Mao Zedong Part 2: The ‘Great Leap Forward’
Real Dictators
The Cost of Collectivization in China
Professor Frank de Cotta reports on modern China, based in Hong Kong. He spent years studying Chinese archives to build up a picture of life under Mao's rule. Instead of farming your own produce, now you farm in exchange for food rations. The wheat is taken from the fields and loaded into troughs. Then it's carted away. It does work very briefly for a couple of months 1958 as massive amounts of machinery are ordered from abroad. But once the bills come in by 1959 it's too late. This country is already starving quite literally.
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