Chinese citizens, and the Communist Party leaders who govern them, both love to boast of the country’s 5,000 years of history. But the exact details of that history — especially recent history — sometimes act as flashpoints in the struggle to define the relationship between the party, the people, and the nation. And this week, the battle for historical memory spilled over into China’s sprawling social media spaces.
On Sept. 22, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), China’s premier academic research institute and one generally perceived to be a stronghold of orthodox party thought, published an article accusing “hostile Western forces” of greatly exaggerating the number of people who died during the so-called Great Leap Forward, in order to “negate the legitimacy” of the party. The Great Leap Forward, a campaign launched in 1957 by then-Chairman Mao Zedong, aimed to push China’s industrial capacity beyond that of Britain in just 15 years. But from 1958 to 1961, the disastrous industrial and agricultural policies that undergirded it, such as farm collectivization and communal kitchens (pictured above), combined with a tragically timed drought to create a three-year famine across China, often called the “Three Years of Hardship.” Official data has been suppressed, but later studies estimated that some 30 million to 45 million people died of starvation — more people than perished in all of World War I.
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