Second Five Year Plan sets a goal of 75 percent increase in agricultural and industrial production. Great Leap Forward is announced, setting impossible goals for production by 1960. Socialized agriculture is effected through creation of People's Communes. Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping downplay Maoist policies to promote economic recovery. Mao calls for a new emphasis on class struggle in cultural life.
China enters the nuclear age with a successful rest of the atomic bomb.
Population approximately 694.6 million. Mao organizes hard-line radicals, including his third wife, Jiang Qing, a severe critic of bourgeois cultural tendencies. Mao launches the Cultural Revolution. Politburo directs Cultural Revolution leaders to attack bourgeois elements in the CCP, the government, the PLA, and cultural circles. First appearance of the Red Guards, encouraged by Mao to criticize and reform the CCP from below.