Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962 (Essay Sample)

Name Professor Course Date The incident that took place in Xinyang remains the subject discussed in the first chapter called “Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958–1962”.This is an epic account touching on the worst famine experienced in the history of the country written by a Chinese journalist called Yang. He conventionally estimates that around 36 million individuals have died because of unnatural cases such as starvation and government initiated torture as well as murder. This was done to those opposed to those individuals opposed to the maniacal financial plans of the communist party resulted to the catastrophe. The epic center of the happenings was Xinyang County, which one out of eight people had died because of famine. The book explains the body of people lying beside the roads as family members begins to eat each other for survival. Police were also blocking refugees from relocating to other places as Mao Zedong ignored desperate pleas from the people together with his coward courtiers (Marx, Friedrich, and Jones, 234). Yang’s remarkable success was making use of the party records of the Communist party to document. He states that the famine was unprecedented tragedy in the history of the world as millions of people died because of hunger. The situation made them opt for cannibalism in a time of f normal climatic patterns devoid of wars and epidemics. All these happened because of Mao’s wish to speed up the development of the country and force it to embrace a utopian Communist dream. A few people from the communist leadership party had no belief that such a situation would be possible (Yang ,et al,345). When Communists ascended to power through forceful means, there were atrocious land reforms, which killed many landowners, as well as imagined enemies. At the same time, they also redistributed property to the poor, which was a massively common mechanism that won Mao support among majority of the people (Marx, Friedrich, and Jones, 200). However, Mao started to press for speedier process of development termed as rash advance. Yang highlights how other two powerful party leaders such as Vice Chairman Liu Shaoqi as well Premier Zhou Enlai had opposed the ideology. Liu opposition of collectivized agriculture started from 1951,which viewed the concept as erroneous, risky and fantastical. The year 1957 saw Mao launch an Anti-Rightist movement, which was a terror wave cowed and killed many members of his inner circle. The situation permitted him to undertake collectivization, which main objective was to reverse the reform on land by forcefully taking peasants land. Instead of the poor people owning land, the state did, therefore offering the authority full control in relation to agricultural production. Yang highlights how hurriedly conceived dams together with canals contributed to the food...