Study Of Jining In The 1959 Food Shortages

During China's 3-year economic difficulties (1959—1961), the development of national economy met severe setbacks, especially in agriculture. As a result, many farmers died from hunger owing to the grain shortage in the countryside. Compared with other provinces, Shandong Province suffered most while Jining Prefecture suffered most in Shandong. This paper tries to examine, by surveying the background and process of the famine in 1959 in Jining Prefecture, the traditional belief of "Natural Calamity and Human Mischief" and truly reflect the degree and causes of the famine.The viewpoint of "Natural Calamity" has been influencing people's view on the causes of the economic difficulties. The diagram of Jining's calamity clearly demonstrated that the year of 1958 was a favorable year for agriculture and the year of 1959 was indeed less unfavorable than many people believed and should not lead to the famine all over the prefecture. So we say the "Natural Calamity" belief does not hold water.Along with the popularity of "Leftist Thinking" , coxcombry greatly blocked the development of agriculture, the grain collection by the state from the farmers was too much for the farmers could bear, as a result too little grain was left for the farmers;The decrease of arable land directly cut down the harvest in the summer of 1959;coxcombry led to the wrong idea on agriculture and led to the movement of People's Commune, during which "communism" and "average distribution" and "free-of-charge eating" became popular . It was not welfare but a psychological ruin and material deprivation of farmers, their positivity for agricultural activities was greatly reduced;the industrial leap-forward characterized by mass steel smelting drew almost all the grownup farmers, it resulted in the shortage of manpower and agricultural tools in the harvesting season of 1958;cadres in the grass-root level issued confused orders in agricultural work, some cadres even did something against the law anddisciplines, all these added to the crises in the countryside.So this paper states that the real reason why Jining Prefecture suffered a severe food shortage is by no means a natural one. It's man-made! The food shortage was resulted from coxcombry and a series of wrong policies and decisions that coxcombry brought about. Coxcombry resulted in a calamity that claimed millions of lives of the farmers. Jining Prefecture witnessed the first population decrease since the founding of New China, what's striking was that in some places human-eating cases were found!The coxcombry grown up during the Great Leap Forward had its special causes. Firstly, within the Party, those opposing rash advance and right-deviationist had been criticized;secondly, there were malpractices in cadre promotion. But the innermost reason was that cadres in the grass-root level, even cadres of higher rank in the Party as well as the masses had a cultural feeling of obeying the superior and following like sheep.The study of Jining Food Shortage can enable us to reflect that period of time, remember that historical lesson, heighten the ability of telling what was correct and what was wrong so that we can keep away incorrect ideas and advance our reform causes steadily ad positively.