Between 1958 and 1962, tens of millions of people starved to death as a result of the Great Leap Forward (大跃进), an attempt by Mao Zedong to overtake Britain as an economic world power in less than fifteen years. During the GLF, private farming was entirely prohibited and households all over China were forced into state-operated communes. Anyone who dared challenge the practice or store their own food was violently persecuted, with many being beaten to death. The impact was catastrophic. An estimated 30 to 45 million died as a direct result of this man-made disaster. 

In recent years, several books on the Great Famine were published outside of Mainland China. Most notable among these were Chinese journalist Yang Jisheng's Tombstone, American journalist Japser Becker's Hungry Ghosts, and Dutch historian Frank Dikotter's Mao's Great Famine. All of these books have been translated into Chinese, but are banned in China. Official archives and materials about the Famine have been made inaccessible since Yang's work became widely acclaimed in the West.

Until today, official documents and textbooks still use the term "Three Years of Natural Disasters" to describe the event. Students in middle schools and high schools are taught that extremely bad weather contributed to a large portion of the total loss of grain production and that policy failure was only a minor factor.