Great Leap Forward Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
- The Great Leap Forward also refers to a hypothesized stage in human evolution.
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2 The Great Leap Forward 3 The outcome 4 See also |
During the 1950s, the Chinese had carried out a program of land distribution coupled with industrialization under state ownership with grudging technical assistance from the Soviet Union. By the mid-1950s the situation in mainland China had somewhat stabilised, and the immediate threat from the wars in Korea (U.S) and Vietnam (France) had receded. People perceived as capitalists by the new leadership had been expropriated in 1952-1953, members of the left-wing opposition imprisoned at the same time, and the remaining Kuomintang on the mainland had been eliminated. For the first time in generations, China seemed to have a strong and stable national government.
However, Mao Zedong had become alarmed by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's term since the Twentieth Congress. He perceived that far from "catching up and overtaking" the West, the Soviet economy was being allowed to fall behind. Uprisings had taken place in East Germany, Poland and Hungary, and the USSR was seeking "Peaceful Co-existence" with what the Chinese regarded as imperialist Western powers. These policies meant for Mao that the PRC had to be prepared to "go it alone."
The Great Leap Forward borrowed elements from the history of the USSR in a uniquely Chinese combination. Collectivisation from the USSR's "Third Period;" Stakhanovism from the early 1930s; the "people's guards" Khrushchev had created in 1959; and the uniquely Chinese policy of establishing communes as relatively self-sufficient economic units, incorporating light industry and construction projects.
It was thought that through collectivisation and mass labor, China's steel production would surpass that of the United Kingdom only 15 years after the start of the "leap."
An experimental commune was established in Henan early in 1958, and soon spread throughout the country. The entire population was mobilised to produce one commodity, symbolic of industrialisation—steel.
The hope was to industrialise by making use of the massive supply of cheap labor and avoid having to import heavy machinery. Small backyard steel furnaces were built in every commune while peasants produced "turds" of cast iron made out of scrap. Sometimes even factories, schools and hospitals abandoned their work to smelt iron. Simultaneously, the peasants were collectivised.
The Great Leap Forward is now widely seen both within China and outside as a major economic disaster. As inflated statistics reached planning authorities, orders were given to divert human resources into industry rather than agriculture. Various Western and Eastern sources put the death toll at about 20-30 million people, with majority of the deaths owed to starvation. It is believed to have been the greatest famine in history.
The Chinese economy initially grew, and iron production increased 45% in 1958 and a combined 30% over the next two years, but plummeted in 1961, and would not reach the level it was at in 1958 until 1964. Though the three years during which the famine were once known as the Three Years of Natural Disasters, they are also known as the Great Leap Famine, although this name is now rarely used in China because it is acknowledged that the disasters were less rooted in natural events than bad economic planning.
Despite the risks to their careers, some Communist Party members openly laid blame for the disaster at the feet of the Party leadership and took it as proof that China must rely more on education, acquiring technical expertise and applying bourgeois methods in developing the economy. It was principally to crush this opposition that Mao launched his Cultural Revolution in early 1966.
After the death of Mao and the start of Chinese economic reform under Deng Xiaoping, the tendency within the Chinese government was to see the Great Leap Forward as a major economic disaster and to attribute it to the cult of personality under Mao Zedong and to regard it as one of the serious errors he made after the founding of the People's Republic of China.
This is an Article on Great Leap Forward. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Great Leap Forward Historical Background
The Great Leap Forward
The outcome
See also