My father grew up in that era, he said a lot of people died, they didn’t have anything to eat and sometimes they ate wild grass, and got food poisoning and there’s no treatment, everyone was so malnourished, and he would immediately tell me that I can’t mention this to anyone in school.

Both my parents lived through this era, and both have consistently summed it up in one simple sentence: "everyone who survived knew at least one person who died."

I am so thankful my grandfather had the courage to abandon China and send his wife and my 13 year old dad and his little siblings on a ship to Taiwan, and then later join them. They left all their possessions behind and just had the clothes on their back. Because of their bravery, I am freer.

My grandparents grew up in this era. Grandmother is incredibly short because of it and some of her younger brothers have stomach issues for life because of it. Its as if the starvation never ended for them. Most of my family hordes food now in chest freezers and dry storage because it is now a habit developed out of starvation trauma. Let the younger generation learn from the old...

I was born in China, 2000, and from my experience growing up and hearing all kinds of stories about the great famine, I got a sense that everybody around me knew what happened, but nobody talked about it in public. Just like the Tiananmen Square Massacre, everybody knew it (and are quite open to private discussions, you will be AMAZED how much they actually know about the event), it was just that nobody talked about it openly.

Remember in a communist society, everyone is equal but some are more equal than others

my mom worked with a guy who grew up during the famine and the stories he told her left her in tears in the middle of work. he and his family resorted at times to eating straw, insects, and dirt, and his parents often went days with no food at all just so the kids could have whatever meagre scraps they could find. there was this one specific food (i can't remember which) that was often all they had to eat for months on end that he couldn't even stand the sight or smell of as an adult bc he was so traumatized. it was horrendous to even hear about, so i can't even begin to imagine what these people suffered.

American, mid-30s. I’ve never heard of this. It truly astounds me what we were and weren’t taught about history. My son once asked if the Hunger Games could actually happen. I said it probably already did. Well, minus the high-tech arena, here it is. Just horrific.

I attended a gathering at a friend of my GF's house a couple of years ago. The host, an American white guy around age 70 at one point was talking about how marvelous modern day China was and how wonderful the Communist revolution was. How the people of China were so lucky to have been brought into the modern world by Mao. I replied, sure, if you can overlook the 50 million who died in the famines. He gave me a dirty look and said nothing more.

The loss wasn't only in lives. It was also in Chinese culture. A great and ancient culture that has been mostly blown up or burned down.

I watched with tears in my eyes and horrified when realizing this terrible tragedy may happen again to humans under dictator’s oppression.

I was married to a Chinese born and bred woman for 10 years until 2020. She struggled to come to terms with the amount of people who died in the famine, and was in denial about the Tiananmen Square massacre, both of which are taboo subjects in her native country. The CCP closely regulates what is taught in schools and neither of those topics are permitted along with several other topics which paint the CCP in a bad light, it won't be long until no one from those times will still be alive to tell what really happened and then it will be completely forgotten about.

The world and younger generations should never forget their older generations who went through such horrific and horrendous days.

'A country that can't face up to its history has no future'. Well said. We are seeing it repeating itself, again, in 2022.

yeah both sides of my family suffered from this, dads side went to hong kong, mums side had to renounce all their assets and lay low to avoid prosecution. Basically lost all their land, business & wealth. Mums side managed to stow away some minor wealth comprising antiques, precious metals, paintings, all now remain in china. Some of the arts and antiques were later donated to museums in china. The great leap forward was a brutally simple extermination of the upper classes and class divide but also had far reaching consequences with erasure of chinese culture, literature, intellect, innovation & human development.

I cried towards the end, I cried for all those people and the horrors they endured the scale of which is difficult even to imagine. I cried knowing our species can be so incredibly cruel. I cried knowing the victims were never even officially recognized or given a proper memorial.

The world needs to hear this over and over again!

wow. this woman is what a true journalist is. i wish this could reach more people. thank you for this ill always regret not asking my grandpa for the full story of his experience in the USSR, WW2, german POW camp, and the gulag.

