> shake up the distribution of it so that the land could produce again... It's how you turn a billion serfs into a billion entrepreneurs.

In your telling, how does the resulting famine that killed of tens of millions fit in?

The famine is unrelated to the land distribution but also the farm land distribution didn't last. They changed course and put the land into collectives and it is still in collectives today so the famine cannot be blamed on collectives.

My understanding is the famine was essentially the middle managers of these collectives over stating yields and being too afraid to admit their lies. To maintain the lie, they shipped off food while the farmers starved.

Famine along the yellow river and yangtze river has been happening for thousands of years across all dynasties, its specifically what land distribution was meant to fix, and since 1960s there hasn't been a famine since. My parents and grandparents lived through it and left cities to work in countryside fields during the cultural revolution. You tell me how the famine fits in and I'll let you know if you're accurate or not.