The Great Leap Forward

Thursday 17 February 2011

China’s Great Leap Forward was an economic and social campaign of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aimed to modernize its economy through decisions made from 1958 to 1961. Mao Zedong led the campaign, using China's vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a communist society through the process of agriculturalization and industrialization.


Private farming was prohibited, and those engaged in it were labeled as counter revolutionaries and persecuted. Restrictions on rural people were enforced by social pressure, The Great Leap ended in catastrophe, resulting in tens of millions of deaths by starvation and violence. Described by ones as a policy based on coercion, terror, and systematic violence and by others a very expensive disaster, it "motivated one of the most deadly mass killings of human history.”

Mao was criticized and marginalized in the party conferences, leading him to initiate the Cultural Revolution in 1966. It is said that this disastrous policy is an economic disaster, in which 30% was nature’s fault and 70% human error.

Mao Zedong stated:

"Casualties have indeed appeared among workers, but it is not enough to stop us in our tracks. This is the price we have to pay, it's nothing to be afraid of. Who knows how many people have been sacrificed on the battlefields and in the prisons [for the revolutionary cause]? Now we have a few cases of illness and death: it's nothing!"

"When there is not enough to eat people starve to death. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill."

The great leap forward turned out to be a great leap into the abyss!
Daniela :)