Estimating the Long-Term Impact of the Great Chinese Famine (1959–61) on Modern China

This research analyzes the long-term impact of the Great Chinese Famine (1959–61) on the modern Chinese economy, and shows that areas in which famine was most severe have significantly lower per capita GDP today. The Great Famine coincided with the Chinese Communist Party’s industrialization and agriculture modernization plan, the Great Leap Forward (GLF). To remove omitted variable and endogeneity problems, a unique relationship between the Communist army’s takeover of mainland China (1946–50) and the degree to which subnational leadership was willing to enforce GLF policies to the detriment of rural citizens’ well-being is exploited via instrumental variable (IV) estimation. Specifically, areas liberated later had a higher density of zealous administrators by the start of the GLF in 1958, and in turn experienced stricter enforcement of GLF policies which resulted in greater famine severity. As a result, this research finds a relatively pronounced impact of politically-triggered famine captured by the IV approach, which strengthens the growing outlook that famine is a consequence of inadequate food entitlement, as opposed to being simply food shortages.