The Great Leap Forward and rural collectivization were the direct causes of the Great Famine. The "Great Leap Forward" wasted a lot of manpower, a large number of people in the countryside went to make steel, which prevented the timely harvest of grain, and most of the ironware held by farmers was collected for public use. The large canteen of the People's Commune, which promotes production teams as a unit throughout the country, has led to "relaxing the belly and eating enough", and the implementation of unpaid labor has led to a sharp drop in labor efficiency. In the case of severe famine across the country, from 1958 to 1959, the Chinese government continued to export a large amount of grain to the Soviet Union and Eastern European and other socialist countries in exchange for industrial raw materials, machinery and technology in order to rapidly develop the military industry. For example, in 1959, when economic difficulties and starvation in the rural areas occurred, the amount of grain exported for the whole year reached a record high of 41,575,700 tons.