Discussion has been rife online of late about the true number of deaths and causes of the famine that occurred during the period known as the "Three Years of Natural Disasters," which lasted from 1959 to 1961  when famine blighted the country during the Great Leap Forward.

It has been officially characterized as being widespread natural disasters, mainly drought, compounded by economic planning errors by the government.   

"My hometown is the village of Wen'an country, Hebei Province. My father said nearly every village had people dying during that time," said one Internet user.

"I had to leave my hometown during that period. My whole family would have starved to death, and two of my neighbors died." said Yang Desheng, 84, who traveled from Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region with his family in 1959 to Shandong Province, where famine was very serious at the time.

The Great Leap Forward refers to an economic and social campaign between 1958 and 1961, which aimed to transform the country from a poor economy into a modern communist society through the process of rapid industrialization.

In one touchy incident framing this debate, Lin Zhibo, head of People's Daily branch in Gansu Province, was forced to back down from an inflammatory series of Weibo posts in which he questioned whether millions had truly died during the Three Years of Natural Disasters.

Following an outpouring of anger online, Lin apologized on his Weibo on Tuesday, saying he was not fully familiar with the history of the Great Leap Forward period and his words "had hurt people's feelings and revived their trauma."

A few days earlier, Lin had written on Weibo that "some who aim to slander Chairman Mao Zedong even made up that tens of millions of people had died during the Three Years of Natural Disasters."

Controversial data

According to the latest edition of the History of the Communist Party of China published last year, the population nationwide in 1960 was 10 million lower than for the previous year. However, no exact data about the three years in question has been released.

Scholars and experts have widely disagreed on the number of famine victims, putting the figure at between 17 and 36 million.

Yang Jisheng, a former Xinhua News Agency senior reporter who spent over 10 years researching the subject, estimates the number of deaths at 36 million. This figure is backed up by Mao Yushi, a well-known economist. 

Mao also described his starving experience in Tengxian county, Shandong Province in 1960 on his Weibo on Tuesday, and said he would have "starved to death if he had lived in the county for another two months."

Learning lessons

Cao Siyuan, a constitutional and economic scholar and director of Siyuan Think Tank, told the Global Times that the major reason for many scholars to highlight this part of history is to stress the importance of political reform at the Party's upcoming 18th National Congress, as many of them see that poor governance contributed to the famine.

"Another reason to rethink history is to learn the lessons and stop this kind of tragedy from happening again," Cao noted.

Fu Siming, a professor with the Party School of the  CPC Central Committee, told the Global Times that the current debate among scholars is understandable, and some former senior officials did admit human errors that led to the disaster.

Then Chairman Liu Shaoqi pointed out at a conference in 1962 following the Great Leap Forward, that only 30 percent of the famine was due to natural disasters, and the remainder were "human errors."

But the authorities have not changed the references concerning the "Three Years of Natural Disasters," nor given a clear answer about exactly how many people died during the famine. Some books about this part of history, written by Chinese scholars, are still banned on the Chinese mainland.

According to the History of the Communist Party of China, during the Great Leap Forward, iron and steel production was identified as a key requirement for economic advancement, and many farmers were ordered away from agricultural work to join the iron production workforce. The production of agriculture and light industry production dropped sharply.

In 1959, China also experienced the most severe drought in its recent history, the book said. It claims that combined with foreign affairs, especially the deteriorating relationship with the Soviet Union, food shortages became serious.

Yang Jisheng, a journalist and author, wrote in his book Tombstone that the famine could fully be blamed on political errors. According to experts from the China Meteorological Administration, no severe weather calamities occurred between 1958 and 1962, he wrote.

"Though the History of the Communist Party of China illustrated the various causes of the famine, it is still far from enough," Cao Siyuan said.

Vacuum of history

The public has had only limited recourses to access information about this time, especially during the 60s and 70s, when discussion about these sensitive topics was severely limited.

While some, who have learnt about the famine through recent online exposure to this tragic part of history, were shocked by the different version of accounts, others prefer to forget.

"I was only 5 years old in 1959, and what I can remember was my father giving bread to me and he only having wild herbs to eat," said Xiao Hong, 58, from Chengdu.

Xiao said her parents never talked about the famine, and she would rather forget this painful experience.

In high school history text books, this period is only generally described. This means few young people have known much about the famine.

A historian who declined to be named said that "if the government wants to comprehensively calculate the number of dead, it must start the project at once, while those who experienced it are still alive."