More Steel, More Food: The Crisis of Urban Food Rationing During the Great Leap Forward

This paper examines food supplies and rationing in Chinese cities during the Great Leap Forward, a period best known Mao Zedong’s vision of rural industrialization and the ensuing famine in the countryside. Drawing on extensive archival records from municipal archives in Shanghai, Beijing, and Tianjin, the paper explores the urban experience of the Leap, especially shifts in food consumption and rationing policy. It argues that the food crisis in cities was a culmination of internal contradictions within Maoist China's rationing system that struggled to balance food supply and demand amidst rapid industrialization and urbanization. During the Great Leap Forward, urban party cadres drastically raised ration levels to support the growing urban workforce, including millions of rural migrants seeking better living conditions.This was due to both the political need of prioritizing industrial output over food security and a misguided belief that agricultural productivity alone could achieve food self-sufficiency for the growing cities. My research further links the urban food crisis to later developments in the 1960s, particularly the policy shift towards reducing urban populations and emphasizing technological innovation to enhance productivity. By examining these developments, the paper sheds light on the deeper structural issues within Maoist China’s socioeconomic system and the long-term consequences of the Leap’s failure in urban contexts.