The Great Leap Forward and its Impact

Background

• 1949: Communist Party of China wins Civil War
  • Leader: Mao Zedong
  • Aim: Transform China's traditional, politically weak, and under-industrialized society

First Five-Year Plan (1952)

• Modeled after Soviet Industrialization
  • Focus on heavy industry
  • Problem: Insufficient industrial workforce
  • Low agricultural productivity; insufficient food for industrial expansion

Shift to Rural Areas

• Traditional rural society
  • Family-based farming
  • Land reforms redistributed land from rich landowners to peasants
  • Collectivization began

Second Five-Year Plan (1958) – The Great Leap Forward

• Rejected Soviet model
  • Decentralized agricultural and political decisions
  • Emphasis on political ideology over technical expertise
• Goals
  • Increase agricultural surplus to support urban industrial workforce
  • Mobilize rural labor for industrial production
• Establishment of large-scale communes
  • Collectivized farms: end of individual small holdings
  • Communal living, childcare, and elderly care to free up labor

Implementation and Initial Success

• Propaganda to garner support
• Communes provided communal kitchens, childcare, and “houses of happiness” for elderly
• Policy titled “Walking on Two Legs”
  • Rural workers drafted into countryside factories
  • Backyard furnaces for steel production
• Target: Increase steel production from 5 million tons to 100 million tons by 1962

Internal Issues and Ecological Impact

• Good weather in 1958 masked problems
  • High agricultural production led to overoptimism
  • Inadequate stockpiles for winter
  • Lack of incentive in large communes
  • Transport and supply chain issues
• Low-quality, unusable steel production
• Ecological imbalance from killing sparrows
  • Surge in crop-eating insects
  • Harmful deep plowing practices

Consequences

• Political purges against critics
  • Officials continued supporting Great Leap Forward despite failures
• Starvation due to overzealous grain requisitioning
  • Severe droughts and floods in 1959 and 1960 worsened situation
• Widespread famine and starvation
  • People resorted to extreme measures: eating animals, lime plaster, tree bark, even cannibalism
  • Mao continued grain exports; refused foreign aid

Death Toll and Aftermath

• Estimated deaths: 18-45 million
• Mao blamed but remained Party Chairman
  • Policy and economic decisions taken over by others by 1962
  • Scaling back of communes
  • Permitted individual farming
  • Increased incentives for industrial workers
• Mao retained power and initiated Cultural Revolution in 1966