(Great review of Great Leap forward/ the first 5 year plan a little too)
Prelude to Great Leap Forward
- People losing "fire" of original revolution
- 1958- Mao said transition to socialism was complete and it was time for the transition to communism
- Sino-Soviet relations strained and China wanted to prove
- 1958-1963-Great Leap Forward (Second 5 year plan)
- Focus on development of agriculture and Heavy industry
- Introduced with great fanfares
- Quotas constantly changed, plucked from thin air (not based on economic research)
- Stressed acts of faith in communism
- Goal: "To overcome all capatalist Countries in a fairly short time, and become one of the richest most advanced countries in the world" -Mao (Moscow 1957)
- SOviet Union rapidly advancing
- Sputnik, 1957
- Soviet economic achievement
- China wanted self reliance & its own economic/technological advancements
- Farming
- Small units of land
- No farm machinery or fertilizers (old fashioned methods)
- Many peasants would often leave their farm for military duties
- Industry
- Years of war= widespread damage to industry
- outdated machines
- Lack of investments
- Infrastructure damaged
- Inequalities between rich and poor
Mao's Reform plan in the Great Leap forward
- Industry: The "Backyard" Steel campaign
- Extreme Communist lifestyle
- Communes
- Heavy Industry
- Chemical Fertilizers
- Cement
- Oil
- Steel
- Iron
- Coal
- "Incentives" offered (food raitons, better apartment, better schools for kids, ect.) for workers who met quotas
- Mao wanted to achieve space exploration ("Lift off") in China
- Collectivized peasants would create a food surplus
- Surplus sold to pay for industry reform
- Believed manpower war the key to industrial development
- focus on big projects
- Believed that effort and output of each worker could be increased
- The Emperor of the Blues ants
- Thousands of Mechanical diggers
- all wore Blue uniforms
- Helped construct Bridges, Dams, Canals
- 1957-1959 Tienanmen Square Built
- Made to be bigger than Moscow's Red Square
- Ming Tombs reservoir outside Beijing
- Dug for half an hour
- Propaganda stunt
- Two great (Figurative) soldiers
- "General Steel"
- "General Grain"
- Backyard Furnaces:
- National movement to build small furnaces in backyard
- Mao believed this would achieve goal of industrial development
- 100's of families made quotas for home-made steel
- Very low quality steel
- Home-made goods= unrecognizable blobs
- Steel unusable in any practical way
- lots of effort, little substance
- Huge environmental effort
- Deforestation of China
- "Backyard furnaces" fueled environmental destruction
- State Owned enterprises (SOE's)
- Notion of centrally controlled industry
- No profit-making concerns
- No bargaining
- Wages, prices, quotas: all set by the state
- Total Government direction
- Failure of SOE's
- Inefficient
- SOE’s were given state subsidies
- Workers received guaranteed wages
- No motivation for managers or workers
- No initiative
- Payment the same
- Shi Man Tam Reservoir
- 25,000 Peasant workers
- Organized into "People's Communes" that ate, slept & worked together
- Workers exhausted from little food & long, intensive work days
- 1958- Good year for harvest
- Resulted in Unrealistically high quotas for the next year
- Enthusiastically embraced by commune officials
Great Leap Forward- Communes
- Peasants organized into huge Communes (approx. 24,000 across China)
- They ate, slept, and worked together
- Commune officials took detailed noted on exactly who did what/ how much work
- State Quotas demanded of each commune
- Individuals paid in "work points"
- used at commune store for food, clothes, ect.
- "Amenities"
- Canteen- fed everyone
- nurseries- looked after children
- "Happy Homes"- for the elderly
- 1958- All communes should produce steel via "backyard steel furnaces"
- Crop Expiramentation
- Lysenkoism- "close planting" was supposed to increase yield- it didn;t
- Sparrowwide- they killed all the birds to get rid of crop predators, but then all the birds were dead and there were a lot of bugs
- 1958 CCP conference at Wuhan
- Attempts to decrease radicalism in communes
- Re-establish the party's control over local officials
Effects/ Problems of Great Leap Forward
"Three Bitter Years"
- Economic problems & Famine
- Communes did not meet grain quotas
- State still took promised amount of grain
- Little food left over for peasants to eat
- killed hundreds of thousands of people
- Cannibalism became an issue in the heart of famine stricken starvation
- Droughts & Flood
- Destroyed much of the next 3 years of harvest ('59-'69)
- Fraudulence
- Even with bad harvests, commune officials reported high production levels to meet quotas
- Death Toll: Estimated: 20- 30 million in three years
Peng De Huai's Opposition
- July 1959- CCP's central committee gathered @ Lushan for a conference to asses "Great Leap"
- Control of the PLA, Future of the communes, & Mao's
- Mao addmited his mistakes and acknowledged his short fallings but did not change anything
- Peng De Huai
- "Old Revolutionary"
- commrade of Mao's for over 30 years
- respected soldier
- Minister of defense
- He visited his home Provence of Hunan (next to Mao's Home province)
- Noted reality of the Great Leap Forwards
- Affected by poor conditions & Poverty
- Peng wrote private letter to Mao adressing issues
- Mao copied letter, distributed to central party
- Peng denounced
- Mao threatened to go back into a civil war against opponents
- Soviet denouncement of the great leap forward shortly after
- Peng had recently visited the Soviet Union
- Accusations that Peng was a soviet mole
- Stripped of office & exiled
- Lin Biao replaces Peng Duhuai
- Mao steps back and does not make many decisions for a few years after this
- Failure
- Nonetheless, after Lushan, Mao did nothing to correct the problems of the Great Leap. He withdrew from public life (resigning as President – or Chairman – of the PRC) and left his successor, Liu, and others to deal with the aftermath. The situation was also clearly worsened by the attitude of the state in promoting exaggerated targets, and collecting and selling grain needed by peasants.
- 1961 Mao resigns as chairman, leaving successor Liu in charge of the mess he created
- . Did the Great Leap achieve anything?
- Some successful flood and irrigation schemes were carried out as a result of the mass mobilisation of the Great Leap – although Jung Chang points out (“Mao: The Unknown Story”) that many of the reservoirs associated with these collapsed with disastrous consequences in later years. Women were brought into the work force for the first time – continuing the process of liberating women in China.
- What happened next?
- With Mao’s withdrawal, the control of economic life fell to his colleagues – notably Liu Shaoqi (now president) and Deng Xiaoping. In 1962 they began restoring private plots to peasants Communes were substantially reduced down Factory and industrial workers saw bonuses and incentives restored to help boost production.
- The retrenchment policies were influenced considerably by the observations and reports of respected Politburo member Chen Yun, in summer 1961 (see Spence, p.559) However, as the party pursued retrenchment, it was also becoming apparent that many rural cadres were abusing their positions (Spence, p.560-561).
- The concerns over corruption coincided with Mao’s increasing restlessness at being on the sidelines – he complained of being treated “like a dead ancestor”. The Socialist Education Campaign, established in 1962, was to be the vehicle for rooting out corrupt practices. It also ended up containing the seeds of the Cultural Revolution, and Mao’s return to supreme power.
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