China. Great Leap Forward. Mao aims to reach Western levels of development within a few years. It will lead to one of the greatest famines in modern history and cause a profound rift within the Communist Party. Metal production is so scarce as to be unusable. Wheat and rice harvests collapse, hunger rages, even leading to cannibalism. Infant mortality doubles in three years. The famine kills 37 million people between 1959 and 1961: many more than the Japanese occupation. Yet Mao’s prestige in the Western world remains intact for years. A segment of the European intelligentsia is Maoist or sympathetic.
