"To distribute resources evenly will only ruin the Great Leap Forward... when there is not enough to eat, people starve to death. It is better to let half the people die so that others can eat their fill." - Mao Zedong, 1959
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When Mao Zedong implemented the Great Leap Forward, it caused the Chinese people to face famine, systematic torture, brutality and many other factors that had been bestowed upon the Chinese People. In the fields, the peasants had to work till their very core in order to grow with the fast pace production of crops. In the eyes of the Government, these peasants were simply "digits", or a faceless workforce. Anyone who committed acts of rebellion, how minor it was, would be punished for even stealing a small potato, even by a child, would be tied up and thrown into a pond. Parents were forced to bury their children alive or were doused in excrement and urine or for others, limbs and body parts were cut off. These "digits" were branded with numbers and were forced to work naked in the middle of winter. About 80% of peasants were banned from using the official well for water because they were too old or ill to be effective workers. Deliberately, starving them to death. This man-made genocide lead by Mao Zedong to implement his new economic policy creating the death of 45 million..
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"People died in the family and they didn't bury the person because they could still collect their food rations; they kept the bodies in bed and covered them up and the corpses were eaten by mice. People ate corpses and fought for the bodies. In Gansu they killed outsiders; people told me strangers passed through and they killed and ate them. And they ate their own children. Terrible. Too terrible." - Quote from Yang Jisheng, a survivor.