How did the Great Leap Forward affect China’s population growth around 1960?

The Great Leap Forward, an economic program implemented between 1958 and 1960, had a catastrophic impact on China’s population growth. The program's policies, which included the inefficient commune system and the diversion of labor from agriculture to small-scale industry, caused a massive famine.12

As a result of this widespread food shortage, the death rate surpassed the birth rate, leading to an overall decline in China's population by 1960. It is estimated that approximately 20 million people died of starvation between 1959 and 1962. Following the famine, the country began to recover by 1963, at which point a soaring birth rate resulted in an annual population growth rate exceeding 3 percent, the highest recorded since 1949.213