The Great Leap Forward - History Learning Site The Great Leap Forward Citation: C N Trueman "The Great Leap Forward" historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site, 26 May 2015. 16 Aug 2016. The Great Leap Forward took place in 1958. The Great Leap Forward was Mao’s attempt to modernise China’s economy so that by 1988, China would have an economy that rivalled America. Card issued to celebrate the Great Leap Forward Mao had toured China and concluded that the Chinese people were capable of anything and the two primary tasks that he felt they should target was industry and agriculture. Mao announced a second Five Year Plan to last from 1958 to 1963. This plan was called the Great Leap Forward. The Great Leap Forward planned to develop agriculture and industry. Mao believed that both had to grow to allow the other to grow. Industry could only prosper if the work force was well fed, while the agricultural workers needed industry to produce the modern tools needed for modernisation. To allow for this, China was reformed into a series of communes.

The geographical size of a commune varied but most contained about 5000 families. People in a commune gave up their ownership of tools, animals etc so that everything was owned by the commune. People now worked for the commune and not for themselves. The life of an individual was controlled by the commune. Schools and nurseries were provided by the communes so that all adults could work. Health care was provided and the elderly were moved into “houses of happiness” so that they could be looked after and also so that families could work and not have to worry about leaving their elderly relatives at home. The commune provided all that was needed – including entertainment. Soldiers worked alongside people. The population in a commune was sub-divided. Twelve families formed a work team. Twelve work terms formed a brigade. Each sub-division was given specific work to do. Party members oversaw the work of a commune to ensure that decisions followed the correct party line. By the end of 1958, 700 million people had been placed into 26,578 communes. The speed with which this was achieved was astounding. However, the government did all that it could to whip up enthusiasm for the communes.

Propaganda was everywhere – including in the fields where the workers could listen to political speeches as they worked as the communes provided public address systems. Everybody involved in communes was urged not only to meet set targets but to beat them. If the communes lacked machinery, the workers used their bare hands. Major constructions were built in record time – though the quality of some was dubious. The Great Leap Forward also encouraged communes to set up “back-yard” production plants. The most famous were 600,000backyard furnaces which produced steel for the communes. When all of these furnaces were working, they added a considerable amount of steel to China’s annual total – 11 million tonnes. The figures for steel, coal, chemicals, timber, cement etc all showed huge rises though the figures started at in 1958 were low. Grain and cotton production also showed major increases in production. Mao had introduced the Great Leap Forward with the phrase “it is possible to accomplish any task whatsoever.” By the end of 1958, it seemed as if his claim was true. The consequences of the Great Leap Forward However, in 1959, things started to go wrong.

Political decisions/beliefs took precedence over commonsense and communes faced the task of doing things which they were incapable of achieving. Party officials would order the impossible and commune leaders, who knew what their commune was capable of doing or not, could be charged with being a “bourgeois reactionary” if he complained. Such a charge would lead to prison. Quickly produced farm machinery produced in factories fell to pieces when used. Many thousands of workers were injured after working long hours and falling asleep at their jobs. Steel produced by the backyard furnaces was frequently too weak to be of any use and could not be used in construction – it’s original purpose. Buildings constructed by this substandard steel did not last long. Also the backyard production method had taken many workers away from their fields – so desperately needed food was not being harvested. Ironically, one of the key factors in food production in China was the weather and 1958 had particularly good weather for growing food. Party leaders claimed that the harvest for 1958 was a record 260 million tons – which was not true. The excellent growing weather of 1958 was followed by a very poor growing year in 1959.

Some parts of China were hit by floods. In other growing areas, drought was a major problem. The harvest for 1959 was 170 million tons of grain – well below what China needed at the most basic level. In parts of China, starvation occurred. 1960 had even worse weather than 1959. The harvest of 1960 was 144 million tons. 9 million people are thought to have starved to death in 1960 alone; many millions were left desperately ill as a result of a lack of food. The government had to introduce rationing. This put people on the most minimal of food and between 1959 and 1962, it is thought that 20 million people died of starvation or diseases related to starvation. The backyard furnaces also used too much coal and China’s rail system, which depended on coal driven trains, suffered accordingly. By 1959, it was obvious that the Great Leap Forward had been a failure and even Mao admitted this. He called on the Communist Party to take him to task over his failures but also asked his own party members to look at themselves and their performance.

“The chaos caused was on a grand scale, and I take responsibility. Comrades, you must all analyse your own responsibility. If you have to fart, fart. You will feel much better for it.” Some party members put the blame of the failure of the Great Leap Forward on Mao. He was popular with the people but he still had to resign from his position as Head of State (though he remained in the powerful Party Chairman position). The day-to-day running of China was left to three moderates: Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping. In late 1960, they abandoned the Great Leap Forward. Private ownership of land was reinstated and communes were cut down to a manageable size. Peasants also had the incentive to produce as much spare food as was possible as they could sell any spare that they had a market. These three moderates had restricted Mao’s power but his standing among the ordinary Chinese people was still high as he was seen as the leader of the revolution. He was to use this popularity with the people to resurrect his authority at the expense of the moderates. This was in the so-called Cultural Revolution.

The Great Leap Forward Period in China, 1958-1960 The Great Leap Forward Period in China, 1958-1960 Economic development under the People's Republic of China government started with about 150 development projects planned, financed and staffed by the Soviet Union. When political ideological differences between Mao Zedong and Nikita Khrushchev led to a split, the 15,000 Soviet engineers and staff on the development projects were withdrawn and the blueprints for the projects destroyed. China did not have the technological and financial resources to complete these projects on its own and Mao Zedong was made conscious of how vulnerable China was in depending upon outside aid, even from communist regimes. It was then that the conviction developed with Mao that China would industrialize on its own, pulling itself up by its own bootstraps, so to speak. Mao was also aware that the first attempt to create a socialist economy was brought to a halt in the Soviet Union in 1921 when peasants reacted to confiscation of their grain harvest by declining to plant and produce as much grain.

