My current understanding –
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It was a terrible famine, no denying that, one of the worst in human history.
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It wasn't the first famine in China, in fact it was the last, so a positive spin would be to say it put an end to Chinese famines. Chinese famines happened under Sun Yat-Sen and the Qing Dynasty too. (Though this was was that bit worse)
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Mao's mismanagement should probably be blamed. Liu Shaoqi said the causes were 30% natural factors, 70% mismanagement
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Collectivisation doesn't seem to have been the problem. Collectivisation in China was comparatively smooth, not like the USSR and elsewhere.
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A bigger problem was bad agronomy.
Are these takes mistaken? Should I correct or expand my understanding?
note that the CPC responded to the famine with an elegant solution that also addressed urban unemployment— sending urban dwellers to the countryside to work as peasant farmers
and in 1961 the CPC reversed its policy of decentralized fiscal planning