Jasper Becker, "False Science, False Promises" and "How Many Died?" Selections from Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine

In the media age, when images and information can be dispersed rapidly around the globe, all governments are concerned with exercising some control over how they are represented to their citizens and to the rest of the world. This concern is only heightened during times of war, when the survival of a nation may partially rest on how well the government regulates the flow of images and information about itself and its enemies. In his award winning book, Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine, Jasper Becker details Mao's efforts to control scientific research in China and the disastrous consequences this had for China and its people.

Becker focuses on the unreported famine that followed the Great Leap Forward, Mao's ambitious plan to revolutionize farming and industry in China during the late 1950s. News of the famine did not reach the West until the 1980s, when demographers working with population statistics that had been released at the beginning of China's open-door policy began to piece together the magnitude of this human catastrophe. As Becker describes it in the foreword to Hungry Ghosts, "[The demographers'] conclusion was startling: at least 30 million people had starved to death, far more than anyone, including the most militant critics of the Chinese Communist Party, had ever imagined. Why, and how, did such a cataclysm take place? Who was to blame? How was it kept secret for so long? And what was life like in the countryside? How did people behave and how did they survive?"

Jasper Becker is a British journalist who has served as the Asian Affairs Analyst for the BBC World Service and for the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. He is a contributing writer for The Guardian, The Spectator, and The Economist. Becker presently lives in Beijing and is the bureau chief for the South China Morning Post. During the past two decades he has reported on the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the colossal Three Gorges Dam project, the rise of Falun Gong, and China's vexed relations with Tibet.

Becker, Jasper. "False Science, False Promises" and "How Many Died?" Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine. (The Free Press, 1996), 58-82;266-274, + notes.
Biographical information drawn from the Henry Holt and Company Web Site and the Pioom Award Web Site.

Links to Explore:

Sowing the Seeds of Famine: an article by Jasper Becker that serves as a good companion to Hungry Ghosts, providing more information on Mao Zedong and "The Great Leap Forward."

A Poisoned Arrow: The Secret Report of the 10th Panchen Lama: an introduction to a key document that criticized Mao's policies during The Great Leap Forward. According to the authors who maintain this site, for the past thirty-five years, "the history of modern Tibet has revolved around" this officially suppressed document by the 10th Panchen Lama.

Zero Population Growth: a site dedicated to promoting zero population growth (ZPG), a movement which seeks to put an end to the exhaustion of the earth’s resources, promoting instead "an ethos of ecostasis."

Oxfam International: the home page for Oxfam, an international organization dedicated to addressing the structural causes of poverty and social injustice, which they seek to do by assisting in "the development of structures which directly benefit people facing the realities of poverty and injustice and which are accountable to them."

Questions for Learning:

• In Sowing the Seeds of Famine, Jasper Becker provides a synopsis of the overarching argument of Hungry Ghosts, where he set out to uncover the mystery of the famine caused by Mao Zedong and "The Great Leap Forward." Becker writes, "Even now China officially keeps silent about the 30 million or more who died. Today’s youth scarcely know of it." Clearly Becker aims to break this silence and force people to acknowledge a past that has been long hidden from view. What do you think he hopes to accomplish by bringing this catastrophe to light? Does knowledge of such events have a demonstrable influence on future actions?

• In A Poisoned Arrow: The Secret Report of the 10th Panchen Lama, the authors introduce us to what they say is the single most important document of the latter half of the twentieth century in Tibet. Indeed, to this day even to be associated with this document is to put one's life at risk, as the closing remarks about the need to suppress the identities of many who have helped bring the document to light. How can a document that was suppressed shortly after it was produced nearly forty years ago exercise such power today? What makes this document so threatening? Can the historical account provided by the authors on this site, many of whom have shrouded themselves from view, be trusted? And, if you doubt this account, where might you go to check on this version of events?

• In order to relieve poverty and hunger throughout the world, Zero Population Growth seeks to end the continual increase in the number of the Earth's inhabitants and to the exploitation of the natural resources that accompanies this increase. How do the creators of this site go about trying to enlist people to their cause? What approach do they take to get visitors to entertain the thought that individual decisions might have global consequences? How would you characterize their use of scientific evidence?

• Oxfam International is an organization committed to ending world hunger and poverty. After you've read through Oxfam's mission statement, how would you describe its approach to bringing about global changes in how food and funds are distributed? What motivates their interest in these projects? And what role would you say that science has to play in their efforts to realize their goals?

Questions for Connecting:

• Becker states that in order to turn China into a "land of abundance," Mao Zedong convinced himself "that science could make his dreams come true" and then set about implementing an eight-point plan that totally destroyed many of the crops in China. In "Playing God in the Garden," Michael Pollan states that "genetic engineering overthrows the old rules governing the relationship of nature and culture in a plant." How can a layperson determine if the powers attributed to science are being overstated? And what recourse does one have if one doubts the version of events that is being presented by those with greater political and/or economic power?

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