40 THE GREAT LEAP: “HALF OF CHINA MAY WELL HAVE TO DIE”
40 大跃進：“中国非死一半人不可”
(1958–61 AGE 64–67)
1958～1961 年 64-67 岁
WITH HIS cult fed and watered among the population, his colleagues cowed into submission, and potential voices of dissent silenced through the “Anti-Rightist” campaign, Mao proceeded vastly to accelerate his Superpower Program, though he still concealed its military nature. The original 1953 schedule of completing “industrialisation” in “ten to fifteen years” was now shortened to eight, seven, or even five—or possibly three—years. Mao had been informed that acquisitions from Russia could enable him to break into the superpower league in five years. He fancied he could fulfill his ambition in one “big bang,” declaring that “Our nation is like an atom.” He called the process the “Great Leap Forward,” and launched it in May 1958.
有了精心培植的个人崇拜，有了中共领导的集体就范，有了反右造成的万马齐喑，毛终于得以加速他的军事工业化進程。一九五三年他首次推出这个纲领时，曾把实现的时间定为“十年到十五年”，现在他把期限缩短到八年，七年，五年，甚至三年。这个过程他叫作“大跃進”，于一九五八年五月“八大”二次会议拉开序幕。
While the nation was told, vaguely, that the goal of the Leap was for China to “overtake all capitalist countries in a fairly short time, and become one of the richest, most advanced and powerful countries in the world,” Mao spelled out to small audiences, and strictly confidentially, just what he meant to do once the Leap was completed. On 28 June, he told an elite army group: “Now the Pacific Ocean is not peaceful. It can only be peaceful when we take it over.” At this point Lin Biao interjected: “We must build big ships, and be prepared to land [sc. militarily] in Japan, the Philippines and San Francisco.” Mao continued: “How many years before we can build such ships? In 1962, when we have xx–xx tons of steel [figures concealed in original] …”
毛政权宣传说，大跃進是为了中国“在一个比较短的时间内赶上一切资本主义国家，成为世界上最先進、最富强的国家之一”。但这个目标跟提高人民生活水准毫无关系。六月二十八日，毛在军委扩大会议小组长座谈会上说：“目前太平洋实际上是不“太平”的，将来归我们管了才算是“太平”洋。”林彪插话说：“X年后，我们一定要造大船，准备到日本、菲律宾、旧金山登陆。”毛接着说：“造船还要几年才行？一九六二年我们有XX--XX万吨钢，有XX万台工作母机，生产能力就大了。”(数字在文献原件中略去)
On 19 August, Mao told select provincial chiefs: “In the future we will set up the Earth Control Committee, and make a uniform plan for the Earth.” Mao dominated China. He intended to dominate the world.
八月十九日，毛以同样的气概对省委书记们说：“将来我们要搞地球管理委员会，搞地球统一计划。”毛搞大跃進，就是要称霸世界。
For the Chinese population, the Great Leap was indeed an enormous jump—but in the amount of food extracted. This was calculated on the basis, not of what the peasants could afford, but of what was needed for Mao's Program. Mao proceeded by simply asserting that there was going to be an enormous increase in the harvest, and got the provincial chiefs to proclaim that their area would produce an astronomical output.
大跃進的主要内容是大规模地从苏联和东欧進口以军工为核心的重工业项目。这就意味着食品大量出口。当毛要赫鲁晓夫卖昂贵的核潜艇技术设备时，赫鲁晓夫问毛怎样付费，毛的答覆是：苏联要多少食品，中国就可以出口多少。为了名正言顺地从农民手中夺粮，毛硬说一九五八年有了神话般的大丰收。在他示意下，各省领导纷纷宣布各自省内的粮食产量将会激增。比如，毛最喜欢的柯庆施声称，他管辖下的华东地区这年的产量将比上一年增长百分之七十。新上任的河南第一书记吴芝圃，也提出高于通常产量几倍的收获数字，被毛封为头号模范。
When harvest time came, the chiefs got selected lackeys down at the grassroots to declare that their areas had indeed produced fantastic crops. Mao's propaganda machine then publicized these claims with great fanfare. The stratospheric harvests and other sky-high claims were called “sputniks,” reflecting Mao's obsession with the Russian satellite. On 12 June People's Daily reported that in Henan, Mao's No. 1 model province, a “Sputnik Cooperative” had produced 1.8 tons of wheat on one mu (1/6th acre)—more than ten times the norm. Claims in this vein were not, as official Chinese history would have us believe, the result of spontaneous boasting by local cadres and peasants. The press was Mao's voice, not the public's.
六月是夏收时节。在各省领导给特别听话的基层干部打招呼后，这些基层干部便宣称他们那里有了奇迹般的收成。毛的宣传机器接着鼓吹一连串“高产典型”，把它们叫作“放卫星”。六月十二日，《人民日报》报导河南省遂平县卫星农业社“小麦每亩产量达到了三千五百三十斤”，十倍于实际产量，被称作“卫星田”。后来官方说，这些都是基层干部和农民，头脑发热”的“吹牛浮夸”。《人民日报》何时成了人民的声音？它从来就是毛的喉舌。
“Sputnik fields” mushroomed. They were usually created by transplanting ripe crops from a number of fields into a single artificial plot. These were the Maoist equivalent of Potemkin fields—with the key difference that Mao's plots were not intended to fool the ruler, but instead produced by the ruler for the eyes of his distant underlings, grassroots cadres from other collective farms. These cadres were most important to Mao, as they were the people immediately in charge of physically handing over the harvests to the state. Mao wanted them to see these Sputnik fields and then go back and make similar claims, so that the state could say: since you've produced more, we can take more. Cadres who declined to go along were condemned and replaced with others who would. Charades of sky-high yields filled the press, though Peking eventually quietly stopped the transplanting theater, as it caused big losses.
很快全国出现了不少“卫星田” ，通常是把几块田的庄稼移到一起。这些弄虚作假的典型不是给上级、不是给毛看的，恰恰相反，是上边安排来给下边的人看的。各地农村的基层干部被组织起来参观，让他们回去也编造同样的高产。那些不肯睁眼说瞎话的基层干部被批判撤职，让位给敢吹大牛的人。天文数字般的高产充斥全国报刊。*
* “卫星田” 完成了使命后，上面就不让干了。谁都知道它们糟蹋粮食，影响收获。
By late July, People's Daily was declaring that “we can produce as much food as we want,” setting the stage for Mao to assert publicly on 4 August: “We must consider what to do with all this surplus food.” This claim about there being surplus food was one that Mao himself could not possibly have believed. Barely six months before, on 28 January, he had acknowledged to the Supreme Council that there was a shortage of food: “What are we going to do as there isn't enough food to eat?” he had asked. His solution was as follows: “No worse than eat less … Oriental style … It's good for health. Westerners have a lot of fat in their food; the further west one goes the more fat they eat. I say that Western meat-eaters are contemptible.” “I think it is good to eat less. What's the point of eating a lot and growing a big stomach, like the foreign capitalists in cartoons?” These airy remarks might well apply to Mao, who had a paunch, but they were irrelevant to famished peasants. In January, Mao had been saying: There isn't enough food, but people can eat less. Six months later, he was saying: There is too much food. Both of these contradictory remarks had the same purpose: to gouge more food out of the peasants.
