Editing Great Leap Forward (section)

==Organizational and operational factors==
The Great Leap Forward campaign began during the period of the Second [[Five-year plans of China|Five Year Plan]] which was scheduled to run from 1958 to 1963, though the campaign itself was discontinued by 1961.<ref>Li, Kwok-sing (1995). ''A glossary of political terms of the People's Republic of China''. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Translated by Mary Lok. pp.&nbsp;47–48.</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Chan |first=Alfred L. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9pPxwn6EvR4C&pg=PA13 |title=Mao's crusade: politics and policy implementation in China's great leap forward |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-19-924406-5 |series=Studies on contemporary China |page=13 |access-date=20 October 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190612142616/https://books.google.com/books?id=9pPxwn6EvR4C&pg=PA13 |archive-date=12 June 2019 |url-status=live}}</ref> Mao unveiled the Great Leap Forward at a meeting in January 1958 in [[Nanjing]].

The Great Leap Forward was grounded in a logical theory of economic development and represented an unambiguous social invention.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Gabriel |first=Satya J. |year=1998 |title=Political Economy of the Great Leap Forward: Permanent Revolution and State Feudal Communes |url=https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/sgabriel/economics/china-essays/4.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210727092936/https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/sgabriel/economics/china-essays/4.html |archive-date=27 July 2021 |access-date=15 December 2021 |website=[[Mount Holyoke College]]}}</ref> The central idea behind the Great Leap was that China should "walk on two legs", by rapidly developing both heavy and light industry, urban and rural areas, and large and small scale labor.{{sfnp|Hou|2021|p=44}} The hope was to industrialize by making use of the massive supply of cheap labor and avoid having to import heavy machinery. The government also sought to avoid both social stratification and technical bottlenecks involved in the Soviet model of development, but sought political rather than technical solutions to do so. Distrusting technical experts,{{sfnp|Lieberthal|1987|p=301|loc="Thus, the [1957] Anti-Rightist Campaign in both urban and rural areas bolstered the position of those who believed that proper mobilization of the populace could accomplish tasks that the 'bourgeois experts' dismissed as impossible."}} Mao and the party sought to replicate the strategies used in its 1930s regrouping in [[Yan'an]] following the [[Long March]]: "mass mobilization, social leveling, attacks on bureaucratism, [and] disdain for material obstacles".{{sfnp|Lieberthal|1987|p=304}} In the absence of material development inputs, Mao sought to increase development through [[Voluntarism (philosophy)#Marxist context|voluntarism]] and organizational advantages brought about by socialism.{{sfnp|Qian|2024|p=148}} Mao advocated that a further round of collectivization modeled on the USSR's [[Third Period]] was necessary in the countryside where the existing collectives would be merged into huge people's communes.{{citation needed|date=July 2024}}, Since the country side was significantly poorer than the cities and the people were hands on workers. (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/430804).

===People's communes===
{{Main|People's commune}}
[[File:People's commone canteen3.jpg|thumb|A canteen in a people's commune, 1958]]
An experimental commune was established at Chayashan in [[Henan]] in April 1958. Here for the first time, private plots were entirely abolished and communal kitchens were introduced. At the [[Politburo of the Communist Party of China|Politburo]] meetings in August 1958, it was decided that these people's communes would become the new form of economic and political organization throughout rural China. By the end of the year, approximately 25,000 communes had been set up, with an average of 5,000 households each. The communes were relatively self-sufficient co-operatives where wages and money were replaced by work points.{{citation needed|date=July 2024}}

The commune system was aimed at maximizing production for provisioning the cities and constructing offices, factories, schools, and social insurance systems for urban-dwelling workers, cadres, and officials. Citizens in rural areas who criticized the system were labeled "dangerous". Later on, as more and more families linked together to form people's communes, peasants started to lose individual identities, since families were from vastly different communities with different cultural views, political views, family structures, and financial backgrounds, which created conflict regarding the means and modes of production. Some wealthier families who refused to join a people's commune might be labeled as rightists.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Cheng |first=Jingru |year=2022 |title=Collectivisation, paradox and resistance: The architecture of people's commune in china |journal=Journal of Architecture |volume=27 |issue=7–8 |pages=913–948 |doi=10.1080/13602365.2022.2158207 |doi-access=free}}</ref> Escape was also difficult or impossible, and those who attempted were subjected to "party-orchestrated public struggle", which further jeopardized their survival.{{sfnp|Thaxton|2008|p=3}} Besides agriculture, communes also incorporated some light industry and construction projects. Harvests did increase in 1958. However this was because of exceptional weather, not, which a lot of officials mistook, as the result of hard work of the peasants (collectivization lowered the efficiency of labour and increased overconsumption), causing officials to raise the projected quota. This led to famine in the countryside since they were required to reach set harvest goals, leaving not enough food for themselves.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kjeld Erik Brodsgaard, Koen Rutten |title=From Accelerated Accumulation to Socialist Market Economy in China Economic Discourse and Development from 1953 to the Present |date=2017 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=9789004330092 |pages=34–36}}</ref>

