Great Leap Forward Famine

Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward campaign intended to turn China from an agrarian nation into an industrialized one. To win favor with their superiors and avoid being purged, each layer in Mao’s party exaggerated the amount of grain produced under them. Therefore the state requested a disproportionately high amount of that fictitious harvest for state use. Farmers were left with little food for themselves. Millions starved and many resorted to cannibalism. There were reports of people eating the dead and parents eating their own children.