到了七月底，《人民日报》社论正式宣布：“只要我们需要，要生产多少，就可生产出多少粮食来。”毛泽东于八月四日公开指示：“应该考虑到生产了这么多粮食怎么办的问题。”一月二十八日，毛才在说：“中国地大物博，只有那么一点田，但是人口多。没有饭吃怎么办？无非少吃一点。”“吃那么多把肚子胀那么大干啥，像漫画上外国资本家那样。”毛的话翻云覆雨，为的都是从农民那里把粮食挤出来。
In September, People's Daily reported that “the biggest rice sputnik” yet had produced over 70 tons from less than 1/5th of an acre, which was hundreds of times the norm. This sputnik field was faked by an ambitious new county boss in Guangxi. At the end of the year, his county reported a grain output that was over three times the true figure. The state then demanded an impossible 4.8 times what it had taken the year before.
九月，《人民日报》报导了最高纪录的“水稻卫星”，广西省环江县亩产十三万斤！这颗卫星是野心勃勃的县委书记逼着放的，结果这一年环江县上报的粮食产量是实际数字的三倍多，国家下达的征粮任务是上一年的四点八倍。
Grassroots cadres often resorted to brute force. And if they were judged ineffective, armed police were sent in. On 19 August 1958, Mao instructed his provincial chiefs: “When you order things handed over and they are not handed over, back up your orders with force.” Under such pressure, state violence raged across the countryside.
这是无论如何也交不出来的。在环江，在全国，政府以高压手段强迫农民交粮。八月十九日，毛亲自对省委书记下令说：“马克思与秦始皇结合起来”，“调东西调不出来要强迫命令。”“强迫命令”在中共的语汇中是动武行凶的意思。全国乡村到处是“逼粮会”，到处是捆、打、吊。
To produce a “justification,” Mao repeatedly accused peasants and village cadres of hiding grain. On one occasion, on 27 February 1959, he told his top echelon: “All production teams hide their food to divide among themselves. They even hide it in deep secret cellars, and place guards and sentries …” Next day, he asserted again that peasants were “eating carrot leaves during the day, and rice at night …” By this he meant that peasants were pretending they had run out of proper food but in fact had good food, which they consumed in secret. Mao revealed his contempt for the peasantry to his inner circle: “Peasants are hiding food … and are very bad. There is no Communist spirit in them! Peasants are after all peasants. That's the only way they can behave …”
为了使暴力师出有名，毛一而再，再而三地指责农民和基层干部“瞒产私分”。他反覆说：“生产小队普遍一致瞒产私分，深藏密窖，站岗放哨”，农民“白天吃萝卜缨，晚上吃大米”。毛还用鄙夷的口气说：“瞒产私分，名誉很坏，共产主义风格哪里去了！农民还是农民，农民只有如此。”
Mao knew perfectly well that the peasants had no food to hide. He had an efficient reporting system, and was on top of what was happening daily around the country. On one batch of reports in April 1959 he noted that there was severe starvation in half the country: “a big problem: 15 provinces—25.17 million people no food to eat”; his response was to ask the provinces to “deal with it,” but he did not say how. A report that reached his desk from Yunnan province, dated 18 November 1958, described a wave of deaths from edema—swelling caused by severe malnutrition. Again, Mao's response was to pass the buck: “This mistake is mainly the fault of county-level cadres.” Mao knew that in many places people were reduced to eating compounds of earth. In some cases, whole villages died as a result, when people's intestines became blocked.
毛泽东清楚得很，农民没有粮可私分。一九五八年十一月十八日，云南省向毛报告省里因肿病而大批死人。肿病就是吃不饱造成的。毛的批示是拿下级做替罪羊：“云南这个错误就是主要出于县级干部”。一九五九年四月十七日，他收到一组文件，报告半个中国缺粮，他为文件拟了个标题：“十五省二千五百一十七万人无饭吃大问题”。但他的反应是做戏。他指示把文件用“飞机送到十五省委第一书记手收，请他们迅即处理”。毛既不说明如何处理，更没有松口要他们少征粮食。
This nationwide squeeze made it possible for Mao to export 4.74 million tons of grain, worth US$935 million, in 1959. Exports of other foods also soared, particularly of pork.
The claim about China “having too much food” was trundled out to Khrushchev. When he came to Peking in summer 1958, Mao pressed him for help to make nuclear submarines, which were going to be extremely expensive. Khrushchev asked how China was going to pay. Mao's response was that China had unlimited supplies of food.
Food was also used as a raw material in the nuclear program, which required high-quality fuel. Grain was turned into the purest alcohol. On 8 September, having claimed that there was food to spare, Mao told the Supreme Council that “we have to find outlets for grain in industries, for example to produce ethyl alcohol for fuel.” Grain was therefore used for missile tests, each of which consumed 10 million kg of grain, enough to radically deplete the food intake of 1–2 million people for a whole year.
THE PEASANTS WERE now having to work much harder, and much longer hours, than before. As Mao wanted to raise output without spending any money, he latched on to methods that depended on labor, not investment. It was for this reason that he ordered huge drives to build irrigation systems—dams, reservoirs, canals. Over the four years from 1958, about 100 million peasants were coerced into such projects, moving a quantity of earth and masonry equivalent to excavating 950 Suez Canals, mostly using only hammers, picks and shovels, and sometimes even doors and bed planks from their homes to improvise makeshift carts. Peasants corvéed for these projects often had to bring not only their own food but their own tools, and in many cases their own materials to put up shelters.
毛一方面需要农业增产，一方面又不肯给农业投资。他的宗旨是不花钱，或少花钱，最大限度地使用人力。搞大跃進靠的是奴役劳动。水利是发展农业的关键，毛就叫农民去修水利，一分工钱不给，美其名曰“大搞群众运动”。自一九五八年起的四年内，一亿农民被投入大大小小的堤坝、水库、水渠工程里，移动的土石方足以建造九百五十条苏彝士运河，而使用的工具大多只有手工的锄头、榔头、铁铲之类，靠农民自带。劳作时吃的东西得自己出，经常还得在露天搭起棚帐，权作栖身之地。
In the absence of safety measures and medical care, accidents were frequent, as were deaths, which Mao well knew. His talks with provincial chiefs about these waterworks are littered with mentions of death tolls.
安全无从谈起，工伤事故如家常便饭，医疗也基本上没有。死亡率高到什么程度呢？毛谈到修水利时，常把挖的土方数和死人数连在一起。
In April 1958 he observed that as Henan (his model) had promised to move 30 billion cubic meters that coming winter, “I think 30,000 people will die.” Anhui, another of Mao's favorite provinces, “said 20 billion cubic metres, and I think 20,000 people will die …” When senior officials in Gansu province appealed against “destroying human lives” in these projects, Mao had them condemned and punished as a “Rightist anti-Party clique.”