Mao was also aware that when Stalin began his five-year plans he collectivized agriculture in order to have control over what was planted and produced. Mao should have also been aware, although perhaps he was not, that the collectivization program in the Soviet Union was a great failure in terms of production and that a severe famine occured in the Ukraine afterwards. Nevertheless Mao called for the Chinese peasants to be organized into communes. This, in effect, took away the land that had been distributed to the peasants in the years immediately after 1949. The peasants had been urged to confiscate the lands of the landowners and distribute it to the peasants that farmed it. This land distribution program was extremely popular with the peasants and contributed to their support of Mao's Communist Party. But the peasants had the land for less that ten years before the State took it away from them. First, peasants were organized into cooperatives of 20 to 40 families. This was at the village level. Next the cooperatives were replaced by county-wide collectives involving hundreds of thousands of people. In addition to calling for the creation of communes Mao urged the peasants to build backyard blastfurnaces to make iron and steel for tools.

The peasants were supposed to melt down scrap metal to make useful items such as tools and utensils. In practice the program worked backwards with peasants melting down useful items to produce unusable masses of metal. This happened because the State exhorted the peasants to increase production from the backyard blast furnaces and when they ran out of scrap they started melting down anything they could find, including tools and utensils. Some of this destruction of useful objects to increase the production from the backyard blastfurnaces might be attributed to enthusiasm but probably more of it was due to there being quotas of production from the furnaces that had to be met. Communist leaders at the local level faced with possible personal punishment for not meeting the quota or destruction of useful items of metal and of wood for fuel usually would choose to try to meet the quota. But the mixture of metals and the impurities in the fuel produced metal that could not be formed into anything useful. The metal was too brittle. The more incidious consequence of the backyard blastfurnaces and other nonagricultural projects of the Great Leap Forward was that they took labor away from food production and led to a shortfall in food.

China was, as always in recent history, on the edge of subsistence and any decrease in food production means privation if not starvation. To make matters worse the centralized control resulted in no one with the authority to change things being informed of the decline in food production. The commune leaders were under pressure to exceed past production and when production declined they did report it. They, in fact, reported what the higher authorities wanted to hear. Thus the policy errors that were leading to food shortfalls went on beyond the point when anyone could do anything about them. The central government made things even worse for the peasants by taking a share based upon the falsified production figures and thus leaving the peasants too little to survive on. In addition to the decline in food production due to the diversion of effort away from agriculture there was losses in food production because of the erroneous policies promoted by the State. One of these idiocies was close planting. If two plants are set too close to each other there is not enough nutrients in the soil to feed both and both die. The State promoted close planting of grain to increase productivity. The initial growth of a plant derives from the nutrient stored in the seed itself.

With close planting the initial germination produces spectacular results, but when the growth of the plant has to depend upon nutrients drawn from the soil the close planting produces failures. During the Great Leap Forward there developed a competition for creating the most striking demonstrations of close planting. The record was probably the case which produced a famous photograph of children standing on top of a wheat field that could hold their weight. Jasper Becker, in his history of the Great Leap Forward era Hungry Ghosts tells that an interviewee told him that the picture was faked. There was a bench hidden in the wheat below the children's feet that supported them. Jasper Becker in Hungry Ghosts traces the foolishness of close planting to the fraudulent science of the Soviet Union. T.D. Lysenko was a quack who got the support of Joseph Stalin and ruled over Soviet genetics for twenty five years. Among the many erroneous notions promoted by Lysenko and which had to be accepted in Marxist countries was his "law of the life of species" which said that plants of the same species do not compete with each other but instead help each other to survive. This was linked to the Marxist notion of classes in which members of the same class do not compete but instead help each other survive.

So Marxist ideology seemed to support the notion that the denser grain was planted the better it was for the grain. But in reality this close planting led to whithering of the plants after the initial germination phase. Lysenko was responsible for many other foolish notions most based upon the precept that environment not genetics determine plant characteristics. Lysenko argued that if you grew plants a little farther north each year they would adapt to the climate and eventually you would be able to grow oranges in the arctic. All of the Lysenko nonsense had to accepted in the Soviet Union and promoted in propaganda as scientific truth. The Marxists in China apparently believed it was the truth. The reality was that this nonsense resulted in less production of food under conditions of bare survival. Some tried to communicate to Mao the failures of the Great Leap Forward but were denounced as traitors. Marshal Peng Dehuai who commanded the Chinese troops in the Korean War was one of those denounced and branded as a counter-revolutionary by Mao. Peng captured the situation well in a poem: The millet is scattered over the ground. The leaves of the sweet potato are withered. The young and old have gone to smelt iron.

To harvest the grain there are only children and old women. How shall we get through the next year? Peng Dehuai This version of the poem quoted in Jasper Becker's Hungry Ghosts Famine ensued and was particularly severe in some areas. The people in these areas were forbidden to leave their area and so were doomed to starvation. Altogether about thirty million people died in the famine. The famine was caused by the shortfall in food production but this was a result of the bad policies and centralization of power in the central government. It was made worse by the refusal to admit the problem. During the time peasants were starving in the country side the government was shipping to grain to the Soviet Union to repay loans. Some grain also rotted in warehouses in the cities where it was taken from the communes. This famine was kept secret from the outside world until China began opening up to the outside world and demographers began analyzing the the population statistics. When Mao finally accepted the fact that the Great Leap Forward had failed he left the task of achieving an economic recovery to Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping and Zhou Enlai.

Harrison Salisbury believes there is evidence that Mao made an explicit agreement with the three that he would give them free rein for five years. The three did bring about the recovery but in 1966 Mao sought to return to absolute power again. The power struggle took the form of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) . It was a social and economic disaster for China but it was brilliant guerilla warfare on the part of Mao. Mao may have been a fool in matters of economic policy but he was a genius in guerilla warfare. Mao and The Great Leap Forward | Rutgers–Newark Colleges of Arts & Sciences Rutgers–Newark Colleges of Arts & Sciences News & Events Mao and The Great Leap Forward The death toll amassed by Mao and his regime range from forty- to seventy-million, eclipsing the Jewish victims of Hitler’s Holocaust by a factor of six to eleven times. Nine years after seizing power, Mao instituted “The Great Leap Forward,” a socioeconomic plan designed to transform China’s agrarian socioeconomic culture towards an industrialized one. The program, which was grounded upon the Marxian prescription for the advancement of industrial technology, yielded the deaths of twenty to forty-three million.

