- The
Great Leap Forward of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was an economic
and social campaign by the Communist Party of China (CPC) from 1958 to
1961. The campaign was led by Mao Zedong and aimed to rapidly transform
the country from an agrarian economy into a socialist society through
rapid industrialization and collectivization. The campaign caused the
Great Chinese Famine.
- Chief
changes in the lives of rural Chinese included the introduction of a
mandatory process of agricultural collectivization, which was introduced
incrementally. Private farming was prohibited, and those engaged in it
were labeled as counter-revolutionaries and persecuted. Restrictions on
rural people were enforced through public struggle sessions, and social
pressure, although people also experienced forced labor. Rural
industrialization, officially a priority of the campaign, saw “its
development … aborted by the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward.
- On
the communes, a number of radical and controversial agricultural
innovations were promoted at the behest of Mao.The policies included close
cropping, whereby seeds were sown far more densely than normal on the
incorrect assumption that seeds of the same class would not compete with
each other
- Substantial
effort was expended during the Great Leap Forward on large-scale, but
often poorly planned capital construction projects, such as irrigation
works often built without input from trained engineers.
- Mao
saw grain and steel production as the key pillars of economic development.
He forecast that within 15 years of the start of the Great Leap, China’s
steel production would surpass that of the UK. In the August 1958
Politburo meetings, it was decided that steel production would be set to
double within the year, most of the increase coming through backyard steel
furnaces.During this rapid expansion, coordination suffered and material
shortages were frequent, resulting in “a huge rise in the wage bill,
largely for construction workers, but no corresponding increase in
manufactured goods.”Facing a massive deficit, the government cut
industrial investment from 38.9 to 7.1 billion yuan from 1960 to 1962 (an
82% decrease; the 1957 level was 14.4 billion)
Backyard
furnaces:
- With
no personal knowledge of metallurgy, Mao encouraged the establishment of
small backyard steel furnaces in every commune and in each urban
neighborhood.Huge efforts on the part of peasants and other workers were
made to produce steel out of scrap metal.
To fuel the furnaces the local
environment was denuded of trees and wood taken from the doors and furniture of
peasants’ houses. Pots, pans, and other metal artifacts were requisitioned to
supply the “scrap” for the furnaces so that the wildly optimistic production
targets could be met. Many of the male agricultural workers were diverted from
the harvest to help the iron production as were the workers at many factories,
schools and even hospitals.
Although the output consisted of
low quality lumps of pig iron which was of negligible economic worth, Mao had a
deep distrust of intellectuals and faith in the power of the mass mobilization
of the peasants.
Mao visited traditional steel
works in Manchuria in January 1959 where he found out that high quality steel could
only be produced in large-scale factories using reliable fuel such as coal.
However, he decided not to order a halt to the backyard steel furnaces so as
not to dampen the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses. The program was only
quietly abandoned much later in that year.
Failure
of Great Leap Forward:
- The
amount of labour diverted to steel production and construction projects
meant that much of the harvest was left to rot uncollected in some areas.
Although actual harvests were reduced, local officials, under tremendous
pressure from central authorities to report record harvests in response to
the innovations, competed with each other to announce increasingly
exaggerated results. These were used as a basis for determining the amount
of grain to be taken by the State to supply the towns and cities, and to
export. This left barely enough for the peasants, and in some areas,
famine and starvation set in.
- The
exact number of famine deaths is difficult to determine, and estimates
range from 18 to upwards of 42 million people. Also at least 2.5 million
people were beaten or tortured to death and 1 to 3 million committed
suicide.
- The
years of the Great Leap Forward in fact saw economic regression, with 1958
through 1962 being the only period between 1953 and 1985 in which China’s
economy shrank. Enormous amounts of investment produced only modest
increases in production or none at all.The Great Leap was a very expensive
disaster.
- In
subsequent conferences in March 1960 and May 1962, the negative effects of
the Great Leap Forward were studied by the CPC, and Mao was criticized in
the party conferences. Moderate Party members like Liu Shaoqi and Deng
Xiaoping rose to power, and Mao was marginalized within the party, leading
him to initiate the Cultural Revolution in 1966.
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