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 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.

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.

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...

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

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.

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

I lived in a food insecure family as a child, and it greatly affected me (and still does). To learn of this, and witness the testimony and videos of these people and their plight hurts my soul. Whether I agree or not with whatever ideology is irrelevant- human suffering is human suffering. May those affected find better times, and may those no longer with us find peace.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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!

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

This is the most terrifying and quite frankly most depressing event in history I’ve ever learnt about by far, how so few people in power could spell death for the millions feeding them nothing but lies as they starved their own people to death. Rest in peace to those who died in the struggle to survive we will never forget

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:

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.

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

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.,

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.

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

Thank you for sharing this. As I lost My great grandfather due to the ccp UNDER MAO ZE TSONG and could have lost all my great grandparents if not the rest fleed to Taiwan… I appreciate this. More people need to hear and know this and not be so ignorant about the great evils… I heard my great grandparents through my father & grandma, & grandparents and dad’s stories. For when the last time I talked with my great grandma the very one who lost her husband (my great grandfather ) to the communist party of China under Mao…. Never talked about it with me…. Must have impacted her deeply… at least she’s reunited with him for almost 9 years now….. not even my grandpa talks about it… why?…. cause that was *HIS* father……

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.

I watch this video a few times a week, and I always cry at the part where the father had to bury his son alive. I cannot fathom the pain he must have felt. And that is just one of the many horror stories that came out of this period of history.

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

Thank you for making this a documentary. Very enlightening.

Dikotter's trilogy about the tragedy of China is fantastic. It was nice to see him here. I highly recommend checking his works out. The scale of murder and misery in China since Mao is so far beyond anything else in human history that it's almost laughable. And the Marxists shrug it off.

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.

None of the great dystopian novels of the 20th century can compare to the real physical and psychological horror that so many countries and societies experienced at the hands of left-wing and right-wing extremists in that century (it's telling that all these extremist dictators were incredibly similar and treated people very similarly). Of all the countries where the government enslaved a large population (often their own people) and committed genocide (whether intentional massacre or simply not caring that millions of their own people were dying), China probably suffered the worst - especially with such a huge population. Just like with the French revolution, when the extremists took control, ideals of freedom and equality were twisted and a new elite ruling class replaced the old on a wave of blood.

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.

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.”

What a heart breaking documentary...just simply wild.

Absolutely nightmarish. This needs to be thoroughly taught in every school so people stop believing communism is the answer to our problems.

Seeing the poor children suffering makes me tear up

We all should know by now the wisdom in remembering and preserving our history, lest we are doomed to make the same mistakes. More often today I am shocked how much we seem to have forgotten any lessons from our past. Of course, he who controls history also controls the future, which serves to highlight the value of that knowledge.

As an avid Chinese Communist history reader it would be great to see a documentary with regards to the power struggle which occurred in the party from Mao getting sidelined due to the failure of the GLP to him regaining his footing as a result of the Cultural revolution to him politically fighting with his anointed successor Lin Biao to finally seeing him trying to reach an equilibrium between the radical leftist faction and the old guard.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

All schools and universities in the UK should make this mandatory for pupils to see and be shown on the education curriculum, for this is what the powers in charge would be doing to us if they could 😢

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 grandgrandparents also experienced hunger (not in China, but in other country, i won't tell you). when hunger has started they were wealthy but they were forced to give their food and cows and everything to government as everyone in the village. most of villagers had died and my grandgrandparents were eating even tree bark. their children and parents died, but they survived. it's sad

The line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.

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.

Anyone who survives living in this regime always has a horror story to share.

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.

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)

I still remember my History teacher saying "Great Leap Forward, more like a giant step back." He was right.

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" 🤦🏻‍♂️

A very good well documented well researched story .

There are plenty of things that go wrong in democracies but there is no way that democracies give humans worse outcomes and such utter lack of accountability for injustice than totalitarian regimes. There is always hope in democracies; there is never any hope in totalitarianism - there is just acceptance and surrendering one's humanity to the state.