Riding the coattails of the successful collectivization of 1955-1956 and the plentiful harvest of 1957, Mao announced a five-year plan (i.e., The Great Leap Forward) to the People’s Commune in 1958. Mao continually increased the agricultural production quotas due to early bountiful yield of crops. Whereas the early bounties were produced by sound pre-Maoist agricultural methods, the farming methods imposed by Mao, which included natural collectivization— growing incompatible seeds together—, were an unmitigated disaster that led to mass starvation. The five-year program, which only lasted three years, ended in utter catastrophe, inducing a famine that produced an estimated twenty to forty-three million deaths. This manmade famine was a result of Chairman Mao and his commissars implementing policies based on their ignorant notions of farm production. Mao was under the false impression that nature could be run in a non-symbiotic fashion. Indeed, Mao once quipped that “Happy plants grow together.” It was this utopian naivety that grounded Mao’s five-year project, and the manmade famine that followed.

The Great Leap Forward constituted genocide, as Mao employed all of Stanton’s “Eight Steps of Genocide” against his Chinese compatriots in his unsuccessful effort to launch China into a sterling model of communism. Mao classified the Chinese agrarians among economic lines, labeling them peasants and wealthy peasants. Furthermore, Chairman Mao classified anyone who did not tow the party line as a counter-revolutionary. The Peoples Republic of China used symbolization when they erected red flags on the grounds of the collectivized farms. The communist regime dehumanized the wealthier peasants by stealing their land in an effort to communize the farms of China. The People’s Republic organized their communist government in a uni-polar fashion; political dissidents were left to rot in jail, if they were not murdered outright. The Chinese government polarized the nation by means of producing pro-government propaganda favoring the collectivization of China. The communist Chinese hierarchy prepared via their compulsory reallocation of people and farms. The extermination of twenty to forty-three million Chinese citizens was a direct result of the manmade famine that was a byproduct of Mao’s Great Leap Forward. The Chinese government denied the genocide by officially assigning an under-inflated death toll of fourteen million people.

In an effort to unify his people under the ideological yoke of communism, Mao oversaw one of the largest genocides in the annals of human history. Lenin said, “If you want to make an omelet, you must be willing to break a few eggs.” The means Mao employed, however, precluded the possibility of a Leninist utopia: He broke too many eggs. ISEModernworldhistorygrade9 - The Great Leap Forward, 1958 ISEModernworldhistorygrade9 The Great Leap Forward, 1958-1961 Key Terms Commune groups of villages of different sizes, from a few squared kilometers to more. The average commune had around 5000 families. and their goals were to combine industry agriculture commerce, education and military affairs. To work towards the Great Leap, the combination of industry and agriculture. They were set up in 1958. Mao Zedong Mao Zedong lived from 1893 to 1976, he was a Chinese revolutionary and Communist leader. He led the People's Republic of China (PRC) from 1949 until his death in 1976.

He supported the theories of Marxism and Lennism. He started the Great Leap and his communist theories are now called Maoism. Great Leap Forward A plan establish by the Party, and their leader Mao Zedong, to develop industry as well as agriculture. This plan started in 1958 and ended in 1961 Propaganda the organized dissemination of information, allegations, etc, to-assist or damage the cause of a government, movement.Advertisiments such as posters and slogans, anything that covers the issue. Communism A system of social organazations that all social and econonomic activity is all controlled by the government. In the summer of 1958, Mao Zedong made a tour of the Chinese countryside, when he returned he said he witnessed energy of the masses, and that it is possible any task whatsoever. The task he was planning to accomplish was to develop China into one of the wolrd's leading industrial nations, and also improving the agriculture. The Great Leap forward was a second Five-Year Plan, running from 1958 to 1961. Mao thought the economy could overtake Britain within 15 years, and America's in twenty to thirty years.

The Communes The Great Leap Forward differed from the first Five-Year Plan, as it was aimed to develop industry as well as agriculture, both at the same time. The way to do this was to re-organize Chinese people into communes. The communes were groups of villages of different sizes, the average commune had about 5000 families who had given up their land, their animals and their equipment to common ownership by all members of the commune. Mao said the purpose of communes was to release the tremendous energy by having no time and effort wasted. The members of the communes could work together to combine industry, agriculture, commerce, education and military affairs.At first, everything was set up perfectly, so that people would not be distracted from their work. Around 4 million communal eating halls were set up, so the number of people who cooked the meals were reduced. Children were enrolled into nurseries and schools, so their families could have full-time work. The old were moved into 'houses of happiness' that way their families did not have to take care of them, and be more focused at work.The communes were controlling almost every activity in a person's life because they combined different functions . The communes were: "1.

A unit of local government, with a committee made up peasants, Party members and soldier running schools, clinics, nurseries, eating halls, entertainments and other public services. 2. A unit of work organization, with the work of the commune divided among work teams of a dozen families, and grouped into work brigades of a dozen work teams. 3. A unit of the Communist Party, with a Party committee making sure that the commune always followed Party decisions." Communes were created with great speed, by the end of 1958 700 million people, almost 90 percent of the population had been put into 26,578 communes all over China. Eating Hall in one of the Communes Propaganda, Enthusiasm and the Backyard Steel Campaign The government and the Party, made a great effort convince people into being enthusiastic about their work. Posters, slogans and newspapers articles were posted, urging the Chinese to work long hours, whatever conditions they were under (bad weather, sick).As a result of this project, many great buildings and projects were completed in China, especially the gigantic dam that was being built near Beijing.

