Editing Great Leap Forward (section)

===Failures of the food supply===
In agrarian policy, the failures of the food supply during the Great Leap were met by a gradual de-[[collectivization]] over the course of the 1960s that foreshadowed the further measures taken under Deng Xiaoping. Political scientist [[Meredith Jung-En Woo]] argues: "Unquestionably the regime failed to respond in time to save the lives of millions of peasants, but when it did respond, it ultimately transformed the livelihoods of several hundred million peasants (modestly in the early 1960s, but permanently after Deng Xiaoping's reforms subsequent to 1978)."<ref>[http://www.lsa.umich.edu/orgstudies/people_detail.asp?id=422 Woo-Cummings, Meredith] {{webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20131129094106/http://www.lsa.umich.edu/orgstudies/people_detail.asp?id=422 |date=29 November 2013 }} (2002). {{Cite web |date=22 January 2015 |title=''The Political Ecology of Famine: The North Korean Catastrophe and Its Lessons'' |url=http://www.adbi.org/files/2002.01.rp31.ecology.famine.northkorea.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060318194644/http://www.adbi.org/files/2002.01.rp31.ecology.famine.northkorea.pdf |archive-date=18 March 2006 |access-date=13 March 2006}}, ADB Institute Research Paper 31, January 2002. Retrieved 3 July 2006.</ref>

Despite the risks to their careers, some CCP members openly laid blame for the disaster at the feet of the Party leadership and took it as proof that China must rely more on education, acquiring technical expertise and applying [[bourgeoisie|bourgeois]] methods in developing the [[economic science|economy]]. [[Liu Shaoqi]] made a speech at the [[Seven Thousand Cadres Conference]] in 1962, stating that "[the] economic disaster was 30% fault of nature, 70% [[human error]]."<ref>''Twentieth Century China: Third Volume''. Beijing, 1994. p.&nbsp;430.</ref>

A 2017 paper by economists found "strong evidence that the unrealistic yield targets led to excessive death tolls from 1959 to 1961, and further analysis shows that yield targets induced the inflation of grain output figures and excessive procurement. We also find that Mao's radical policy caused serious deterioration in human [[capital accumulation]] and slower economic development in the policy-affected regions decades after the death of Mao."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Liu |first1=Chang |last2=Zhou |first2=Li-An |title=Radical Target Setting and China's Great Famine |journal=The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization |date=23 December 2021 |volume=38 |issue=1 |pages=120–160 |doi=10.1093/jleo/ewab025 |ssrn=3075015 }}</ref>{{long quote|date=December 2023}}

A dramatic decline in grain output continued for several years, involving in 1960–61 a drop in output of more than 25 percent. Causes of this drop are found in both natural disaster and government policy.<ref name="Ashton1984" />