There I was, feeling sorry for myself, surfing KZfaq. Then I watched this documentary. I got over it.

This should be MANDATORY for every single American college student.

Just shows how a relatively small handful of people can destroy the lives of millions.

“Did you ever hear the Tragedy of the Great Leap Forward?” “No.” “It’s not a story the Chinese government would tell you.”

THANK YOU FOR SPREADING TRUTH! IGNORANT COLLEGE STUDENTS NEED TO WATCH THIS.

Seeing the poor children suffering makes me tear up

When even USSR thinks you are too extreme

I think this is where China's exotic cuisine culture came from. Being forced to eat anything from insects to dogs, cats, lizards, etc. for years, convinced many that anything is good to eat.

Taking teachers to a labour camp and labelling it a "re-education camp". They really don't realise the irony.

This was one of the best doc's I have seen in quite a while and this is a very necessary one.

fun fact: Mao Zedong had green teeth because every morning he used to wash his teeth with tea and then chew tea leaves. His personal doctor was worried he might get dental issues but Mao told him "Tigers never brush their teeth" 🤦🏻‍♂️

Met a guy who was a boy at the time of the famine, used to eat the plaster from the walls so he hunger pains wouldn’t keep him awake at night. The local village put guards on the small cemetery so people wouldn’t dig up the dead to eat them. First case of cannibalism he was aware of when a person from a neighboring village collapsed and died as he walked through the village - some people took his body that night and used it as food.

this should be required study in high school how terribly sad And many young people today want to try this again here in the U. S.

I've always been horrified when I've read something about the Great Leap Forward. However, seeing actual video footage makes it even worse to comprehend.

I’ve always called it the Great LIE forward. The saddest part is just how little he thought of the PEOPLE in his supposed Peoples movement. The comment made by the writer sticks with me “A country that cannot face its past has no future.”

Powerful documentary. Don't forget or excuse the mistakes of history.

Just cannot help getting teary and emotional again and again watching this ... Heavens, why so much suffering for Chinese people, my country, my race?! I'm so sad because I know it's all true - my own grandmother on my mother's side died of starvation then! following her husband who as the head of the village in the government hang himself when communist's "Chinese liberation army" came.

Thank you so much for this video. For making easy education and brining light to such a topic. Love the people who interviewed and the interviewers. Thank you for this video c:

My fiancé’s parents lived through that time, and she told me that they were still shaken up by what they’ve seen and experienced during the “Great Famine” until the day they died!

Xun was one of my lecturers at the Uni of Essex. I always remember how her eyes used to light up when someone engaged in the topic. She really gave off the impression of being a tremendously driven and competent scholar in this field. (She's also a notoriously strict marker, which goes to show how far her commitment to good academic practice goes - it often felt like my undergrad papers were being graded against an MA standard :P)

My parents lived in the city during those years, they still vividly remember the bizarre things they were told to do, beat drums and things so sparrows have no places to land or perch, give up any old metal objects so they can be melted to "make steel"; they still refer to that period "the three year of natural disaster"; my father side has large family with a single mother, with food ration coupons, grandmother would go hungry so the kids can use the coupons. My college friend's father was in very rural village in Fujian, things were much much worse for them during those years.

This is one of the best if not the best documentary this channel made. Sooooo good

People in America complain they are oppressed. They don't even know the meaning of the word

Let's not forget this doctrine was exported and implemented lock, stock and barrel to Cambodia 20 years later, with equally disasterous results.

One word of advice: if your authorities ever try to take away property rights, do everything you can to prevent it. Even if you are almost assured to die doing so. Because if they do, the result will be far worse than death.

Thank you for opening my eyes to such a tragedy.

I love the like "women were liberated from their maternal duties to work in the fields" nothing more liborating than toiling away for days on end for no pay.

Knowing all of this, those current western journalists who still to this day spout the Communist party line, deserve the harshest condemnation.

Patterns repeat… Thanks so much for spreading this content and awareness

"You will own nothing, and you will be happy."