The dam was completed and was 2088 feet high and 38.2 feet wide at its base, even though encouraged by the party and Mao Zedong himself, the people worked under very bad conditions, without enough machinery and the necessary tools they were being left to build the dam with their own hands. Propaganda of the Great Leap Forward by the Party The communes were set up to contribute in the Great Leap Forward in small and big projects. Small factories were set up in the communes to make industrial goods, but one was more emphasized on than the rest. Steel production began and around 600,000 "backyard steel factories' were set up in town and villages in China. At first, these small furnaces were only able to produce a few tonnes of steel, until later they began makin 11 million tonnes of steel, This was 65 percent more production of steel than in 1957. Throughout the year the production of coal, timber, cement, fertilizer and other industrial products continued to rise. In agriculture, harvests of cotton and grain rose too. People had begun to believe that it was "possible to accomplish any task whatsoever" as Mao Zedong had said.

Background Steel Furnaces Consequences There weren't many things that the Great Leap Forward accomplished but to show its failure. The 3 years between 1959 and 1962 were called the Three Bitter Years, due to the sufferings that China went through after a year of the Great Leap forward being started. There were any casualties, people died from starvation as there wasnt enough food for everyone and very little amounts were distributed within China, and many of the foods were exported. This was mainly because Mao started focusing more on industrialization, so there weren't enough people to work on the fields. Not only from starvation, there were also deaths from violence. It was said that communist officials beat, tortured and killed many workers who would not met ends with their grain quota, and had not done the job completely, or as had been instructed. Especially after starvation set in it was harder to have the malnourished workers working on the field, they would be tortured and humiliated, until they got the job done. Many beatings were such as with sticks, however more were set in later as the year proceeded.

At first it was a good impact on the economy, it started to grow, then things started not to work out, because of the farming and the starvation. The government also lost, two of the closes officials to Mao Zedong were then put into task to recover China's economy. Mao was then attacked a lot by other people in high ranks about the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward. Key Terms of Russia and China Russia Vladimir Lenin Leader of the Bolsheviks, strategist, in 1917.Lived from 1870 to 1924. Ruled Russia until his death. His actual name is Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, his brother was hanged from plotting agaisnt the Tsar. Leon Trotsky Public voice of the Bolsheviks, chairman of Petrograd in 1917, killed by Stalin in 1940. Bolsheviks They are a party against the Tsar with basic communists beliefs such as: every one is equal, and there are no owners of land.Their leader was Lenin and they took over in November 1917. Their leader was Lenin.

Bolshevik Revolution The Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government on November 7th of 1917 along with the Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies.They took over the Winter palace and arrested the officials. There wasn't much opposition since the provisional government was disliked by most of the population of Russia. Joseph Stalin Soviet politician. The successor of Lenin, he was general secretary of the Communist Party (1922-1953) and premier (1941-1953) of the USSR. His rule was marked by the exile of Trotsky (1929), a purge of the government and military, the forced collectivization of agriculture, a policy of industrialization, and a victorious but devastating role for the Soviets in World War II. HE KILLED SO MANY PEOPLE.

Tsar Nicholas II The last monarch of Russia (1894-1917), whose reign was marked by defeat in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), the 1905 Revolution, the court influence of the unpopular Rasputin, involvement in World War I, and governmental incompetence, all of which helped precipitate the Revolution of 1917. Forced to abdicate, he and his family were executed by the Bolsheviks. Who later took over the Provisional Government. China Qing dynasty The last dynasty of China that ruled between 1644-1912 B.C. The dynasty was followed by Republic of China. Sometimes the dynasty was called "Manchu dynasty" or Manchurian dynasty because the rulers were Manchus. Sun Yatsen A Chinese general and politician who later became the first president of China. Commune groups of villages of different sizes, from a few squared kilometers to more. The average commune had around 5000 families. and their goals were to combine industry agriculture commerce, education and military affairs. To work towards the Great Leap, the combination of industry and agriculture.

They were set up in 1958. Mao Zedong Mao Zedong lived from 1893 to 1976, he was a Chinese revolutionary and Communist leader. He led the People's Republic of China (PRC) from 1949 until his death in 1976. He supported the theories of Marxism and Lennism. He started the Great Leap and his communist theories are now called Maoism. Great Leap Forward A plan establish by the Party, and their leader Mao Zedong, to develop industry as well as agriculture. This plan started in 1958 and ended in 1961 Communism A system of social organazations that all social and econonomic activity is all controlled by the government. Two Essay Questions - Compare and contrast Russia's First and Second Five Year Plan to China''s Great Leap Foward. Both the First and Second Five Year plan and the Great Leap Forward had the goals of industrial and economic, both however did suffer consequences after the plans. . The leaders were Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin. After the Five Year Plan in China, China announced a new plan.

In China, people were re-arranged into communes, to work on many different tasks, all to achieve development of the industry and agriculture. In Russia, collectivization was imposed to achieve industrialization and the rise of economy.However,both countries suffered great consequences, Mao was being criticized because of the plans, and the losses the country was going through Stalin was also being criticized, any criticism would them mean you would be replaced, as if Stalin was loosing grip. Many punishments were imposed on workers who did not meet the ends, and many of them began to lie, so there wouldn't be punishment. In Russia as well as in China many people began to die by starvation, due to food shortages. Other, than these deaths, the economies at first began to rise impressively, in China however it wasn't as effective as in Russia. Russia survived the Great Depression while other countries were suffering. China suffered a lot from the Great Leap forward, the economy later went down. Russia gained, however lost many of its people, and China suffered a lot, the period of the Three Bitter Years. Both plans have similarities and differences.

Both countries worker towards the same goal, industrializing and developing the economies and they were aware that their countries were still behind the rest of the world., with these plans they hope to eventually catch in in 20-30 years time to America's economy. These plans worked toward the development of production of steel, iron as well as other industrial products as well as in the farms. Russia introduced collective farms, were people would sell food to the government and then the government would use it to feed the people. However, the population was very upset, this meant loosing the very last bit of land that they owned. In China, people were re-arranged into communes, the average contained about 5,000 families. These families were moved and had to ggive up their houses, and farms taking very little with them. They were to work together to accomplish tasks and productions which would increase. Everybody was to be doing work, no matter the conditions. These plans have similar objectives however, the economy started growing and soon people were living low, but stable lives. Both plans managed to achieve economical growth, however people were becoming mad at their leaders who were very ambitious.

