Great Leap Forward

Great Leap Forward
Rural workers smelting iron during the nighttime in 1958
Native name 大跃进
Date1958–1962
LocationChina
TypeFamine, economic mismanagement
CauseCentral planning, collectivization policies
MotiveEconomic collectivisation of agriculture, realisation of socialism
Deaths15–55 million
Great Leap Forward
"Great Leap Forward" in Simplified (top) and Traditional (bottom) Chinese characters
Simplified Chinese大跃进
Traditional Chinese大躍進

The Great Leap Forward was an economic and social campaign within the People's Republic of China (PRC) from 1958 to 1962, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Party Chairman Mao Zedong launched the campaign to reconstruct the country from an agrarian economy into an industrialized society through the formation of people's communes. Mao decreed that efforts to multiply grain yields and bring industry to the countryside should be increased. Local officials were fearful of Anti-Rightist Campaigns and they competed to fulfill or over-fulfill quotas which were based on Mao's exaggerated claims, collecting non-existent "surpluses" and leaving farmers to starve to death. Higher officials did not dare to report the economic disaster which was being caused by these policies, and national officials, blaming bad weather for the decline in food output, took little or no action. Millions of people died in China during the Great Leap, with estimates ranging from 15 to 55 million, making the Great Chinese Famine the largest or second-largest[1] famine in human history.[2][3][4]

The major changes which occurred in the lives of rural Chinese people included the incremental introduction of mandatory agricultural collectivization. Private farming was prohibited, and those people who engaged in it were persecuted and labeled counter-revolutionaries. Restrictions on rural people were enforced with public struggle sessions and social pressure, and forced labor was also exacted from people.[5] Rural industrialization, while officially a priority of the campaign, saw "its development ... aborted by the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward".[6] The Great Leap was one of two periods between 1953 and 1976 in which China's economy shrank.[7] Economist Dwight Perkins argues that "enormous amounts of investment only produced modest increases in production or none at all. ... In short, the Great Leap [Forward] was a very expensive disaster".[8]

In 1959, Mao Zedong ceded day-to-day leadership to pragmatic moderates like Chinese President Liu Shaoqi and Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping, and the CCP studied the damage that was done at conferences which it held in 1960 and 1962, especially at the "Seven Thousand Cadres Conference". Mao did not retreat from his policies; instead, he blamed problems on bad implementation and "rightists" who opposed him. He initiated the Socialist Education Movement in 1963 and the Cultural Revolution in 1966 in order to remove opposition and re-consolidate his power. In addition, dozens of dams constructed in Zhumadian, Henan, during the Great Leap Forward collapsed in 1975 (under the influence of Typhoon Nina) and resulted in the 1975 Banqiao Dam failure, with estimates of its death toll ranging from tens of thousands to 240,000.[9][10]

  1. ^ Kte'pi, Bill (2011), "Chinese Famine (1907)", Encyclopedia of Disaster Relief, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc., pp. 70–71, doi:10.4135/9781412994064, ISBN 978-1412971010, The Chinese Famine of 1907 is the second-worst famine in recorded history, with an estimated death toll of around 25 million people; this exceeds the lowest estimates for the death toll of the later Great Chinese Famine, meaning that the 1907 famine could actually be the worst in history.
  2. ^ Smil, Vaclav (18 December 1999). "China's great famine: 40 years later". BMJ: British Medical Journal. 319 (7225): 1619–1621. doi:10.1136/bmj.319.7225.1619. ISSN 0959-8138. PMC 1127087. PMID 10600969.
  3. ^ Meng, Xin; Qian, Nancy; Yared, Pierre (2015). "The Institutional Causes of China's Great Famine, 1959–1961" (PDF). Review of Economic Studies. 82 (4): 1568–1611. doi:10.1093/restud/rdv016. Archived (PDF) from the original on 5 March 2020. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
  4. ^ Hasell, Joe; Roser, Max (10 October 2013). "Famines". Our World in Data. Archived from the original on 18 April 2020. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference mirsky was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Perkins, Dwight (1991). "China's Economic Policy and Performance" Archived 2019-02-26 at the Wayback Machine. Chapter 6 in The Cambridge History of China, Volume 15, ed. by Roderick MacFarquhar, John K. Fairbank and Denis Twitchett. Cambridge University Press.
  7. ^ GDP growth in China 1952–2015 Archived 2013-07-16 at the Wayback Machine The Cultural Revolution was the other period during which the economy shrank.
  8. ^ Perkins (1991). pp. 483–486 for quoted text, p. 493 for growth rates table.
  9. ^ "1975年那个黑色八月(上)(史海钩沉)". Renmin Wang (in Chinese). Archived from the original on 6 May 2020. Retrieved 25 March 2020.
  10. ^ IChemE. "Reflections on Banqiao". Institution of Chemical Engineers. Retrieved 25 March 2020.

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