一九五八年四月上旬，毛召集各省谈水利工程，表扬了两个省：吴芝圃的河南和曾希圣的安徽。毛说：“吴芝圃讲搞三百亿方，我看得死三万人；曾希圣讲搞两百亿方，我看得死两万人”。甘肃省副省长等干部把这样搞水利叫作“秦始皇磨民”，“是人命换来的”。这批干部被打成“右派反党集团”。
Mao wanted instant results, so he promoted a typical slogan: “Survey, Design and Execute Simultaneously,” known as the “Three Simultaneouslys.” Geological surveying was therefore scanty, or non-existent, so a fourth “simultaneous” usually soon had to be added: Revision.
对水利工程，毛追求的是立竿见影，他推崇“三边”式：边测量、边设计、边施工。地理查勘等不可缺少的程式被当作陈规旧习推翻，“三边”很快成了“四边”多了个“边修改”。
One well-known project was a canal 1,400 km long across the drought-plagued Yellow Earth Plateau in the northwest. It had to cross 800 mountains and valleys and the 170,000 laborers had to dig caves to sleep in, and forage for herbs to eke out their meager food. Months into the project, tunnels which they had already started digging, by hand, were abandoned in favor of culverts. After more months, this approach in turn was abandoned, and some of the tunnels reinstated. The project went on in this way for three years, during which at least 2,000 laborers died, and was then abandoned. The official account admitted that not one plot of land had benefited.
如甘肃省的“引洮上山”工程，修一条长达一千四百公里、翻越八百余座山岭的大水渠，把洮河引到黄土高原。参加施工的十七万民工在高山大壑里挖洞穴居，席地裹衣而卧，下工后在山里采野菜合着自带的干粮充饥。他们先挖了几个月的隧道，发现不行，上面决定劈山修明渠。干了几个月又不行，又改修隧道。三年过去了，葬身在工地的民工，最少也有两千多人，工程“血淋淋”地下马了，官方自己承认：一亩地也没浇上。
Most of the projects turned out to be a stupendous waste. Many had to be abandoned halfway: out of the over 500 large reservoirs (100 million cubic meters capacity or more), 200 had already been abandoned by late 1959. Many others collapsed during Mao's lifetime. The worst dam disaster in human history happened in 1975 in Mao's model province of Henan, when scores of reservoirs built during the Leap crumbled in a storm, drowning an estimated 230,000–240,000 people (official death toll: 85,600). Other Mao-era follies went on killing people long after his death, and as of 1999, no fewer than 33,000 were considered a risk to human life. The dams also uprooted untold millions from their homes, and more than two decades later there were still 10.2 million “reservoir displaced persons.”
像“引洮上山”一样，大跃進中的大部分水利工程都是浪费。许多修到半途，修不下去，只好停工。蓄水量一亿立方公尺以上的大型水库，开工的有五百多座，一年多以后就减掉了两百座。建成的有不少毛还在世时就坍塌了。其中有人类历史上最大的蓄水工程垮坝惨案，发生在一九七五年的河南。短短几小时内，板桥与石漫滩两座大型水库、数十座中小型水库的一整套水库群，在一场大暴雨中相继溃决，淹死人数达二十四万。(官方说法是八万五千六百多人。)毛死前没垮的，在他死后继续遗祸于人。一九九九年，有三万三千座水利工程被列为危险建筑，随时可能给下游地区带来灭顶之灾。
MAO INFLICTED MANY other half-baked schemes on the peasants, like forcing them to dig up soil by hand to a depth of half a meter. “Use the human wave tactic, and turn every field over,” he ordered. Grossly excessive close planting was another. Close planting needed fertilizer, but Mao refused the requisite investments, and in late 1958 he actually ordered: “Reduce chemical fertiliser imports.” On another occasion he said: “Turn China into a country of pigs … so there will be lots of manure … and more than enough meat, which can be exported in exchange for iron and steel.” But he did not say where the feed was to come from for these pigs. In fact, under Mao's stewardship the number of pigs fell by no less than 48 percent between 1957 and 1961.
毛的增产办法包括用人工深翻土地：“用人海战术，把耕地全部翻一遍。”另一个办法是密植。这需要多施肥料 -- 要增产无论用什么法子都得多施肥料。可是毛在最需要化肥的一九五八年后期反而决定“不走化肥的道路”，“進口化肥也要减少。” 毛不愿意花钱，要求“搞得中国除了人之外就是一个猪国”，“养猪就有肥料，肥料多就能增产粮食……肉食就吃不完，出口换钢铁，外汇就多。”可是靠什么养猪呢？毛没有行得通的办法。事实上，一九五七到一九六一年，中国的猪减少了百分之四十八。
Over the centuries, Chinese peasants had applied their ingenuity to find every possible substance that could be used as fertilizer. In urban areas, every spot where human waste was dumped was allocated to a particular village, and peasants coming in before dawn to collect this waste with their special oblong barrels on carts were a feature of life. Human waste was so precious that frequent fights broke out between people from different villages over poaching, using their long-handled ladles. Desperate to find new sources for fertilizer, people started to mix human and animal manure with the thatched roofs and earth walls of old houses, into which smoke and grease had seeped. Millions of peasant houses were torn down to feed into manure pits, known as “shit lakes and piss seas.”
为了肥料，中国农民祖祖辈辈绞尽了脑汁，能够想到的肥源都已经用上了。在增产指标压力下，人们只好拆自己的茅草房作肥料。烧饭的油烟不是渗進草屋顶了吗？还有那土垒的墙，那也有肥力啊！百万农民的家就这样毁掉了，沉進了“屎湖尿海”。
One day it hit Mao that a good way to keep food safe would be to get rid of sparrows, as they ate grain. He designated sparrows as one of “Four Pests” to be eliminated, along with rats, mosquitoes and flies, and mobilized the entire population to wave sticks and brooms and make a giant din to scare sparrows off landing so that they would fall from fatigue and be caught and killed by the crowds. There was much to be said for eradicating the other three, which were genuine pests, though one side-effect was that whatever slight privacy people had once had in performing their bodily functions disappeared, as eager fly-collectors loitered in droves at public lavatories. But the case for eliminating sparrows was not so clear-cut, as sparrows got rid of many pests, as well as eating grain—and, needless to say, many other birds died in the killing spree. Pests once kept down by sparrows and other birds now flourished, with catastrophic results. Pleas from scientists that the ecological balance would be upset were ignored.