This however caused many people to die by starvation, or execution by not full filling or giving into the policies. In Five year plan, Stalin abolished Kulaks, and he began to have opposition. Mao too was now being criticized. Since the officers encouraged people to work more, the machines were over heated, people from exhaustion were causing accidents, and from the backyard steel campaign and the industry, there weren't enough people to work in the farms. This caused food shortages and many deaths of the people. Mao then later came with apologies, but China faced a quite bitter period after the Great Leap Forward. Stalin began to kill anybody who opposed him, they were either tortured, exiled or executed. It was the Great Purge. Not only peasants but many able men who were officials of the army and many who were also in the Communist Party.Russia was also facing starvation as the peasants destroyed their grain and killed their animals, so the government could not take over their farm. This caused food shortages and less grain production. Even though food was being distributed, it did not mean that it was enough many people were starving.

In Russia, the plan was more successful than in China, in Russia they economy boomed it was industrialized however, China had an Industrial, farming and Leadership crisis after the Great Leap Forward. - To what extent did Mao come to achieving his goals with the Great Leap Forward? People's Republic of China: II The Great Leap Forward, 1958-60 The antirightist drive was followed by a militant approach toward economic development. In 1958 the CCP launched the Great Leap Forward ( ) campaign under the new "General Line for Socialist Construction." The Great Leap Forward was aimed at accomplishing the economic and technical development of the country at a vastly faster pace and with greater results. The shift to the left that the new "General Line" represented was brought on by a combination of domestic and external factors. Although the party leaders appeared generally satisfied with the accomplishments of the First Five-Year Plan, they--Mao and his fellow radicals in particular--believed that more could be achieved in the Second Five-Year Plan (1958-62) if the people could be ideologically aroused and if domestic resources could be utilized more efficiently for the simultaneous development of industry and agriculture.

These assumptions led the party to an intensified mobilization of the peasantry and mass organizations, stepped-up ideological guidance and indoctrination of technical experts, and efforts to build a more responsive political system. The last of these undertakings was to be accomplished through a new xiafang ( or down to the countryside) movement, under which cadres inside and outside the party would be sent to factories, communes, mines, and public works projects for manual labor and firsthand familiarization with grass-roots conditions. Although evidence is sketchy, Mao's decision to embark on the Great Leap Forward was based in part on his uncertainty about the Soviet policy of economic, financial, and technical assistance to China. That policy, in Mao's view, not only fell far short of his expectations and needs but also made him wary of the political and economic dependence in which China might find itself. The Great Leap Forward centered on a new socioeconomic and political system created in the countryside and in a few urban areas--the people's communes .

By the fall of 1958, some 750,000 agricultural producers' cooperatives, now designated as production brigades, had been amalgamated into about 23,500 communes, each averaging 5,000 households, or 22,000 people. The individual commune was placed in control of all the means of production and was to operate as the sole accounting unit; it was subdivided into production brigades (generally coterminous with traditional villages) and production teams. Each commune was planned as a self-supporting community for agriculture, small-scale local industry (for example, the famous backyard pig-iron furnaces), schooling, marketing, administration, and local security (maintained by militia organizations). Organized along paramilitary and laborsaving lines, the commune had communal kitchens, mess halls, and nurseries. In a way, the people's communes constituted a fundamental attack on the institution of the family, especially in a few model areas where radical experiments in communal living--large dormitories in place of the traditional nuclear family housing-- occurred.

(These were quickly dropped.) The system also was based on the assumption that it would release additional manpower for such major projects as irrigation works and hydroelectric dams, which were seen as integral parts of the plan for the simultaneous development of industry and agriculture. The Great Leap Forward was an economic failure. In early 1959, amid signs of rising popular restiveness, the CCP admitted that the favorable production report for 1958 had been exaggerated. Among the Great Leap Forward's economic consequences were a shortage of food (in which natural disasters also played a part); shortages of raw materials for industry; overproduction of poor-quality goods; deterioration of industrial plants through mismanagement; and exhaustion and demoralization of the peasantry and of the intellectuals, not to mention the party and government cadres at all levels. Throughout 1959 efforts to modify the administration of the communes got under way; these were intended partly to restore some material incentives to the production brigades and teams, partly to decentralize control, and partly to house families that had been reunited as household units. Political consequences were not inconsiderable.

In April 1959 Mao, who bore the chief responsibility for the Great Leap Forward fiasco, stepped down from his position as chairman of the People's Republic. The National People's Congress elected Liu Shaoqi as Mao's successor, though Mao remained chairman of the CCP. Moreover, Mao's Great Leap Forward policy came under open criticism at a party conference at Lushan ( ), Jiangxi Province. The attack was led by Minister of National Defense Peng Dehuai ( ), who had become troubled by the potentially adverse effect Mao's policies would have on the modernization of the armed forces. Peng argued that "putting politics in command" was no substitute for economic laws and realistic economic policy; unnamed party leaders were also admonished for trying to "jump into communism in one step." After the Lushan showdown, Peng Dehuai, who allegedly had been encouraged by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to oppose Mao, was deposed. Peng was replaced by Lin Biao ( ), a radical and opportunist Maoist. The new defense minister initiated a systematic purge of Peng's supporters from the military. Militancy on the domestic front was echoed in external policies.

The "soft" foreign policy based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence to which China had subscribed in the mid-1950s gave way to a "hard" line in 1958. From August through October of that year, the Chinese resumed a massive artillery bombardment of the Nationalist-held offshore islands of Jinmen ( Chin-men in Wade Giles but often referred to as Kinmen or Quemoy) and Mazu ( Ma-tsu in Wade-Giles). This was accompanied by an aggressive propaganda assault on the United States and a declaration of intent to "liberate" Taiwan. Chinese control over Xizang had been reasserted in 1950. The socialist revolution that took place thereafter increasingly became a process of sinicization for the Tibetans. Tension culminated in a revolt in 1958-59 and the flight to India by the Dalai Lama, the Tibetans' spiritual and de facto temporal leader. Relations with India--where sympathy for the rebels was aroused--deteriorated as thousands of Tibetan refugees crossed the Indian border.

