Editing Great Leap Forward (section)

===Impact on the government===
{{See also|Seven Thousand Cadres Conference}}
Officials were prosecuted for exaggerating production figures, although punishments varied. In one case, a provincial party secretary was dismissed and prohibited from holding higher office. A number of county-level officials were publicly tried and executed.<ref>Friedman, Edward; Pickowicz, Paul G.; Selden, Mark; and Johnson, Kay Ann (1993). ''Chinese Village, Socialist State''. Yale University Press. p.&nbsp;243. {{ISBN|0300054289}} / As seen in [https://books.google.com/books?id=GN2cXHxg_6oC&pg=PA243 Google Book Search].</ref>

Mao stepped down as State Chairman of the PRC on 27 April 1959, but remained CCP Chairman. Liu Shaoqi (the new PRC Chairman) and reformist [[Deng Xiaoping]] (CCP General Secretary) were left in charge to change policy to bring economic recovery. Mao's Great Leap Forward policy was openly criticized at the [[Lushan Conference|Lushan party conference]] by one person. Criticism from Minister of National Defense [[Peng Dehuai]], who, discovered that people from his home province starved to death caused him to write a letter to Mao to ask for the policies to be adapted.<ref name="Guardian2012" /> After the Lushan showdown, Mao replaced Peng with [[Lin Biao]] and Peng was sent off into obscurity.<ref name="Guardian2012" />

However, by 1962, it was clear that the party had changed away from the extremist ideology that led to the Great Leap. During 1962, the party held a number of conferences and rehabilitated most of the deposed comrades who had criticized Mao in the aftermath of the Great Leap. The event was again discussed, with much [[self-criticism]], and the contemporary government called it a "serious [loss] to our country and people" and blamed the [[cult of personality]] of Mao.{{citation needed|date=July 2024}}

At the Lushan conference of 1959, Peng Dehuai, one of the great marshals of the Chinese civil war against the nationalists, was a strong supporter of the Leap. But the discovery that people from his own home area were starving to death prompted him to write to Mao to ask for the policies to be adapted. Mao was furious, reading the letter out in public and demanding that his colleagues in the leadership line up either behind him or Peng. Almost to a man, they supported Mao, with his security chief Kang Sheng declaring of the letter: "I make bold to suggest that this cannot be handled with lenience."{{citation needed|date=July 2024}}

In particular, at the ''[[Seven Thousand Cadres Conference]]'' in January–February 1962, Mao made a [[self-criticism]] and re-affirmed his commitment to [[democratic centralism]]. In the years that followed, Mao mostly abstained from the operations of government, making policy largely the domain of Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. Maoist ideology took a back seat in the CCP, until Mao launched the [[Cultural Revolution]] in 1966 which marked his political comeback.{{citation needed|date=July 2024}}

Following the failures of the Great Leap Forward, Chinese leadership slowed the pace of industrialization, focusing more on the development of China's already more developed coastal areas and the production of consumer goods.{{sfnp|Meyskens|2020|p=3}} Thus, during the preliminary formulation of the Third Five Year Plan (which had been delayed due to the economic turmoil),<ref>{{Cite journal |last=W. K. |date=Jan–Mar 1966 |title=China's Third Five-Year Plan |journal=The China Quarterly |issue=25 |pages=171–175 |jstor=3082101}}</ref> Liu stated:{{sfnp|Meyskens|2020|p=51}}

{{Blockquote|text=In the past, the infrastructure battlefront was too long. There were too many projects. Demands were too high and rushed. Designs were done badly, and projects were hurriedly begun ... We only paid attention to increasing output and ignored quality. We set targets too highly. We must always remember these painful learning experiences.}}

During the discussion of the Third Five Year Plan, Mao made similar statements about the Great Leap Forward having "extended the infrastructure battlefront too long", acknowledging that it was "best to do less and well".{{sfnp|Meyskens|2020|p=56}}

The failures of the Great Leap Forward also informed the government's approach to the [[Third Front (China)|Third Front]] construction campaign which followed a few years later and which built basic industry and national defense industry in China's interior.{{sfnp|Meyskens|2020|p=9}} Rather than adopting the Great Leap Forward's approach of locally developed projects, the mass mobilizations of the Third Front were centrally planned.{{sfnp|Meyskens|2020|pp=10–12}}

In addition, according to historian Philipp Brigham, the failures of the Great Leap Forward significantly contributed to the Cultural Revolution, which is another pivotal event in modern Chinese politics that happened later in Chairman Mao's regime. Specifically, he posits that one of the main objectives of the Cultural Revolution was to extricate Chairman Mao and the [[Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party]] from the responsibility for the Great Leap Forward.<ref name="Bridgham1967">{{Cite journal |last=Bridgham |first=Philip |year=1967 |title=Mao's "Cultural Revolution": Origin and Development |journal=The China Quarterly |issue=29 |pages=5 |jstor=651587}}</ref> According to Brigham's explanation, Chairman Mao and the central committee tried to incite through the Cultural Revolution that the Great Leap Forward had failed despite the right direction from above due to inadequate leadership of the local cadres.<ref name="Bridgham1967" />