增产之外还得省粮，毛的心思转到围歼那些吃粮食的麻雀身上。全国老少遵命挥舞竹竿扫帚，敲打铁锅铝盆，要吓破麻雀的胆子，使它们不得停下歇息，最后筋疲力尽堕地被捉。殊不知，别的鸟儿跟着玉石俱焚，以鸟为天敌的庄稼害虫横行霸道。昆虫学家痛陈利害的上书被置之不理。*
It was not long before a request from the Chinese government marked “Top Secret” reached the Soviet embassy in Peking. In the name of socialist internationalism, it read, please send us 200,000 sparrows from the Soviet Far East as soon as possible. Mao had to accept that his anti-sparrow drive was counter-productive, and it gradually petered out.*
* 毛曾怂恿北朝鲜的金日成仿效中国的打麻雀运动。金为了敷衍毛也订了一个“惩罚麻雀的三年计划”。但他按兵不动，等到毛的运动不了了之，他的计划也就束之高阁。
The “Four Pests” campaign was a sort of Maoist DIY substitute for a health service, as it was labor-intensive and investment-free. Mao had wanted to get rid of dogs, which consumed food, but relented, when he was advised that peasants needed them to guard their houses when they were out at work.
ANOTHER FIASCO that drained the peasants' energy, and brought disaster, was an order from Mao that the entire nation had to “make steel.” The Superpower Program needed a lot of steel—and steel was also Mao's yardstick for superpower status. When he boasted to Communist leaders in Moscow in 1957 that China would “overtake Britain in fifteen years” (which he later shortened to three) and when he told the Chinese he was fully confident that China could “overtake America” in ten years, steel output was what he had in mind. Mao set the 1958 target at 10.7 million tons. How this came about illustrates his broad-brush approach to economics. Sitting by his swimming pool in Zhongnanhai on 19 June he said to the metallurgy minister: “Last year, steel output was 5.3 million tons. Can you double it this year?” The yes-man said: “All right.” And that was that.
大跃進中还有一场灾难：大炼钢铁。毛规定一九五八年中国钢铁产量为一千零七十万吨。这个指标是这样来的：六月十九日晚，在中南海的游泳池旁，毛问冶金部长：“去年是五百三，今年可不可以翻一番？”冶金部长迎合说：“好吧！”
Steel mills and related industries like coal mines were ordered to go flat out to speed up production. Rules, and common sense, were cast aside. Equipment was overworked to the point of breakdown, and over 30,000 workers were killed in serious accidents alone within a few months. Experts who tried to talk sense were persecuted. Mao set the tone for discrediting rationality by saying that “bourgeois professors' knowledge should be treated as dogs' fart, worth nothing, deserving only disdain, scorn, contempt …”
正规的钢铁厂受命“多装快炼”， 日夜加班连轴转。但“洋炉子”不管怎样被滥用，还是远不能完成毛的指标。毛叫全国人民造“土炉子”。被“强制性”(毛的话)卷進土法炼钢的人起码有九千万。
Even going flat out, the existing steel mills could not fulfill Mao's target. His response was to order the general population to build “backyard furnaces.” At least 90 million people were “forced,” as Mao said matter-of-factly, to construct such furnaces, which Khrushchev not unfairly dubbed “samovar” furnaces, and which produced not steel at all, but pig iron, if that.
炼钢需要废铁，人们家里的铁器便交了出去，有用没用的都交，哪怕生活必需品，像门上的铁环，做饭的铁锅铁铲，妇女头上的铁发夹。宝贵的农具也填進了怎么也填不满的土高炉。当时有这样的口号：“交一把镢头就是消灭一个帝国主义，藏一个铁钉就是藏一个反革命。”
To feed these furnaces, the population was coerced into donating virtually every piece of metal they had, regardless of whether this was being used in productive, even essential, objects. Farm tools, even water wagons, were carted off and melted down, as were cooking utensils, iron door handles and women's hair-clips. The regime slogan was: “To hand in one pickaxe is to wipe out one imperialist, and to hide one nail is to hide one counter-revolutionary.”
Across China yet more peasant houses were torn down, and their occupants made homeless, so that the timber and thatch could be burned as fuel. Most accessible mountains and hillsides were stripped bare of trees. The resulting deforestation was still causing floods decades later.
为了大炼钢铁需要的燃料，长满森林的山被砍秃，农民的草房被扒掉。人们一天二十四小时围着土高炉转。收获季节到了，收庄稼只剩下妇女儿童，大片庄稼烂在地里。
The furnaces required constant attention, consuming vast amounts of labor time. Tens of millions of peasants, plus a large proportion of draft animals, were pulled out of agriculture, leaving only women and children to bring in the crops in many places. By the end of the year, some 10 billion work-days had been lost to agriculture, about one-third of the time that would normally have gone to producing grain. Though the total 1958 crop output was slightly up on 1957, there was no increase in the amount harvested.
As the year-end deadline approached for his steel output goal, every time Mao saw his managers he would use his fingers to count the days left, and urge them: “We must make it!” By 31 December, the 10.7 million tons figure was reached, but as Mao acknowledged to his top echelon, “only 40 percent is good steel”; and more than 3 million tons were completely useless. The “good” steel had been produced by proper steel mills; the useless stuff from the backyard furnaces, almost all of which were soon abandoned. The whole venture, a gigantic waste of resources and manpower, triggered further losses: in one place, local bosses hijacked shipments of high-quality Russian alloys and had them melted down so that they could claim a bumper output, called an “Iron and Steel Sputnik.” “No good at constructing, but super-good at destruction”: never was Mao's own assessment of himself more accurate.
毛一心惦记着他的“一千零七十万吨”，每次见到管经济的人，他都要拿手指头当计算器，一根根扳着算时间：今年还剩多少天？“钢铁尚未完成，同志仍需努力！” 到年底，《人民日报》终于以套红标题报导指标达到。但就像毛自己承认的：“只有四成是好的。”这四成实际上是正规钢厂炼出来的。土高炉出产的最多不过是生铁，大多连生铁也够不上，是些毫无用处的“牛屎疙瘩”。赫鲁晓夫挖苦地把土高炉叫做俄国“茶炊”。连几船从苏联高价买来的高质合金钢，也被地方干部偷偷扣下来送進了“茶炊”，成了废物。毛后来自己也说：“我是成事不足，败事有余。”
MAO WASTED MUCH of the technology and equipment bought from Russia, along with the skills of the accompanying specialists. Machinery often lay idle, as the gigantic industrial infrastructure they required was lacking. The equipment that was working was overworked, often twenty-four hours a day, while maintenance was neglected or dismissed as irrelevant. Mao encouraged ignoring regulations, and told those Chinese who were working with Russian advisers that they must not be “slaves” to Russian expertise. Russian pleas for common sense got nowhere. Even the very pro-Chinese chief adviser Arkhipov was rebuffed. In 1958, he told us, “I asked Chou and Chen Yun to try to persuade Mao to keep his ideas to himself, but Mao wouldn't listen … They said to me: Very sorry; Mao didn't agree with the Soviet side.” In June 1959, Soviet deputy premier Aleksandr Zasyadko, a metallurgy and missile silo expert, visited China and afterwards reported to Khrushchev that “They've let the whole thing go to pot.”