There were several border incidents in 1959, and a brief Sino-Indian border war erupted in October 1962 as China laid claim to Aksai Chin, nearly 103,600 square kilometers of territory that India regarded as its own. The Soviet Union gave India its moral support in the dispute, thus contributing to the growing tension between Beijing and Moscow. The Sino-Soviet dispute of the late 1950s was the most important development in Chinese foreign relations. The Soviet Union had been China's principal benefactor and ally, but relations between the two were cooling. The Soviet agreement in late 1957 to help China produce its own nuclear weapons and missiles was terminated by mid-1959. From that point until the mid-1960s, the Soviets recalled all of their technicians and advisers from China and reduced or canceled economic and technical aid to China. The discord was occasioned by several factors.

The two countries differed in their interpretation of the nature of "peaceful coexistence." The Chinese took a more militant and unyielding position on the issue of anti-imperialist struggle, but the Soviets were unwilling, for example, to give their support on the Taiwan question. In addition, the two communist powers disagreed on doctrinal matters. The Chinese accused the Soviets of "revisionism"; the latter countered with charges of "dogmatism." Rivalry within the international communist movement also exacerbated Sino-Soviet relations. An additional complication was the history of suspicion each side had toward the other, especially the Chinese, who had lost a substantial part of territory to tsarist Russia in the mid-nineteenth century. Whatever the causes of the dispute, the Soviet suspension of aid was a blow to the Chinese scheme for developing industrial and high-level (including nuclear) technology. Readjustment and Recovery, 1961-65 In 1961 the political tide at home began to swing to the right, as evidenced by the ascendancy of a more moderate leadership.

In an effort to stabilize the economic front, for example, the party--still under Mao's titular leadership but under the dominant influence of Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun ( ), Peng Zhen ( ), Bo Yibo ( ), and others--initiated a series of corrective measures. Among these measures was the reorganization of the commune system, with the result that production brigades and teams had more say in their own administrative and economic planning. To gain more effective control from the center, the CCP reestablished its six regional bureaus and initiated steps aimed at tightening party discipline and encouraging the leading party cadres to develop populist-style leadership at all levels. The efforts were prompted by the party's realization that the arrogance of party and government functionaries had engendered only public apathy. On the industrial front, much emphasis was now placed on realistic and efficient planning; ideological fervor and mass movements were no longer the controlling themes of industrial management. Production authority was restored to factory managers. Another notable emphasis after 1961 was the party's greater interest in strengthening the defense and internal security establishment.

By early 1965 the country was well on its way to recovery under the direction of the party apparatus, or, to be more specific, the Central Committee's Secretariat headed by Secretary General Deng Xiaoping. China - The Great Leap Forward, 1958-60 The Great Leap Forward, 1958-60 China Table of Contents The antirightist drive was followed by a militant approach toward economic development. In 1958 the CCP launched the Great Leap Forward campaign under the new "General Line for Socialist Construction." The Great Leap Forward was aimed at accomplishing the economic and technical development of the country at a vastly faster pace and with greater results. The shift to the left that the new "General Line" represented was brought on by a combination of domestic and external factors. Although the party leaders appeared generally satisfied with the accomplishments of the First Five-Year Plan, they--Mao and his fellow radicals in particular-- believed that more could be achieved in the Second Five-Year Plan (1958-62) if the people could be ideologically aroused and if domestic resources could be utilized more efficiently for the simultaneous development of industry and agriculture.

These assumptions led the party to an intensified mobilization of the peasantry and mass organizations, stepped-up ideological guidance and indoctrination of technical experts, and efforts to build a more responsive political system. The last of these undertakings was to be accomplished through a new xiafang (down to the countryside) movement, under which cadres inside and outside the party would be sent to factories, communes, mines, and public works projects for manual labor and firsthand familiarization with grassroots conditions. Although evidence is sketchy, Mao's decision to embark on the Great Leap Forward was based in part on his uncertainty about the Soviet policy of economic, financial, and technical assistance to China. That policy, in Mao's view, not only fell far short of his expectations and needs but also made him wary of the political and economic dependence in which China might find itself . The Great Leap Forward centered on a new socioeconomic and political system created in the countryside and in a few urban areas--the people's communes.

By the fall of 1958, some 750,000 agricultural producers' cooperatives, now designated as production brigades, had been amalgamated into about 23,500 communes, each averaging 5,000 households, or 22,000 people. The individual commune was placed in control of all the means of production and was to operate as the sole accounting unit; it was subdivided into production brigades (generally coterminous with traditional villages) and production teams. Each commune was planned as a self-supporting community for agriculture, small-scale local industry (for example, the famous backyard pig-iron furnaces), schooling, marketing, administration, and local security (maintained by militia organizations). Organized along paramilitary and laborsaving lines, the commune had communal kitchens, mess halls, and nurseries. In a way, the people's communes constituted a fundamental attack on the institution of the family, especially in a few model areas where radical experiments in communal living-- large dormitories in place of the traditional nuclear family housing-- occurred.

(These were quickly dropped.) The system also was based on the assumption that it would release additional manpower for such major projects as irrigation works and hydroelectric dams, which were seen as integral parts of the plan for the simultaneous development of industry and agriculture. The Great Leap Forward was an economic failure. In early 1959, amid signs of rising popular restiveness, the CCP admitted that the favorable production report for 1958 had been exaggerated. Among the Great Leap Forward's economic consequences were a shortage of food (in which natural disasters also played a part); shortages of raw materials for industry; overproduction of poor-quality goods; deterioration of industrial plants through mismanagement; and exhaustion and demoralization of the peasantry and of the intellectuals, not to mention the party and government cadres at all levels. Throughout 1959 efforts to modify the administration of the communes got under way; these were intended partly to restore some material incentives to the production brigades and teams, partly to decentralize control, and partly to house families that had been reunited as household units. Political consequences were not inconsiderable.

