> Before that, the Chinese leadership under Mao were doing their best to drive all of China into poverty and famine.
Drought is widely seen as the fundamental factor the caused the great famine. Government policy was one aspect that was poorly implemented. It is easy to say in hindsight - but this was a national emergency on a scale that no other country had experienced.
Even the official stance of the Chinese government, the one being taught in schools these days, is that "the disaster was 30% due to natural causes and 70% by mismanagement". With the tendency of the CCP to invent any numbers that favour them, I'll leave it to you to guess what the actual causes were.
Drought is widely seen as the fundamental factor the caused the great famine. Government policy was one aspect that was poorly implemented. It is easy to say in hindsight - but this was a national emergency on a scale that no other country had experienced.