Hungry Ghosts (1996)

Excellent Scholarship

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. ( )

Scary stuff kiddies. ( )

Jasper Becker in Hungry Ghosts: "North Korea seems in the grip of a death-cult psychosis that leaves it impervious to rational notions of self-interest" (339). Bruce Cumings on the kind of racism that is allowed to run free when talking about North Korea: "Prominent Americans lose any sense of embarrassment or self-consciousness about the intricate and knotty problems of racial difference and Otherness when it comes to North Korea and its leaders" (49).I'm sure there are better books about the Great Leap Forward out there. The author doesn't even try to hide his pro-West, anti-Communist, orientalist biases. ( )

I first read this book when it came out. Now, 13 years later, I find it has lost none of its shock value. Every page heaps multiple outrages on multiple outrages. It is still the world's most outrageous coverup, and it cost 30 to 60 million deaths in three years Hitler and Stalin had nothing on Mao.
Unlike any other famine, this one did not have a political objective or a natural basis - it was essentially unintentional, and entirely man--made, making it even more horrifying. It was of such proportion the country even suppressed the 1964 census data. Doctors were not permitted to claim starvation as a cause of death. Cannibalism was rampant. And the entire time, China continued to export grain. The state's granaries remained full.
Mao implemented the "Great Lea Forward" to catch up to the West, using an agricultural policy he knew had totally failed in Stalin's USSR 25 years before. Everyone had to go along, or face death. No one could avoid lying that everything was going great, and exceeding expectations, because that's what Mao had to hear. The result was an unending and unendurable hell, which, far from catching up, actually saw wheat production actually drop below the level of the Han Dynasty, 2000 years prior.
The details elicit emotions like I have never experienced in reading the worst atrocities of Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia, probably because this had no such goal - it just happened and kept happening to a worse and worse effect. It is all thoroughly and painstakingly documented, making it absolutely believable, and horrifyingly real, from the bizarre policies that led to it (melting all metal in backyard furnaces to create "steel") to the insane agricultural "solutions" (cutting three to six foot deep furrows so the wheat harvest would multiply) inspired by Mao, it is all there, in seeming science fiction of the worst kind. Absolutely horrifying and totally absurd - if it wasn't true. Truly a must read. ( )

This is a sobering book. It will keep you up at night and astound you that such things actually happened. But - I also got a different look at Mao. For the longest time I just thought he was horrible. Now I think there are many things he didn't really know about. The lengths his people would go to in order to make it look like his idea's were working were unbelievable. Everyone was so afraid of not being a success that they were very deceptive. I recommend this book to give you a different look at how Mao got away with so much. Warning - if canniblism is too much for you to handle, do not read this book. It is harsh. ( ( )