By the end of 1958, the number of large arms-centered industrial projects that were under construction had reached a staggering 1,639—yet only 28 had been completed and were producing anything at all. Many were never finished, because of a lack of basic materials like steel, cement, coal and electricity. The regime itself called these “greybeard projects.” Mao was the only ruler in history to produce a rust-bowl at the start of industrialization rather than at its end.
至一九五八年底，中国上马修建的大型企业高达一千六百三十九座，然而，只有二十八座建成投产。多数成了“胡子工程”，半途而废的比比皆是。被浪费掉的设备不少是花巨资从苏联买来的，因为没有基础设施而闲置一旁，任其生锈报废。
All this was destructive to Mao's own dreams. The breakneck speed he imposed sabotaged quality and created a long-term problem that was to plague arms production throughout his reign. China ended up with planes that could not fly, tanks that would not go in a straight line (on one occasion a tank swerved round and charged at watching VIPs), and ships that were almost a greater hazard to those who sailed in them than to China's enemies. When Mao decided to give Ho Chi Minh a helicopter, the manufacturers were so scared it might crash that they detained it at the border.
投产的设备像人一样没日没夜地用，不得片刻休息。重大事故不断，几个月内最少有三万多工人死于严重工伤。鼓起勇气提意见的专家被当作“白旗”拔掉，毛号召人们唾弃他们的知识，说：“对于资产阶级教授们的学问，应以狗屁视之，等于乌有，鄙视，藐视，蔑视”。重金聘来的苏联专家告诫中方要照章办事，但毛鼓励干部“破除迷信”，不要当“贾桂(即奴才)”。一九五九年六月，苏联副总理、冶金专家扎施亚科(A1eksandr Zasyadk。)访华回去后，向赫鲁晓夫汇报：“他们简直把我们的东西都躇蹋了。”就连那位非常亲华的总顾问阿尔希波夫说话也没用。他对我们说：“我请周恩来和陈云劝毛不要瞎指挥，但毛不听。他们告诉我：对不起，毛主席不同意苏联方面的意见。”
毛不惜一切代价的贪多求快，反而使他的军事大国梦更加遥远。生产出来的飞机、坦克、军舰一直受到质量问题的困扰。毛要送给胡志明一架直升飞机，飞机倒是运到边界了，但工厂不敢送出手，怕胡伯伯坐上去机毁人亡。
The four-year Leap was a monumental waste of both natural resources and human effort, unique in scale in the history of the world. One big difference between other wasteful and inefficient regimes and Mao's is that most predatory regimes have robbed their populations after relatively low-intensity labor, and less systematically, but Mao first worked everyone to the bone unrelentingly, then took everything—and then squandered it.
四年大跃進是一场对人力、物力不可估量的浪费，在世界历史上独一无二。毛式浪费与别的浪费资源、效率低下的国家不一样，没有任何人像他那样先强迫本国人民拚命干活到筋疲力尽，再把他们辛劳的结晶无度地挥霍掉。
Mao demanded a fever pitch of work, using non-stop “emulation” drives to make people vie with each other. Undernourished and exhausted men, women and children were made to move soil at the double, often having to run while carrying extremely heavy loads, and in all weathers, from blazing sun to freezing cold. They had to trot for kilometers along mountain paths carrying water for the fields, from dawn till dusk. They had to stay up all night to keep the useless “backyard furnaces” going. Mao called this way of working “Communist spirit.” In one of his many bits of theater, on 6 November 1958 he first asserted that peasants refused to take breaks (“even if you want them to rest, they won't”), and then played magnanimous and codified his optimal day: “Change from 1 January next year: guarantee 8 hours sleep, 4 hours eating and breaks, 2 hours studies [i.e., indoctrination] … 8–4–2–10,” with the “10” referring to the hours of work. In the same generous tone, he bestowed a few days off: two a month, and five for women (up from the three he had originally contemplated).
大跃進时，人们真是累到了极点。毛说：“不休息，这是共产主义精神。”他不断要大家互相“竞赛”、“挑战”。只见水利工地上，肚子里空空如也的男女老少一天十多个小时，或挑着一百来斤的担子奔跑，或挣扎着飞快地挖土。山路上挑水浇庄稼的人们也在小跑。守着土高炉的人就更不用说了，高炉虽是废物，可是不能停火，人们得昼夜往里填东填西，往外刨这刨那，常见有人累昏在地。
In fact, these tiny concessions resulted in part from reports of epidemics, which Mao took seriously, not least because they affected the workforce. One account that startled Mao involved a typhoid epidemic near Peking. He called for “greatly reducing diseases” so that people “can go labouring every day.”
饿着肚子不得休息地干活导致恶性传染病蔓延。离北京不远的河北邯郸地区，伤寒波及到二十一个县市。毛指示：“把各种疫病大大消灭”， 他要的是确保“出动率达到百分之九十以上”。
IN SUMMER 1958 Mao pitchforked the entire rural population into new and larger units called “People's Communes.” The aim was to make slave-driving more efficient. He himself said that by concentrating the peasants into fewer units—26,000-plus in the whole of China—“it's easier to control.” The first commune, “Chayashan Sputnik,” was set up in his model province, Henan. Its charter, which Mao edited, and touted as “a great treasure,” laid down that every aspect of its members' lives was to be controlled by the commune. All the 9,369 households had to “hand over entirely their private plots … their houses, animals and trees.” They had to live in dormitories, “in accordance with the principles of benefiting production and control”; and the charter actually stipulated that their homes were to be “dismantled” “if the commune needs the bricks, tiles or timber.” Every peasant's life must revolve around “labour.” All members were to be treated as though in the army, with a three-tier regimentation system: commune, brigade, production team (usually a village). Peasants were allowed negligible amounts of cash. The communes were de facto camps for slave-laborers.
一九五八年夏天，中国实行农村人民公社，把全国几亿农民集中在两万六千多个公社中。毛说公社的好处是：“大，好管”，“便于管理”。第一个公社，山查岈山卫星人民公社，就是在他的模范省河南搞起来的。经过毛修改、被他称为“宝贝”的公社章程，规定社员的生活全部围绕着一个中心：劳动。九千三百六十九户社员得“交出全部自留地，并且将私有的房基、牲畜、林木等生产资料转为全社公有”。他们得“根据有利生产和便于领导的原则”集中居住。“社员原有住宅的砖瓦木料，由公社根据需要逐步拆用。”他们必须“积极参加劳动”，“服从指挥调动”。人民公社实质上就是一个个大劳动营，人民公社制就是农奴制，五亿五千万中国农民成了农奴。
Mao even toyed with getting rid of people's names and replacing them with numbers. In Henan and other model areas, people worked in the fields with a number sewn on their backs. Mao's aim was to dehumanize China's 550 million peasants and turn them into the human equivalent of draft animals.
