User:Zanhe/Xinyang Incident

The Xinyang Incident was a major famine that occurred during the Great Leap Forward (1958–61) in Xinyang prefecture, Henan province, China. Provincial and prefectural Communist Party leadership, who were fanatically devoted to Mao Zedong, wildly exaggerated the local grain production and ruled the peasants with terror. At least a million people died from starvation, out of a total population of 8.5 million, and tens of thousands were beaten to death. In the worst hit Guangshan County, a quarter of its 500,000 people died. A 1961 Communist Party report described the incident as a "holocaust and massacre".

Location
Xinyang prefecture lies in the Huai River plain in southeastern Henan province. In 1958 the prefecture comprised Xinyang city, 18 counties, and the town of Zhumadian, roughly equivalent to today's Xinyang and Zhumadian prefecture-level cities. In 1958, the prefecture had a population of 8.5 million. It was Henan's main producer of grain and cotton, and along with Luoyang and Nanyang, an economic centre of Henan.