In an effort to win favour with their superiors and avoid being purged, each layer in the party hierarchy exaggerated the amount of grain produced under them. Based upon the fabricated success, party cadres were ordered to requisition a disproportionately high amount of that fictitious harvest for state use, primarily for use in the cities and urban areas but also for export. The result, compounded in some areas by drought and in others by floods, was that rural peasants were left with little food for themselves and many millions starved to death in the Great Chinese Famine. China's population suffered from the Great Famine during the late 20th century. This came as a result of the lack of food production and distribution to the population of China. The people of urban areas in China were given food stamps each month, but the people of rural areas were expected to grow their own crops and give some of the crops back to the government. The deaths in the rural parts of China out ranked the ones in the Urban cities. Also, the government of China continued to export food to other countries during the Great Famine; this food could have been used to feed the starving citizens. These factors led to the catastrophic death of about 52 million citizens. The famine was a direct cause of the death of some 30 million Chinese peasants between 1959 and 1962. Further, many children who became emaciated and malnourished during years of hardship and struggle for survival died shortly after the Great Leap Forward came to an end in 1962. The extent of Mao's knowledge of the severity of the situation has been disputed. Mao's physician believed that he may have been unaware of the extent of the famine, partly due to a reluctance to criticise his policies, and the willingness of his staff to exaggerate or outright fake reports regarding food production. Upon learning of the extent of the starvation, Mao vowed to stop eating meat, an action followed by his staff. Hong Kong-based historian Frank Dikötter, challenged the notion that Mao did not know about the famine throughout the country until it was too late:  The idea that the state mistakenly took too much grain from the countryside because it assumed that the harvest was much larger than it was is largely a myth—at most partially true for the autumn of 1958 only. In most cases the party knew very well that it was starving its own people to death. At a secret meeting in the Jinjiang Hotel in Shanghai dated March 25, 1959, Mao specifically ordered the party to procure up to one third of all the grain, much more than had ever been the case.