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2With non-experts in mind, the first two (of six) parts retrace major events of the Great Leap Forward disaster and famine, rightly stressing the crucial role of the Lushan Conference: “Had the leadership reversed course in the summer of 1959 at Lushan [as they had intended to before the Peng Dehuai affair], the number of victims claimed by famine would have been counted in the millions. Instead, as the country plunged into catastrophe, tens of millions of lives would be extinguished through exhaustion, illness, torture and hunger” (p. 103). Ironically entitled “Dizzy with Success” – in reference to a famous article of 2 March 1930 in which Stalin called for the inevitable halt to collectivisation and dekulakisation, blaming it on local communist cadres’ excesses – Chapter 11 describes in detail the pre-Lushan period, when Mao had been so disturbed as to declare, “I now support conservatism [and thus prudence]. I stand on the side of right deviation. I am against egalitarianism and left adventurism…” However, he took the latter path six months later. Chapter 16, which concludes the chronological section, contains the newest elements: it eloquently shows how then-president Liu Shaoqi finally took cognisance of the extent of the disaster in the spring of 1961, thanks to an investigation he undertook of his native village in Hunan and the surrounding area. Unlike Mao, Liu resolved not to be misled by local authorities’ versions, and ended up learning from villagers that there had, in fact, been no drought in the region the previous year: the disaster was manmade (renhuo), not a natural calamity. That was the position he took subsequently: “The centre is the principal culprit, we leaders are all responsible” (p. 121). It was a sacrilege for which Mao would not pardon him: this chapter anticipates the epilogue, in which the author recalls the famous 7,000 Cadres Conference (January 1962) and the stormy encounter six months later in which Liu told a furious Mao, “History will judge you and me” (p. 337). Convinced that he had found China’s Khrushchev, and fearing that Liu would denounce him later in a “secret speech,” Mao did all he could to prevent such a terrible eventuality: the book ends on this sinister foreboding of the Cultural Revolution.

4Be it local cadres’ powers over people’s life and death, dead rats being fished out of cesspools to be eaten (p. 284), cannibalism (p. 320-23), or hogs trampling on smaller piglets and devouring them (p. 142), the horror that figures on almost every page is presented in a sober and factual manner. Sobriety also informs the description of victims’ comportment: the “masses” are not idealised. They try to survive by all means, even at the cost of others (p. xv, 214 and Chapter 26). One should not be too hasty in characterising as “resistance,” much less revolt, the slightest sign of these desperate measures, even though some collective actions might well merit such a description.

5Meanwhile, there is something lacking in this fine book: a demographic and economic perspective of the catastrophe. The latter is too lightly attempted, the former not at all. Instead, the perspective offered at the outset deliberately leans towards Tiananmenology, stressing with some smugness – for a change – the Mao-Stalin and then Mao-Khrushchev rivalry. To be clear: there’s no question of letting Mao off lightly – he was the prime culprit behind the disaster – or of underplaying (how could one?) his pride, arrogance, blunders, and criminal stubbornness. But instead of once again narrating well-known episodes such as Mao’s humiliation of Khrushchev by the Zhongnanhai swimming pool (p. 44) or the shelling of the offshore islands Quemoy and Matsu without notifying Moscow (p. 45), would it not have been more useful to set out briefly that demographic transition had hardly progressed on the eve of the Great Leap Forward? Fertility remained high, and mortality was decreasing at a rate all the more vigorous as generalised prevention (essentially vaccination) and other measures adopted in the previous eight years had reversed, or in certain cases eradicated, most infectious and parasitic diseases. In less than a decade (1949-57), infant mortality had fallen by two-thirds – according to official figures, which were no doubt given to exaggerating achievements. At any rate, infants’ survival was better assured in China on the eve of the famine than ever before. Many children who starved to death between 1958 and 1962 would not have been alive in 1958 had infant mortality stayed at the pre-1949 level. (Those who survived would eventually add to worries over the problem of retirees, which is not exclusively linked to the one-child policy). Staying with the pre-Great Leap Forward situation, an extremely high natural growth rate characteristic of the first phase of demographic transition (between 20 and 25 per thousand annually from 1955 to 1957) compounded another problem: feeding a rapidly growing population. Agriculture was facing great difficulty in catering to clamouring mouths. It had been on the verge of disaster many times in the 1950s, before the aberrations of the Great Leap Forward.