Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine by Jasper Becker (PDF)

Description

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Chinese people suffered what may have been the worst famine in history. Over thirty million perished in a grain shortage brought on not by flood, drought, or infestation, but by the insanely irresponsible dictates of Chairman Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward,” an attempt at utopian engineering gone horribly wrong. Journalist Jasper Becker conducted hundreds of interviews and spent years immersed in painstaking detective work to produce Hungry Ghosts, the first full account of this dark chapter in Chinese history. In this horrific story of state-sponsored terror, cannibalism, torture, and murder. China’s communist leadership boasted of record harvests and actually increased grain exports, while refusing imports and international assistance. As reviewer Richard Bernstein wrote in the New York Times, “Mr. Becker’s remarkable book…strikes a heavy blow against willed ignorance of what took place.”About the AuthorJasper Becker worked in China as a correspondent for 18 years and is the author of 10 books on Asia.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This is an extremely well documented history of Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” (1958-1961) which starved to death between 30 million and 60 million Chinese people. They were sacrificed on the altar of Marxist-Leninist ideology, specifically through the forced collectivization of 500 million peasants. It’s astonishing how the news of the famine was suppressed in China, and decades later in the West. If your teacher or professor starts quoting the “great thoughts” of Mao Zedong, this book can help you recover your sanity and begin to learn the true depth of Mao’s evil, which millions of people deny even today.

⭐Here is a story never taught in school, and certainly unknown to the general public. Who knew that while I and my friends were leaning to drive, eating pizza and cheese steaks, watching American Bandstand, going to school, complaining about what we wanted and didn’t have – – millions were suffering beyond anything we could imagine? Starving, living in constant fear, eating their dead, selling their own children to be eaten, eating excrement, letting grain rot to avoid embarrassment to the government, all the fantastic lies just to avoid offending one man and dying by the thousands in every village. Worse than our most terrible visions of a traditional Hell, trivializing even the worst aspects of the Great Depression in the U.S. Reading this challenges normal beliefs about humanity. The Holocaust in Europe during WW II has been described as the most significant and terrible happening of 20th century history. But is that so? Based on Becker’s quoted estimates, there were possibly more deaths attributable to the Great Famine than to the entire War. Is that the measure of a terrible happening?Given today’s political context, it is doubtful than anything will be learned – by the public – about this fairly recent history without a reading of this book and reference materials used to put it together. I feel that I have learned something that most people know nothing about. Mao and his mentor Stalin certainly rival Hitler in just plain nastiness.

⭐I will say that this is not an easy book to read, it is fascinating but has a lot of very dry political rhetoric. The story is horrifying and unbelievable, especially when looked at in the time frame involved. This was a time when most of the world was advancing and moving into the future and yet you see China rolling back to the middle ages. This shows what can happen to a country when it is ruled by such a tyrant. The Chinese people had no hope and it makes you wonder how much hope the rural people have to this day. It is hard for a democratic people to believe the horrors suffered by the Chinese peasants. I would have given the book five stars but it was kind of slow to plow through. It was certainly an education on suffering and trying to live through a horrible time. Maybe some day there will be leadership in China that really cares about the future of their people.

⭐This book looks at the disastrous policies of the Chinese Communist Party and how those policies led to famine in the late ’50s and early ’60s. Jasper’s writing, while dry and uninteresting, is an example of excellent scholarship. He used countless sources, including many internal CCP documents, interviews, and plenty of statistical analysis. Mixed with the scholarship are several in-depth narratives that look at specific counties and provinces in China.Becker’s book is one of the first to detail the disastrous Great Leap Forward, Yang Jisheng’s “Tombstone” and then Frank Dikötter’s “Mao’s Great Famine.” The English translation of “Tombstone” removes about half of the original book’s contents. “Mao’s Great Famine” is somewhat more myopic than “Hungry Ghosts,” providing little geography context for the hundreds of anecdotes Dikötter presents.The scholarly debate between these books seems focused on the number of deaths. Taken together, the three books point to a death toll between 30,000,000 and 45,000,000 – an unfathomable tragedy. All three books correctly point out the disgusting human fault of the famine. Jasper’s book, while dryer, does an excellent job of examining local and national faults.

⭐What lead me to this book was a work of fiction, dreams of joy by Lisa See. The things that she referred to seemed so unbelievable. When I looked up what she used for references, this book was used. I found this book to be amazing. The information provided kept me wanting more. While Dreams of Joy was a narrative, it was only from the perspective of the peasants in China/Chinese in the US.This book gives the reader incite into the people behind the decision that lead to the events in the other book. The writer gives so much information. It was just fuel to the fire! READ THIS BOOK!!!! :0)

⭐I had read books that hinted at the atrocities committed during China’s great famine but was astonished and at times disgusted with the facts presented in this book. I am amazed at the amount of research done and indeed required for a book of this nature. The author has taken an amazing amount of information and presented it in a surprisingly easy to read text. It is historical, but the author explains who the individuals are, where they stand politically, and how they fit in the picture. As for the experience of the peasants, the author spares no detail. I continue to be amazed and sickened that these things happened in the recent past. Every person’s eyes need to be opened about this tragedy. This book will tell you the full story.

⭐It is amazing that the Chinese Communist Party largely succeeded in sweeping knowledge of this event under the rug, even in the West. Will there ever be a Holocaust Museum in Beijing to commemorate the 30-40 million peasants who died of starvation in Mao’s insane man-made famine? Probably not, as long as the CCP continues to control the official historical narrative in the Chinese press. However, the Party’s conspicuous silence is proof of its complicity in a terrible crime against humanity.

⭐Really helpful for studying The Great Famine.

⭐Excellent book. The sheer stupidity of the decisions made by the chinese leadership at the time is mind bogling. It was a world of lies, hypocrisy and evil.I have read many books about WWII concentration camps, but some of what is described here is worse, and I had personaly never even heard of these famines. A must read.

⭐Have actually not read yet. Was recommended by a relative.

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