Imagine asking your child to eat your heart when you die. I wept. There are fates far worse than death, indeed.

That term "indescribable madness" is the best description of this period. Before 2020 I could have never understood how this could happen, but I saw a small glimpse and its terrifying to think this is where you can end up because of a small group of megalomaniacs

27:00 Really sums up the mental state of the people that this guy’s calmly talking about witnessing a man starve to death; and, literally the next second, he’s laughing about eating leaves 😮.

How insane had things become, when they would go to lengths to make it seem like 90K people died of hunger in an area rather than the actual 120K? How would 'just' 90K be acceptable?

It’s really heartbreaking that the people of China especially the younger generations are completely left in the dark about this, while mao is everywhere even on their currency.

Heartbreaking but critical to understand. Thanks to everyone who produced this doc!

A very good well documented well researched story .

Heartbreaking but critical to understand. Thanks to everyone who produced this doc!. Powerful documentary. Don't forget or excuse the mistakes of history..

there a saying in china：内斗内行 外斗外行 （experts in fighting among themselves, amateurs in fighting against outsiders）. Chinese killed more of their own than any other invaders or enemies, for a reason.

He was extremely wicked& anyone that followed his command.What a Damn crying shame.

One father in Hunan killed and ate his son during the famine, when asked why he did it, he had a simple reply “Mercy” Just puts into perspective the horror

The Great Reset is sounding more and more like the Great Leap Forward the more i learn of it.

This documentary needs to be seen,heard and understood by anyone supporting communism ....

I had a coworker who was a PhD in chemistry who had to leave because intellectuals were being murdered in China . He had 2 children and his wife elected to stay in China .

history will always repeat itself...because the people who repeat it believe that "this time we will do better than those of the past"

It’s worth mentioning that the ideas used for collectivization of agriculture were based on Trofim Lysenko’s “Lysenkoism”, which posited that plants would grow better in a communistic type set up, all together in bunches, to support eachother. All the traditional farmers had already been killed, and lysenokism lead to massive starvation there as well.

most of my family grew up in this era. they told me I was lucky not to grow up in the "starving time" and had to steal or eat bark, but mao was still a good leader. this family of mine contradicts itself on so many levels considering my deceased grandfather was a principal and one of his sons in laws was a red guard in a system designed to reward beating up his colleagues. it was a bizarre time for me to try to process how china screwed them so badly in the head

This is surprisingly, shockingly accurate. Often documentaries embellish or misconstrue- this didn’t.

The hunger continued in rural area til 1980s ( Not as severe as those 3 years but impressive for those who lived through). It was just covered by the bigger case of cultural revolution. Farmers suffer the most. Same story repeats...

This documentary was able to captivate my attention the whole way through

Terrifying, how one psychopath can mobolize the mobs ( mostly proud youths), and even turn them to hate their own parents, teachers, and literally devour one another. The price of killing sparrows

I feel sick seeing so much injustice!

Excellent documentary

Imagine being responsible for 45 million deaths and still sleeping well at night.

"Dare to think" is highly ironic, given the opposition of the party to anyone thinking.

A lot of respect for Timeline putting this out today. People need to know the history and truth about tyranny, communism, & socialism.

"Constipation from eating mud to feed the hunger" is the most hardcore demise I've ever heard. 😮 General Mao, Y U-no give them food?

The Great Leap Forward was a catastrophe followed by another catastrophe a few years later, the Cultural Revolution. Mao really knew how impose economic hardship and turmoil.

"How do we fix our food shortage?" "Simple. We outlaw hunger."

An unbiased view from a Hong Kong citizen! Many mainland Chinese have a very different view of their history.

Thanks!

Wow, Did Netflix grow a backbone? People need to hear this.

My grandfather lived through that era. He used to tell us stories about that time, in the disappointment with the government, how his family had little to eat and had to eat dead fishes he can found in the village river just so that the family could survive. On top of that, he needed to worry about getting falsely accused by the red guard, even though he was just a minor account for the village official but not a party member. Although he still supports the government, he condemns the great leap forward movement, the red guard, especially the so-called "Gang of Four."

