I read a book on the drought, which claimed it could have been over 100 million were killed. When you take into consideration the large size of China and how many rural towns are so secluded, I think the 100+million figure is accurate.
Back in the day, I had the privilege of assisting in the organization of the transfer of the Soviet Archives after the fall of the Soviet Union.
I got to work with some of the scholars from the USSR.
They were outraged by low ball numbers for the number of Russian people who were murdered by the Lenin, Stalin and the Bolsheviks the first draft of history was recording.
Their American counterparts were sympathetic and agreed the numbers feel far short of reality. The problem was that whenever they tried to publish a paper or present at a conference, they were mau-maued by the large number other historians who were sympathetic Fellow Travelers to Communism into reducing the body count down to numbers that were plainly low ball as to be beyond dispute.
They also were of the opinion that the the numbers were so astronomical that the precise difference between 30 million killed and 100 million was not as historically significant as the fact that tens of millions of people were willfully and methodically murdered as part of official Communist policy.
This of course enraged the Russians because it was THEIR families that were murdered and to them every murder was a consequential tragedy.
The number you see in the published literature do not reflect the true magnitude of the murders committed in the name of Communism, they are the absolute low ball numbers mau maued down by Communist apologists in the West and constitute a body count of murdered souls that even the most ardent Fellow Traveler could not dispute and was forced to accept