毛甚至设想过取消他们的姓名，而代之以号码。这一设想在河南等地试行过，地里劳动的人们，背上缝着大号码。毛的意思是抹掉他们“人”的象征，把他们变成一群埋头苦干的人面牲畜。
As befitted the labor-camp culture, inmates had to eat in canteens. Peasants were not only banned from eating at home, their woks and stoves were smashed. Total control over food gave the state a terrifying weapon, and withholding food became a commonplace form of “light” punishment, which grassroots officials could deploy against anyone they felt like.
社员只能在公共食堂吃饭。在家开伙不但不允许，连锅、灶都被砸了。不出工就没有饭吃。“扣饭”成了常见的惩罚，基层干部不高兴谁了，就叫谁挨饿。
As the canteens were sometimes hours' walk away from where people lived or worked, many tended to move to the site of the canteen. There, men, women, children and old people lived like animals, crammed into whatever space was available, with no privacy or family life. This also hugely increased the incidence of disease. Meanwhile, many of their own homes, which were often made of mud and bamboo, collapsed from neglect, in addition to all those torn down to make fertilizer, or to feed the backyard furnaces as fuel. When Liu Shao-chi inspected one area near his home village in spring 1961, of the previous 1,415 abodes, only 621 decrepit huts remained.
为了吃上饭，无奈的农民往往搬到食堂去住，男女老少挤在一处，隐私当然是没有的，家庭生活也无从谈起。各自的房屋因无人照料，在风吹雨打中坍去。刘少奇一九六一年春返乡视察的记录上，有一个天华大队，公社化前有一千四百一十五间房屋，现在几经横祸，只剩下破烂不堪的六百二十一间。
Mao's claim about there being “too much food” contributed in another way to increasing the peasants' misery. When the canteens were first set up, many cadres allowed the hungry peasants to fill their stomachs. This spree only lasted a couple of months, but it hastened the onset of famine—and wholesale deaths—in many areas before the end of 1958. Three years later, Mao reluctantly agreed to abandon canteens. Yet closing down the canteens, though hugely popular in itself, was almost as painful as their opening had been, as the many peasants who had gone to live where the canteens were located now had no home to return to. Even when their dwellings had survived, their stoves and their woks had not.
公共食堂初建时，正是毛泽东宣布中国粮食太多时，基层干部于是放手让农民敞开肚子吃。这样的吃法只持续了一两个月。至今相当多的人仍以为敞开肚子吃是大饥荒的原因，其实它只是让大饥荒来得更早更掹，一九五八年尚未过完就已经有大批人饿死。三年后，毛满心不情愿地同意解散食堂时，农民欢喜之余，却发愁无锅无灶，有的无家可归。
UNDERNOURISHMENT and overwork quickly reduced tens of millions of peasants to a state where they were simply too enfeebled to work. When he found out that one county was doling out food to those too ill to work, Mao's response was: “This won't do. Give them this amount and they don't work. Best halve the basic ration, so if they're hungry they have to try harder.”
饿得虚弱无力的农民还得干沉重的体力劳动。不干不行，有干部监督，用安徽凤阳一个副大队长的话说：“群众是奴隶，不打骂不扣饭就不行。”基层干部的穷凶极恶往往是不得已，他们不这样做就会失掉监工头的特权，自己和全家就会沦入“奴隶” 的境地。
The people who drove the peasants on were the commune cadres, who were Party men. These were the resident slave-drivers. Knowing that if they failed to do their job, they and their families would swiftly join the ranks of the starving, many adopted the attitude articulated by one man: people were “slaves who have to be beaten, abused, or have their food suspended to get them to work.”
这些干部也是狱卒，把农民死死关在他们的村子里。中国传统上老百姓遇到天灾人祸还可以有“逃荒”一条生路，毛政权把这叫作“盲目外流”而一再严禁，有农民这样痛诉：“日本鬼子来，我们还可以跑，今年(一九六0年)我们哪都跑不掉，活活在家管死了。我家六口人，死掉四口人。”
These cadres doubled as jailers, keeping the peasants penned inside their villages. On 19 August 1958, Mao clamped down even further on anyone moving without authorization, what he called “people roaming around uncontrolled.” The traditional possibility of escaping a famine by fleeing to a place where there was food, which had long been made illegal, was now blocked off. One peasant described the situation as worse than under the Japanese occupation: “Even when the Japanese came,” he said, “we could run away. This year [1960] … we are simply shut in to die at home. My family had six members and four have died …”
The cadres' other job was to stop peasants “stealing” their own harvest. Horrific punishments were widespread: some people were buried alive, others strangled with ropes, others had their noses cut off. In one village, four terrorized young children were saved from being buried alive for taking some food only when the earth was at their waists, after desperate pleas from their parents. In another village, a child had four fingers chopped off for trying to steal a scrap of unripe food; in another, two children who tried to steal food had wires run through their ears, and were then hung up by the wire from a wall. Brutality of this kind crops up in virtually every account of this period, nationwide.
由于饥饿，农民不得不“偷”自己辛勤种植的粮食，特别是还不懂事的孩子。基层干部的一个主要任务是抓偷。八十年代的调查报告《乡村三十年》里有这样一些记录：乔山大队总支书记、大队长“一天就活埋四个小孩，埋达腰深才被家人苦苦哀求扒出来。有的小孩扒出来后，拉了一裤子屎，有的回家吓得生了病”。段桥生产队长“用绳勒社员杨四喜小孩的脖子，放下后已断气(后被救)”。殷涧公社赵窑生产队长，逮住一个偷青的小孩，用刀砸劈了小孩的四个手指”。“三小队支书指使亲信，将社员吴开聪的两个小孩(偷青)用铁丝把两人的耳朵串在一起，挂在墙上的钉子上，并取笑的对孩子说：“你们俩打个电话吧”！”
AS PART OF his Leap, in 1958 Mao also tried to turn the cities into slave-labor camps by organizing urban communes. His plan was to abolish wages and put the whole society on a non-cash barracks system. This did not work out, as the slave system could not be made to fit onto modern cities, where life had more complex dimensions.
大跃進时，毛想把“人民公社”引進城市。但相对复杂的城市不容易变成农村那样的劳动营，这个尝试最终不了了之。毛对城市的方针是：“生产第一，生活第二。” 城市在他眼里应该是纯工业生产基地。站在天安门城楼上，毛看着那时宫殿、庙宇和宝塔林立的北京城，对北京市长说：“将来从这里望过去，要看到处处都是烟囱！”
But this failure did not mean that Mao left the cities unravaged. His guideline for them was “Production first, Life takes second place.” His ideal city was a purely industrial center. Standing on Tiananmen Gate and looking out over the gorgeous palaces and temples and pagodas which in those days decorated Peking's skyline, he told the mayor: “In the future, I want to look around and see chimneys everywhere!”
