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Mao Zedong
1959 - the Beijing study at Zhongnanhai (the desk where the provincial production returns are read), in the months following the Lushan Conference
A chairman in his Beijing study reads the inflated production figures the provinces have learned to send up, treating reports manufactured to survive the recent purge of Peng Dehuai as administrative confirmation that the policy is working, while the state requisition apparatus takes grain at the reported rate from villages in Xinyang prefecture and elsewhere where the families are already starving.
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