Hungry Ghosts Mao's Secret Famine Author:Jasper Becker Ten years ago American demographers uncovered evidence of the greatest political crime in history. Using newly released population statistics, they calculated that at least 30 million people had starved to death in China between 1958 and 1962." "This is the first book to unravel the story behind the statistics. Based on hundreds of int... more »erviews and unpublished documents it describes how Mao Zedong created a man-made famine throughout China." "His Great Leap Forward was the greatest example of Utopian engineering ever attempted. Mao tried to abolish money and property and promised that his people's communes would create the first Communist paradise on earth. Instead, even in the richest regions peasants died in their millions while the rest became gaunt skeletons reduced to eating grass and bark." "This man-made disaster brought China to the brink of civil war. The author examines in detail what happened in the worst-affected provinces, including Tibet which martial law was imposed. He goes on to explain how the darkest secret of Mao's rule was kept hidden and why evidence of what happened was disbelieved for so long." "More people died in this catastrophe than in the Second World War or in the concentration camps of Hitler or Stalin. The secret famine is an essential key to understanding why Mao later tried to destroy the Communist Party apparatus in the Cultural Revolution.« less