that while there were no major famines in the 1970s, there was still widespread hunger. 1979 was a good harvest year, 1978 was a bad one. You can see that the crop yields across China vary considerably.

Grain supply in China from 1953 to 1988 in kilograms per person
1953	1957	1961	1962	1970	1978
191	203	153	165	187	195

1979	1980	1985	1986	1987	1988
259	214	254	256	251	249

1957 was a good harvest year, with a per capita harvest of 203 kg. The year 1961 was the worst year of the famine from 1959 to 1961 with 153 kg per inhabitant. Interestingly, although the famine was essentially over, the 1962 crop only increased to 165 kg per inhabitant. From the end of the 1980s, production increased to 250 kg of grain per capita and a strong state took over the supply of the drought-hit areas. Harvest failures can be coped with without causing famines. The worst droughts and floods in recent Chinese history occurred in the 1990s, and there was also a major drought in 2010 without any major impact on the diet of the population.

Views

China can currently feed its population, but its job is to feed 22% of the world's population with 7% of the world's arable land, and the population continues to grow. Increasing grain production beyond the current level is difficult due to limited soil and water resources. According to the “Scientific Advisory Board of the Federal Government on Global Environmental Issues” (WBGU), an area of ​​0.16 hectares per inhabitant is required worldwide to ensure an adequate supply of food. In China, however, there are only 0.08 ha / inhabitant and in the rest of Asia 0.15 ha / inhabitant. In Europe, only 0.11–0.12 ha / inhabitant are required through optimized cultivation. However, 0.25 ha / inhabitant are available here. For Chinese society as well as for the government, securing food production is therefore still a top priority, especially since soil erosion and desertification still threaten the already scarce arable land. To stop the desert from spreading, one of the world's largest environmental projects, the Green Wall , is currently being built in the northwest of Beijing . In order to secure food for the population for the future, China is currently trying to acquire larger land in other countries in the long term.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Thomas Heberer: When the dragon rises . Signal-Verlag Baden-Baden, 1988.
2. ^ The Association for Asian Studies AAS Annual Meeting, March 26, 2009 .
3. ^ Yonggang Xie: Analysis of Famines in China . Nature and Science, page 28 ( Memento of the original dated December 9, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF). 
4. ^ Walter Mallory: China - Land of Famine .
5. ^ Yonggang Xie: Analysis of Famines in China . Nature and Science ( Memento of the original from December 9, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF). 
6. ↑ ^{a b c} TERRA Russia and China, Two World Powers in Transition . Klett Verlag (PDF).
7. ↑ Eduardo Ferreyra: fearfull Famines of the Past . mitosyfraudes.org .
8. ^ ^{A b} Wolfgang Taubmann: Population development in China . Berlin Institute for Population and Development, 2007 .
9. ^ Ulrich Gutmair: El Nino, the Emoire and Hunger . Die Netzeitung, December 6, 2004 ( Memento of November 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ).
10. ^ Carol H. Shiue: The Political Economy of Famine Relief in China, 1740-1820 . spot.colorado.edu (PDF; 461 kB).
11. ↑ shandong-china.de waters of Shandong Province .
12. ↑ Jeffrey Hays: Yellow River Floods ( Memento of the original from November 23, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  
13. ↑ Iwo Amelung: The "Boxers" and their myth . dhm.de .
14. ↑ Karl Josef Rivinius SVD: Beginnings of the missionary activities of the Steyler Missionaries (SVD) in China  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  
15. ↑ Thomas Heberer: When the dragon rises. China between yesterday and today . Signal Verlag, Baden-Baden, 1988, page 122.
16. ↑ Thomas Heberer: When the dragon rises. China between yesterday and today . Signal Verlag, Baden-Baden, 1988, page 80.
17. ^ Politics and Education, 1998 .
18. ↑ Hunger in China . In: Die Zeit , No. 14/1981.
19. ↑ asia times, April 2, 2010 .
20. ^ Report by Welthungerhilfe. World Hunger Index 2009 ( Memento of the original from November 28, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
21. ↑ NOAA, Top Global Weather Events of the 20 ^th Century (PDF, 32 kB).
22. ↑ Stephen Devereux, Institute for Development Studies, Sussex  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  
23. ^ Reuters Foundation .
24. ↑ CBC news February 27, 2010, The world's worst natural disasters .
25. ^ Siegfried Kogelfranz: The barbarians . In: Der Spiegel . No. 26 , 1989 ( online ).
26. ^ Reuters AlertNet: The ten worst famines of the century .
27. ^ Reuters AlertNet .
28. ↑ Yonggang Xie: Analysis of Famines Caused by Heavy Floods and Droughts in China Nature and Science, 2004 ( Memento of the original from December 9, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF). 
29. ↑ Vaclav Smil China’s past, China's future, page 81
30. ↑ Stepden L. Morgan, Stature and Famine in China University of Melbourne, 2007 ( Memento of the original from February 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF). 
31. ^ NOAA News Online .
32. ↑ UNESCO-IHE: Flood damage estimations ( Memento of the original from January 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 48 kB).  
33. ↑ Jeffrey Hays: Floods in China ( Memento of the original from November 23, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  
34. ^ AMG The world's worst floods in history .
35. ↑ Universite catholique de Louvain, Brussels (PDF; 69 kB).
36. ↑ Henrik Bork: China's Realities . Campus Verlag, 1996, Chapter 2.
37. ^ Yonggang Xie: Analysis of Famines Caused by Heavy Floods and Droughts in China . University Harbin, 2004 ( Memento of the original from December 9, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF). 
38. ↑ Reuters Foundation: China drought, April 7, 2010 .
39. ↑ Vaclav Smil China's past, China's future, page 82
40. ↑ Trends in settlement development ETH Zurich: Institute for Spatial and Landscape Development  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  
41. ↑ Questions and Answers on China, China Internet Information Center (CIIC) .
42. ↑ Bernhard Bartsch: China is acquiring arable land worldwide . In: Berliner Zeitung , May 13, 2008.