UN General Assembly
1959

68. The year 1958 was hailed by the Communists on the mainland as the beginning of the "great leap forward." An important part of the "leap" was to be achieved by the primitive furnaces in the backyards. The Communists mobilized 60 million people — this is their own figure — to produce iron in these primitive furnaces, which, so far as quantity is considered, did contribute three-fourths of the pig-iron production on the mainland last year. Japanese steel experts who visited the mainland at the height of the drive reported that in those furnaces between five and ten tons of coal were used to produce one ton of pig-iron, compared with 6.8 ton of coal normally required in a modern blast furnace. Much of the pig-iron produced in these backyard furnaces had such a high content of phosphorus and sulphur that it was useless for either casting or steel-making. And now the decision has been made by the Communists that the production in the backyard furnaces is no longer figuring in the State's economic plan. In other words, the adventure is to be abandoned.