Did Mao know about the famine?

Frank Dikötter, author of “Mao’s Great Famine”, recently wrote,

At a secret meeting in Shanghai on March 25, 1959, he ordered the party to procure up to one-third of all the available grain — much more than ever before. The minutes of the meeting reveal a chairman insensitive to human loss: “When there is not enough to eat people starve to death. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.”

Also, Deng Xiaoping was willing to let his fellow Sichuanese starve.