Worse, Mao wanted to destroy existing cities on a massive scale and build industrial centers on the ruins. In 1958 the regime did a survey of historic monuments in Peking. It listed 8,000—and decided to keep seventy-eight. Everyone who heard of the scheme, from the mayor down, pleaded against this level of destruction. Eventually, the order was not carried out so drastically—for a while. But at Mao's insistence, the centuries-old city walls and gates were mostly razed to the ground, and the earth used to fill in a beautiful lake in the city. “I am delighted that city walls in Nanjing, Jinan, and so on, are [also] torn down,” Mao said. He was fond of mocking cultural figures who shed tears of anguish at such senseless destruction, and intellectuals were deliberately made to work on the wrecking crews. Many of the visible signs of Chinese civilization disappeared forever from the face of the earth.
Time and again, Mao expressed his loathing for Chinese architecture, while praising European and Japanese buildings, which he saw as representing the achievements of militaristic states. “I can't stand the houses in Peking and Kaifeng [old capitals]. I much prefer the ones in Qingdao and Changchun,” he remarked to his inner circle in January 1958. Qingdao was a former German colony, while Changchun had been built by the Japanese as the capital for the puppet state of Manchukuo. Mao repeatedly called these two cities “the best.”
Mao permitted few things with a Chinese character to be built. In the early years of his rule, some buildings in old Chinese style had been put up, but these were soon denounced for their traditional design. When new edifices were put up to mark the tenth anniversary of the regime in 1959, they were built in the Soviet style. They were actually the only Mao-era buildings with even a nod to aesthetics. The rest were factories and utilitarian, gray concrete matchbox blocks.
The best-known of the new buildings was the Great Hall of the People, in central Peking. This was where Mao intended to hold large prestigious meetings, and he specifically ordered the auditorium to be designed to hold as many as 10,000 people. The Great Hall itself, 171,800 square meters in area, was erected on one side of Tiananmen Square in front of the old imperial palace, the Forbidden City. Determined to outdo other totalitarian rulers in gigantism, Mao gave orders to make the Square into “the biggest square in the world, capable of holding a rally of one million people.” What had been a square of 11 hectares, with great character, was quadrupled in size, destroying large swaths of the old city. The result was a vast concrete space devoid of human warmth, the dehumanized heart of Mao's regime.
PEOPLE STARVED in the cities too, although death tolls were much lower than in the countryside. Nonetheless, most urban dwellers could barely survive on the rations they got. “Life seemed to proceed in slow motion,” a Polish witness observed in Peking. “Rickshaw drivers barely able to pedal … tens of thousands of comatose cyclists … dejection stared out of the eyes of passersby.” The urban meat ration declined annually from 5.1 kg per person in 1957 to an all-time low of just over 1.5 kg in 1960. People were told to eat “food substitutes.” One was a green roe-like substance called chlorella, which grew in urine and contained some protein. After Chou En-lai tasted and approved this disgusting stuff, it soon provided a high proportion of the urban population's protein.
城里人靠食物定量苟延残喘，也有不少人饿死。当时在北京的波兰学生罗文斯基(Jan Rowinski)描述说：“生活的图景彷佛是慢动作，三轮车夫每踏一脚都用尽全力，骑自行车的人好像怎么也蹬不动，路人眼里透着无神无助。”城里人的肉食定量一九五七年一人一年还有五点一公斤，到一九六0年降到只有一点五公斤。政府要人们吃“代食品”，其中一种是像鱼籽似的含有蛋白质的小球藻，养在人尿中，吃起来非常恶心。周恩来带头品尝了这“食物”后，全国城市居民的蛋白质来源就指望它了。
This famine, which was nationwide, started in 1958 and lasted through 1961, peaking in 1960. That year, the regime's own statistics recorded, average daily calorie intake fell to 1,534.8. According to a major apologist for the regime, Han Suyin, urban housewives were getting a maximum 1,200 calories a day in 1960. At Auschwitz, slave-laborers got between 1,300 and 1,700 calories per day. They were worked about eleven hours a day, and most who did not find extra food died within several months.
波及全国的大饥荒自一九五八年起，持续至一九六一年，以一九六0年为最烈。这一年，根据中共自己的统计数字，人均热卡吸收量仅达一千五百三十四点八。城市家庭妇女的热卡量，据一向为中共代言的作家韩素音说，最高不过一千二百。而在臭名昭着的纳粹集中营奥斯威辛 (Auschwitz)，苦役犯的每日热卡量还有一千三百到一千七百。
During the famine, some resorted to cannibalism. One post-Mao study (promptly suppressed), of Fengyang county in Anhui province, recorded sixty-three cases of cannibalism in the spring of 1960 alone, including that of a couple who strangled and ate their eight-year-old son. And Fengyang was probably not the worst. In one county in Gansu where one-third of the population died, cannibalism was rife. One village cadre, whose wife, sister and children all died then, later told journalists: “So many people in the village have eaten human flesh … See those people squatting outside the commune office sunning themselves? Some of them ate human flesh … People were just driven crazy by hunger.”
为了活命，有被逼得吃人肉的。《乡村三十年》记载：安徽省凤阳县仅一九六0年春就“出现了人吃人的残酷事件六十三起”， 其中一对夫妇，将亲生的八岁男孩小青勒死煮着吃了”。凤阳或许还不算最坏的，在大饥荒中饿死三分之一人口的甘肃省通渭县，吃人相当普遍。一个公社书记后来对来访的记者说：“我家那个村里一个不到三十岁的妇女把自己女儿的肉煮着吃了。她男人从新强回来找女儿，村里人都替她打掩护，瞒过去了，因为村里吃过人肉的不少。那时人们饿急了，饿疯了，提着篮子出去，看看倒在路边的死尸上还有可吃的肉，就割回家去。你们去看看公社门外蹲在那里晒太阳的人，他们中就有一些是吃过人肉的。
While all this was happening, there was plenty of food in state granaries, which were guarded by the army. Some food was simply allowed to rot. A Polish student saw fruit “rotting by the ton” in southeast China in summer–autumn 1959. But the order from above was: “Absolutely no opening the granary door even if people are dying of starvation” (e-si bu-kai-cang).
在所有这一切发生的同时，中国的仓库里囤满了等待出口的粮食和其他食品，由军队或民兵把守。波兰学生罗文斯基亲眼看见“水果成吨的烂掉”。可是上面有规定：“饿死不开仓。”*
* 粮食还被大量用来提炼高纯度的酒精，作核工程的燃料。一九五八年九月八日，毛宣布中国粮食太多吃不完后，在最高国务会上说要给粮食“找工业方面的出路，例如，搞酒精作燃料”。光是我们所知的导弹试验，每一枚消耗一千万公斤粮食。
CLOSE TO 38 million people died of starvation and overwork in the Great Leap Forward and the famine, which lasted four years.*
为时四年的大跃進使大约三千八百万中国人饿死、累死。
这个数字是这样算出来的。根据一九九五年出版的，由中国人口学家杨子慧等编着的《中国历代人口统计资料》， 一九五八到一九六一年中国人口死亡率分别为：百分之一点二，百分之一点四五，百分之四点三四，百分之二点八三。在它们前后三年的死亡率平均百分之一点零三(一九五七：百分之一点零八，一九六二：百分之一，一九六三：百分之一)。比平均死亡率高出的就是非正常死亡率。用非正常死亡率去除这四年的中国人口，得出非正常死亡人数共三千七百六十七万。
The figure is confirmed by Mao's No. 2, Liu Shao-chi himself. Even before the famine had ended, he told Soviet ambassador Stepan Chervonenko that 30 million had already died.