In case anyone is interested in a fictional story about this timeframe, I highly recommend "Dreams of Joy," by Lisa See. It's a fictional story told from the perspective of survivors of the Great Leap Forward.

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

This should be compulsury history courses to take in every public high school and campus. A lesson on the failures of state controlled economies and the tragic human cost.

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.

Thank you for opening my eyes to such a tragedy.

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

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.

The world needs to hear this over and over again!

Incredible that this is never mentioned in college level history classes.

Around 1980, National Geographic showed a graph of world population in the previous few centuries. As is the case with geometric growth, the curve starts flat and then shoots upward to the present day. But there is a kink in the curve where it suddenly goes flat (first derivative zero in calculus) and then shoots up again. Not during either of the World Wars, but rather the Great Leap Forward.

These horrors illustrate the abuse of humans at its worst. The trivial complaints of so many self interest groups in today's wealthy societies are put into harsh perspective.

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.

This should be MANDATORY for every single American college student.

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.

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

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

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

It was wrong to separate families. Since most people had to be moved from old homes to new areas, they should have built every family their own little shack so families were still living together. Today we might think of tiny houses, yurts, Quonset huts, or other things. It’s too bad they didn’t start building Tower cities (later to be connected to maglev Trains) next to fields growing food. So needed to think of getting running water/toilet facilities for the communities. And start catching all rainwater. Or maybe in places they should have built desalination plants, if they knew of it, which they probably didn’t. They definitely didn’t have a perfect Plan. Too bad.

made me cry, what brutal story

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

The world is on its way to a global one. Klaus Schwabbs words say it all.

That old lady is so expressive, just her mannerisms are inspiring let alone her story.

In case somebody wants to learn Chinese. I teach Chinese in humorous way and with cute pictures. Chinese characters still retain their pictographic origins. Knowing what the characters look like originally can help remember them. I’ve spent about 100,000 hours studying English humor and Western culture, and many years studying Chinese culture and jokes. My native language is Chinese.

Prior to the pandemic lived for four years in P.R.China, the far end, close to North Korea. People buy gold frames to sit in the living rooms showing pictures of family. More often than not in the centre is a frame with Chairman Mao in it. They won't have a word said against him. Very sad.

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

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

one death is a tragedy. a million is a statistic. 50 million is a great leap forward

I was in Beijing and bought a Mao “T” shirt, I slipped it on and the attitude of the people totally changed. What had been friendly,”can I help you?” became glares, people spitting on the ground, the finger from drivers. A guy running a restaurant suggested I lose the shirt and I was an interesting curiosity again.

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.

What incredibly brave Chinese people that made this documentary!

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?

Truly one of the most tragic incidents in human history. 😢

Very sad story of the Chinese people. Let's hope they can find more ways to commemorate the poor victims of this tragic crime.

And people now say that Mao was a true democrat and really cared about his people and that those 40 million people that died didn’t die from starvation but because they wanted to die… Unbelievable

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.

Whether it's totalitarian left or right regimes or countries with corrupt governments, the lack of accountability and leaders' refusal to accept responsibility are the main problems.

Man, I hope their descendants are in much better places. Beyond blessed and Forever grateful for America 🇺🇸 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

This was absolutely heartbreaking and devastating... Mao Zedong showed no remorse for a loss of life.!!!! He had none.. he wouldn't even accept any kind of responsibility for not having nearly enough people planning crops during that greatly forward plan to industrialize China, what you love to somewhere around 38 to 40 plus million people starving to death...

I know there was indoctrination and fear throughout all of this, but I will never understand why people never take it upon themselves to take out the cause of their plight before it got worse.

Documentaries like this this make me feel so grateful

I went a barnes an noble in virginia a few years back, no books or history of any of the crimes of communism, but they had endless copies of karl marx'es communist manifestoon display like a new harry potter book. Fine line between fantasy and fiction, seems we will keep learning that lesson until even more millions of souls have died.

Excellent that truth is being told, the book of this horror should be published worldwide to prevent other nations from this genocide