to convinced the skeptics that China was dramatically advancing. The reality was that crop quotas were not met and Mao's response was brutal, particularly because he accused peasants and village cadres of hiding grain. Though Mao knew quite well that the peasants had no food to hide, he was totally disinterested in the fact that famine and malnutrition were stalking the country. What mattered to Mao was the ability to export 4.74 million tons of grain in 1959 along with huge amounts of other agricultural products (Chang and Halliday, 428).
At the same time, Mao developed a number of projects that were dependent on labor rather than investment, including dams, reservoirs, and canals and ultimately, between 1958 and 1962, about 100 million peasants were coerced into such projects. The overworked peasantry was also required to provide their own food and tools while on such projects and Chang and Halliday report that accidents and deaths were frequent and Mao expected that literally thousands of peasants would die. When
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