这个数字被刘少奇证实：他在大饥荒中的一九六一年初告诉苏联大使契尔沃年科(Stepan Chervonenko)，已经有三千万人非正常死亡。
This was the greatest famine of the twentieth century—and of all recorded human history. Mao knowingly starved and worked these tens of millions of people to death. During the two critical years 1958–59, grain exports alone, almost exactly 7 million tons, would have provided the equivalent of over 840 calories per day for 38 million people—the difference between life and death. And this was only grain; it does not include the meat, cooking oil, eggs and other foodstuffs that were exported in very large quantities. Had this food not been exported (and instead distributed according to humane criteria), very probably not a single person in China would have had to die of hunger.
这是二十世纪最大的饥荒，也是人类有史以来最大的饥荒。而这完全是人为的，是蓄意的。中国的粮食出口仅一九五八、一九五九两年就高达七百万吨，可以为三千八百万人每天提供八百四十热卡。这还不包括肉类、食油、蛋品等大量的出口。如果没有出口，中国人一个人也不会饿死。
Mao had actually allowed for many more deaths. Although slaughter was not his purpose with the Leap, he was more than ready for myriad deaths to result, and had hinted to his top echelon that they should not be too shocked if they happened. At the May 1958 congress that kicked off the Leap, he told his audience they should not only not fear, but should actively welcome, people dying as a result of their Party's policy. “Wouldn't it be disastrous if Confucius were still alive today?” he said. The Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu, he said, “was right to lounge and sing when his wife died. There should be celebration rallies when people die.” Death, said Mao, “is indeed to be rejoiced over … We believe in dialectics, and so we can't not be in favor of death.”
大跃進一开头，毛就告诫中共高层做好大批死人的思想准备。在为大跃進揭幕的中共“八大”二次会议上，他大谈死亡是“白喜事”：“是喜事，确实是喜事。你们设想，如果孔夫子还在，也在怀仁堂开会，他二千多岁了，就很不妙。讲辩证法，又不赞成死亡，是形而上学。”“[庄子死了妻子以后]鼓盆而歌是正确的”，“人死应开庆祝会”。
This airy yet ghoulish “philosophy” was relayed down to grassroots officials. In Fengyang county in Anhui, when one cadre was shown the corpses of people who had died from starvation and overwork, he repeated almost word for word what Mao had said: “If people don't die, the earth won't be able to hold them! People live and people die. Who doesn't die?” Even wearing mourning was forbidden; even shedding tears—since Mao said that death should be celebrated.
乍一听来，毛好像是信口开河讲哲理。但这代表他的政策。安徽一个公社党委书记被带去看饿死的人堆时，几乎是在重复毛的话：“人要不死，天底下还装不下呢！……人有生就有死，那个人保就哪天不死！”有些地区规定死人后“不准哭”，“不准带孝”。
Mao saw practical advantage in massive deaths. “Deaths have benefits,” he told the top echelon on 9 December 1958. “They can fertilise the ground.” Peasants were therefore ordered to plant crops over burial plots, which caused intense anguish.
毛甚至还大讲死人的实用价值。一九五八年十二月九日，他对八届六中全会说：“人要不灭亡那不得了。灭亡有好处，可以做肥料。”据《乡村三十年》记载，有地方人死了埋在田里，上面种上庄稼。
We can now say with assurance how many people Mao was ready to dispense with. When he was in Moscow in 1957, he had said: “We are prepared to sacrifice 300 million Chinese for the victory of the world revolution.” That was about half the population of China then. Indeed, Mao told the Party congress on 17 May 1958: “Don't make a fuss about a world war. At most, people die … Half the population wiped out—this happened quite a few times in Chinese history … It's best if half the population is left, next best one-third …”
毛多次说过为了他的目标，他准备以无数中国人的生命作代价。一九五七年，他在莫斯科对苏联领导人说：“为了世界革命的胜利，我们准备牺牲三亿中国人。” 在“八大”二次会议上，他说：“人口消灭一半在中国历史上有过好几次。”他从汉武帝说到宋朝，都是几千万几千万地死人。“原子仗现在没有经验，不知要死多少，最好剩一半，次好剩三分之一”。
Nor was Mao just thinking about a war situation. On 21 November 1958, talking to his inner circle about the labor-intensive projects like waterworks and making “steel,” and tacitly, almost casually, assuming a context where peasants had too little to eat and were being worked to exhaustion, Mao said: “Working like this, with all these projects, half of China may well have to die. If not half, one-third, or one-tenth—50 million—die.” Aware that these remarks might sound too shocking, he tried to shirk his own responsibility. “Fifty million deaths,” he went on, “I could be fired, and I might even lose my head … but if you insist, I'll just have to let you do it, and you can't blame me when people die.”
毛知道他搞大跃進，中国会死多少人。一九五八年十一月二十一日，毛对中共高层讲：除了“大办水利”以外，“还要各种各样的任务，钢铁、铜、铝、煤碳、运输、加工工业、化学工业，需要人很多，这样一来，我看搞起来，中国非死一半人不可，不死一半也要死三分之一或者十分之一，死五千万人。”毛明白这样说话太露骨了，犹抱琵琶半遮面地说：“死五千万人你们的职不撤，至少我的职要撤，头也成问题。” 但他没有下令不干，反而示意要下面的人干，把责任推给他们：“你们议一下，你们一定要搞，我也没办法，但死了人不能杀我的头。”
*North Korea's Kim Il Sung turned out to be less stupid than Mao on this issue. Mao had pressed him to emulate China's anti-sparrow campaign. To humor Mao, Kim drafted a “3-Year Plan for Punishing Sparrows,” but then did nothing while he watched to see how Mao's campaign turned out.
*This figure is based on the following calculation. Chinese demographers have concluded that death rates in the four years 1958–61 were 1.20 percent, 1.45 percent, 4.34 percent and 2.83 percent, respectively. The average death rate in the three years immediately before and after the famine was 1.03 percent (1957: 1.08 percent; 1962: 1 percent; and 1963:1 percent). The death rates over and above this average could only have been caused by starvation and overwork during the famine. The “extra” death figure comes to 37.67 million, based on population figures of 646.53, 659.94, 666.71, and 651.71 million for 1957, 1958, 1959 and 1960. The official statistics published in 1983 are recognized as partly defective, because local policemen understated the number of deaths in the years 1959–61 after some were purged for “over-reporting deaths.”