Time: September 27th, 2013 Topic: The Three Years of Great Chinese Famine 1958-1962 Lecturer: YANG Jisheng Commentators: SHI Xiuying, WANG Yuesheng, CHEN Ziming In this session, Professor YANG Jisheng started with several different sets of statistics of the people died during the Great Chinese Famine, commenting on their resources and introducing his own method of calculation. He then illustrated some unusual phenomena during the famine, criticized and clarified some rumors and false accounts of the famine. He concluded that the Great Leap Forward was the direct cause of the Great Chinese Famine, putting millions of people to death by excessive social control from the government as a rooting cause. Commentator Mr. WANG Yuesheng believed it was very meaningful to clarify the real death toll. He proposed a method for accounting the death toll by underestimate the domestic flow of population when measuring the whole population of a country, therefore, avoiding non-disclosure and false statistics. He thought the institutional causes of the Great Chinese Famine were excessive concentration of social resources, scandalous wastes of food in the community canteens, and the paralyzed social relieve system. Professor CHEN Ziming thought there was little doubt about the fact that millions of people died during the famine. He claimed that political persecution and physical humiliation led to the death of hunger. Professor SHI Xiuyin proposed to improve the categorization of those who died of unnatural reasons and their social identities. He thought we should reconsider three factors which directly led to the Great Chinese Famine, namely, subjectivism, bureaucracy, and sectarianism. Professor ZHANG Shuguang the analyses stood plausible and proposed that another two causes of the death toll during the famine were excessive spending and wasting, and deficient nutrition. Professor ZHANG Shuguang claimed that we need to respect the truth of history, and he appraised Mr. YANG for the example he set for the academia. |
