Mao Zedong Part 2: The ‘Great Leap Forward’
Real Dictators
00:00
The Famine Isn't the Absence of Food
In communes throughout the land, lines of hungry peasants queue for meager portions of rice. Chairman Mao imposes impossibly high production targets on these new collective farms. The peasants are told they won't receive their food rations if they don't hit their quotas. Food is administered according to merit. It's a tool of control. Starving them hastens their death. More deaths mean fewer mouths to feed.
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