China’s ‘Great Leap’ famine, ‘test purchases’ of Western grain and return to ‘readjustment’, July 1957–August 1960

From July to October 1957 PRC news sources reported that domestic grain production was not keeping up with growing domestic and export requirements.1

With the ‘Hundred Flowers’ campaign encouraging frank discussion, between 3 and 5 July Ma Yinchu’s report to the NPC and article in the People’s Daily, called for the government to take action to slow China’s rapid population growth.2