In April 1959 Mao, who bore the chief responsibility for the Great Leap Forward fiasco, stepped down from his position as chairman of the People's Republic. The National People's Congress elected Liu Shaoqi as Mao's successor, though Mao remained chairman of the CCP. Moreover, Mao's Great Leap Forward policy came under open criticism at a party conference at Lushan, Jiangxi Province. The attack was led by Minister of National Defense Peng Dehuai, who had become troubled by the potentially adverse effect Mao's policies would have on the modernization of the armed forces. Peng argued that "putting politics in command" was no substitute for economic laws and realistic economic policy; unnamed party leaders were also admonished for trying to "jump into communism in one step." After the Lushan showdown, Peng Dehuai, who allegedly had been encouraged by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to oppose Mao, was deposed. Peng was replaced by Lin Biao, a radical and opportunist Maoist. The new defense minister initiated a systematic purge of Peng's supporters from the military. Militancy on the domestic front was echoed in external policies.

The "soft" foreign policy based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence to which China had subscribed in the mid-1950s gave way to a "hard" line in 1958. From August through October of that year, the Chinese resumed a massive artillery bombardment of the Nationalist-held offshore islands of Jinmen (Chin-men in Wade Giles but often referred to as Kinmen or Quemoy) and Mazu (Ma-tsu in Wade-Giles). This was accompanied by an aggressive propaganda assault on the United States and a declaration of intent to "liberate" Taiwan. Chinese control over Xizang had been reasserted in 1950. The socialist revolution that took place thereafter increasingly became a process of sinicization for the Tibetans. Tension culminated in a revolt in 1958-59 and the flight to India by the Dalai Lama, the Tibetans' spiritual and de facto temporal leader. Relations with India--where sympathy for the rebels was aroused--deteriorated as thousands of Tibetan refugees crossed the Indian border.

There were several border incidents in 1959, and a brief Sino-Indian border war erupted in October 1962 as China laid claim to Aksai Chin, nearly 103,600 square kilometers of territory that India regarded as its own. The Soviet Union gave India its moral support in the dispute, thus contributing to the growing tension between Beijing and Moscow. The Sino-Soviet dispute of the late 1950s was the most important development in Chinese foreign relations. The Soviet Union had been China's principal benefactor and ally, but relations between the two were cooling. The Soviet agreement in late 1957 to help China produce its own nuclear weapons and missiles was terminated by mid-1959. From that point until the mid-1960s, the Soviets recalled all of their technicians and advisers from China and reduced or canceled economic and technical aid to China. The discord was occasioned by several factors.

The two countries differed in their interpretation of the nature of "peaceful coexistence." The Chinese took a more militant and unyielding position on the issue of anti-imperialist struggle, but the Soviets were unwilling, for example, to give their support on the Taiwan question. In addition, the two communist powers disagreed on doctrinal matters. The Chinese accused the Soviets of "revisionism"; the latter countered with charges of "dogmatism." Rivalry within the international communist movement also exacerbated Sino-Soviet relations. An additional complication was the history of suspicion each side had toward the other, especially the Chinese, who had lost a substantial part of territory to tsarist Russia in the mid-nineteenth century. Whatever the causes of the dispute, the Soviet suspension of aid was a blow to the Chinese scheme for developing industrial and high-level (including nuclear) technology.

Custom Search Great Leap Forward (1958-1961) Great Leap Forward (1958-1961) The commune is like a gigantic dragon, production is visibly awe-inspiring, 1959 As a result of the successful economic reconstruction that had taken place in the early 1950s under the First Five Year Plan , the Party leadership headed by Mao Zedong considered the conditions ripe for a Great Leap Forward (大跃进, Dayuejin) in early 1958. The Great Leap was not merely a bold economic project. It was also intended to show the Soviet Union that the Chinese approach to economic development was more vibrant, and ultimately would be more successful, than the Soviet model that had been followed studiously until then. Brave the wind and the waves, everything has remarkable abilities, 1958 The Chinese people were to go all out in a concerted effort to surpass England in 15 (or even less) years and to make the transition from socialism to communism at the same time, thereby leaving the Soviet Union far behind.

That, at least, was the plan, which brought to an abrupt stop the earlier, more cautious attempts to sustain the speed of China's recovery and further development by Five Year Plans . The more radical members of the leadership tried to outdo each other with more and more unrealistic calls for "greater, faster, better, [and] cheaper" production. The characters for this call are emblazoned on the sails of the ship in the poster below. The poster also tries to impress on the population how all this will improve their welfare, as opposed to that of the Taiwanese , who are shown in the right-hand corner as suffering under the GMD-regime and the presence of Americans . Go all out and aim high. The East leaps forward, the West is worried, 1958 On the basis of an exaggerated belief in the power of ideology on human consciousness, the radicals were convinced that by putting "politcs in command", the objective difficulties created by lagging industrialisation and mechanisation could be overcome in a relatively short time. By relying on willpower, and by giving supremacy to the human, subjective dimensions of history, the people would be able to bring about a quick transformation of the concrete obstacles they encountered in the physical world.

To mobilize this willpower, the Great Leap Forward, obviously, was accompanied by a concerted propaganda effort, the depth and breadth of which had hitherto not been seen. Put organizations on a military footing, put actions on a war footing, put life on a collective footing, 1958 The Great Leap Forward took two forms: a mass steel campaign, and the formation of the people's communes (人民公社, renmín gongshe). On the one hand, all the people in the country were organized to help produce the amount of steel that was needed to attain the goal of surpassing England. Life was militarized for this battle for steel. Everywhere, small backyard furnaces were built, where everybody pitched in in around-the-clock shifts. Quota for the collection of used iron had to be met, cooking pots were smashed, door handles were melted down in order to meet the production demands. Only later it became clear that the quality of this mass-produced people's steel was so poor that no use could be found for it. The effects of this production battle proved to be disastrous for the environment. On the poster below, rows of such small backyard furnaces can be seen.