My grandma is a survivor of great leap forward, in her village, there are totally 72 people died of farmine.

"Mao showed us a very rare case in which cruelty, selfishness, hypocrisy and shamelessness were all found in the same person. Although he always tried to cover his actions with the most beautiful words, I don’t think he ever had any moral principles. Never, ever, will I forgive Mao for the crimes he committed against the Chinese nation." ―Ding Xueliang, professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

About 20 years ago when I was in college I was working in a hospital dishroom washing thousands of dishes a couple times a day. There was a very old hunchback Chinese lady that worked back there with me and every shift I'd see her taking the leftover food from the dirty plates and eating it right off the conveyor belt despite the fact that you could easily get free food from the kitchen. No one knew she could speak english except me, I was the only person she'd ever speak to so I asked her why she did that and she said because didn't want to waste the food and begged me not to tell on her. It always made me wonder what kind of craziness she went through in her life that eating half eaten food from a hospital patient's plate with bloody gauze and much more nastiness on the plates didn't bother her one bit, just watching it made me want to gag and I always pleaded with her to stop which she never did.

We should all learn the lesson of unquestioned compliance and how dangerous it is to our society.

I was also in the Pol Pot EuroChinese communist facilities for 6 months and my parents and Me siblings suffered exchanging our gold for food and lastly, we returned to Vietnam by the Soviet Vietnamese small Viking ship. Thank God, we survived to be in The USA.

Have we really learned from History or are we destined to repeat it? When lessons like this haven't been passed down I fear that we are.

You know you're in a worrysome time when you're A: surprised anyone would make this video at this time and B: even more surprised KZfaq hasn't taken this down yet.

The history teaches us that nobody learns its lessons. Unfortunately

Great journalism and photograhy . The truth shall set you free~ Should be required in high schools and colleges. Love and Prayers ♡♡♡

I’m an American in my 40s. I knew things were bad but this is unimaginable. How do these people with no regard for human life achieve power over and over?

I think this shows how the modern Chinese mindset developed more than any other documentary.

Mao's rise, the forming of the Communist Party, the great leap forward, and the culture revolution can be made into a long documentary series. This is an excellent documentary and one very accurate one. All of it reminds me what our parents and grandma told us, and news we read. I am very impressed with the filmed footages at the time. Of course we don't get to see the darkest human suffering and deaths. I gather from the clothing this documentary was made around 5 to 10 years ago. Definitely before the shut down of free speech in Hong Kong.,

An excellent documentary although I am left angry and disgusted by Mao Tse-Tung and the painstaking horrors people went through. Why do you need a war when you have a narcissistic maniac in power. It is too bad this evil man died so late in the game. One life for 40 million.

The Chinese as a people have suffered too much, I hope that someday they can have freedom and liberty.

This is so eye opening. I’ve never heard this story. Some of us get so caught up in such trivial matters we’re ignorant of the realities of this world.

Let me get this straight. One man had absolute power over a country of 650 million people. He made dissidence a crime punishable by death. He took away all individual rights, including private property, so that "the individual was no more than a cog in a great machine". What could POSSIBLY go wrong?

My friend’s family lived through that famine and ate cakes made of mud to fill their bellies. They were severely constipated from the mud that they had to pick help each other pass the mud by picking it out. He was born after the famine in 1966.

My son, niece and nephew -all preteens- recently complained about being hungry. I showed them some of this excellent documentary. Ive received no more complaints. I remember telling my great grandmother who grew up in the great depression, i was hungry between meals. After she told me that her and her sisters would snack on crayons and candle wax to curb their hunger I understood that I have never really been hungry. Most people watching this have never known hunger. The things that we take for granted would absolutely shame us in front of people who endured a tragedy such as this.

This is the best documentary on the great leap forward showing what it really was. This was about as bad if not worst then the Holocaust. This is the worst display of human evil I've ever seen.