I can't tell if you're agreeing with me? Because yes, I'm aware of that. That is why I am so confused by OP seeming to say "in China we don't have to worry about starvation even when we're poor".
It's just so far from true I don't understand why they are getting upvoted (and me downvoted).
My take would be that they weren't starving because they were poor, they were starving because there was no food to be had. Starvation in a famine is different from starvation in a land of plenty where you simply can't afford food.
At the time the poster was growing up, starvation wasn't a concern. My wife grew up around the same time, she was born in 1975. There had been a famine a generation before, but that wasn't an issue she had to worry about. What happened a generation before does not invalidate that reported experience and isn't relevant to it.
Even now, people in China are not concerned with or at risk of famine. It doesn't matter how many famines there were 50+ years ago, it won't make that untrue unless you can point to a credible reason why Chinese people today should fear famine.
People often comment on the 1958 famine as some singular event, but it actually was the 6th and last in the 20th century.