Everybody is fully occupied in production, the trade sector is also fully occupied for everybody, 1958 In the countryside, the various forms of rural cooperatives were merged into huge people's communes. Rural life was completely collectivized, including mess halls where free food was supplied. Due to the excessive zeal of local officials, who were whipped up in the general atmosphere of enthusiasm while at the same time afraid to be branded as laggards, production figures that were unrealistic to begin with, were fixed higher and higher. Moreover, because everybody was involved in the battle to produce steel, labor power was lacking to bring in the harvests. If these amounts of food really could have been harvested, as the enthusiastic reports had promised, "communism was just around the corner", as the general belief in the autumn of 1958 seemed to be. Strike the battle drum of the Great Leap Forward ever louder, 1959 By early 1959, it became clear that things were running out of hand. As a result of the massive production drives in steel and agriculture, both the production and transport sectors had become severely dislocated.

The reality of the Great Leap Forward corresponded less and less with the picture painted in the reports to the leadership. Some leaders, including Chen Yun , started to express cautious warnings about the results of this "fever in the brain" which held China in its sway, while the more radical officials continued to proclaim imaginary victories in production. Crossing the Yellow River while sitting in a peanut, 1958 Dissatisfaction climaxed at the Lushan Plenum in July 1959. Originally, the meeting was intended to reign in the "leftism" of the movement, but it turned into a showdown between proponents of the movement (headed by Mao) and opponents (inadvertently headed by Minister of Defense Peng Dehuai ). In a personal letter to Mao, Peng had criticized the extreme elements of the movement. Mao interpreted the letter as a personal attack and had it distributed for study and criticism by the other leaders present at Lushan. As a result of the Plenum, Peng was dismissed from his posts and replaced by Lin Biao . Instead of trying to find answers to the problems of the Great Leap, an anti-Rightist struggle was started.

Transform the Hai River, temper yourself, 1958 Despite the indications that the Great Leap had failed to reach its objectives, the movement continued to be upheld. During the celebrations of the Tenth Anniversary of the People's Republic in October 1959, the "General Line of the Great Leap Forward, the people's communes and the steel campaign" were reaffirmed. The movement turned into a disaster when in the period 1959-1961 China was struck by natural disasters. More than an estimated 30 to 40 million people died in the ensuing famine. Long live the General Line! Long live the Great Leap Forward! Long live the People's Communes!, 1964 Moreover, as a result of the break-up of the relations with the Soviet Union , China was confronted with total economic collapse. The readjustment of the economy started in 1961, and took place under the leadership of Liu Shaoqi , Deng Xiaoping , Chen Yun and others. Mao accepted the responsibility for the disasters and withdrew to Shanghai . From here, he plotted his return to the pinnacle of power, which resulted in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution .

[in Chinese] Jasper Becker, Hungry Ghosts - China's Secret Famine (New York: Henry Holt, 1998) Frank Dikötter, Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62 (London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2010) Li Rui, Lushan huiyi shilu [True Record of the Lushan Plenum] (Peking: Chunqiu chubanshe/Hunan jiaoyu chubanshe, 1989) [in Chinese] Li Zhisui, The Private Life of Chairman Mao - The Memoirs of Mao's Personal Physician (London, etc.: Random House, 1996) Roderick MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, Volume II: The Great Leap Forward, 1958-1960 (Columbia University Press, 1987) Roderick MacFarquhar, Timothy Cheek, Eugene Wu (eds), The Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao - From the Hundred Flowers to the Great Leap Forward (Cambridge, etc.: Harvard University Press

, 1989) Peter J.

Seybolt, Throwing the Emperor from His Horse - Portrait of a Village Leader in China, 1923-1995 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996) Frederick Teiwes and Warren Sun, China's Road to Disaster - Mao, Central Politicians, and Provincial Leaders in the Unfolding of the Great Leap Forward 1955-1959 (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1998) BBC - History - Mao Zedong z Mao Zedong, 1957 © Mao was a Chinese communist leader and founder of the People's Republic of China. He was responsible for the disastrous policies of the 'Great Leap Forward' and the 'Cultural Revolution'. Mao was born on 26 December 1893 into a peasant family in Shaoshan, in Hunan province, central China. After training as a teacher, he travelled to Beijing where he worked in the University Library. It was during this time that he began to read Marxist literature. In 1921, he became a founder member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and set up a branch in Hunan.

In 1923, the Kuomintang (KMT) nationalist party had allied with the CCP to defeat the warlords who controlled much of northern China. Then in 1927, the KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek launched an anti-communist purge. Mao and other communists retreated to south east China. In 1934, after the KMT surrounded them, Mao led his followers on the 'Long March', a 6,000 mile journey to northwest China to establish a new base. The Communists and KMT were again temporarily allied during eight years of war with Japan (1937-1945), but shortly after the end of World War Two, civil war broke out between them. The Communists were victorious, and on 1 October 1949 Mao proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Chiang Kai-shek fled to the island of Taiwan. Mao and other Communist leaders set out to reshape Chinese society. Industry came under state ownership and China's farmers began to be organised into collectives. All opposition was ruthlessly suppressed. The Chinese initially received significant help from the Soviet Union, but relations soon began to cool.

In 1958, in an attempt to introduce a more 'Chinese' form of communism, Mao launched the 'Great Leap Forward'. This aimed at mass mobilisation of labour to improve agricultural and industrial production. The result, instead, was a massive decline in agricultural output, which, together with poor harvests, led to famine and the deaths of millions. The policy was abandoned and Mao's position weakened. In an attempt to re-assert his authority, Mao launched the 'Cultural Revolution' in 1966, aiming to purge the country of 'impure' elements and revive the revolutionary spirit. One-and-a-half million people died and much of the country's cultural heritage was destroyed. In September 1967, with many cities on the verge of anarchy, Mao sent in the army to restore order. Mao appeared victorious, but his health was deteriorating. His later years saw attempts to build bridges with the United States, Japan and Europe. In 1972, US President Richard Nixon visited China and met Mao. Mao died on 9 September 1976.

Question: Who announced his ‘Great Leap Forward’ in 1958?
Answer: Mao Tse Tung