The "Arduous March" Famine Kills Hundreds of Thousands

Severe flooding in 1995 destroyed much of the rice harvest, but the underlying cause was decades of state-mandated collective agriculture that had never been efficient, combined with the sudden loss of subsidised Soviet and Chinese aid after the USSR's 1991 collapse. A US Census Bureau estimate put excess deaths from 1993–2000 at 500,000–600,000; other estimates run as high as one million, out of a population of about 20 million. The state's public distribution system for food collapsed almost entirely in hard-hit provinces.