===Industrialization===
[[File:Carriages on the mine field.jpg|thumb|A minecart leading to the steel base, October 1957]]

Mao saw grain and steel production as the key pillars of economic development. He forecast that within 15 years of the start of the Great Leap, China's industrial output would surpass that of the UK. In the August 1958 Politburo meetings, it was decided that steel production would be set to double within the year, most of the increase coming through backyard steel furnaces.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Chan |first=Alfred L. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9pPxwn6EvR4C&pg=PA69 |title=Mao's Crusade: Politics and Policy Implementation in China's Great Leap Forward |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-19-155401-8 |pages=71–74 |access-date=15 November 2015}}</ref> Major investments in larger state enterprises were made: 1,587, 1,361 and 1,815 medium and large-scale state projects were started in 1958, 1959 and 1960 respectively, more in each year than in the first Five Year Plan.{{sfnp|Lardy|1987|p=367}}

Millions of Chinese became state workers as a consequence of this industrial investment: in 1958, 21 million were added to non-agricultural state payrolls, and total state employment reached a peak of 50.44 million in 1960, more than doubling the 1957 level; the urban population swelled by 31.24 million people.{{sfnp|Lardy|1987|p=368}} These new workers placed major stress on China's food-rationing system, which led to increased and unsustainable demands on rural food production.{{sfnp|Lardy|1987|p=368}} Those between the ages of sixteen and thirty were considered ideal candidates for the militia.{{citation needed|date=April 2024}} Peasants were working long hours, all year round, even contributed their own cooking utensils to be melted as a source of production.{{sfnp|Lieberthal|2003|p={{page needed|date=June 2024}}}}

The consequences of the Great Leap Forward were devastating, leading to one of the most severe famines in human history.{{sfnp|Ashton|Hill |Piazza|Zeitz|1984}} The policies that diverted labor from agriculture to industrial projects, such as backyard steel furnaces, resulted in a catastrophic drop in agricultural output; consequently, food shortages became widespread. According to demographic studies, the famine caused an estimated 15 to 45 million deaths, with rural areas being the hardest hit.{{sfnp|Ashton|Hill|Piazza|Zeitz|1984}} Ashton et al. (1984) highlight: "During the period 1958-62, about 30 million premature deaths occurred in China: deaths that occurred earlier than they would have on the basis of mortality trends for more normal years."{{sfnp|Ashton |Hill|Piazza|Zeitz|1984}}

During this rapid expansion, coordination suffered and material shortages were frequent, resulting in "a huge rise in the wage bill, largely for construction workers, but no corresponding increase in manufactured goods".{{sfnp|Lardy|1987|p=387}} Facing a massive deficit, the government cut industrial investment from {{CNY|38.9&nbsp;billion}} to {{CNY|7.1&nbsp;billion}} from 1960 to 1962 (an 82% decrease; the 1957 level was {{CNY|14.4&nbsp;billion}}).{{sfnp|Lardy|1987|p=387}} Partly due to misreporting, or corruption at every level of the government where they would over-report harvest and steel production, by the time people realized, it was too late to correct statistics without angering Mao.{{sfnp|Lieberthal|2003|p={{page needed|date=June 2024}}}}

===Backyard furnaces===
{{Main|Backyard furnace}}
[[File:Backyard furnace4.jpg|thumb|upright=0.75|Backyard furnaces in the countryside, 1958]]
The Great Leap Forward sought to revive folk technologies, including in the area of steel production.{{sfnp|Qian|2024|p=168}} [[Steel industry in China|China's steel industry]] faced a shortage of imported iron and calls to increase production of "native iron" had begun in 1956.{{sfnp|Qian|2024|p=168}} Efforts to improve steel production were a major focus of the Great Leap Forward.<ref name=":02" />{{Rp|page=234}} By mid-1958, the Chinese state began promoting indigenous metallurgical methods and the proliferation of "folk furnaces".{{sfnp|Qian|2024|p=168}} This was an effort to increase steel production without increased investment costs.<ref name=":02" />{{Rp|page=233}}

Although the 1958 national mobilization effort to produce steel reached its target if 10.7 million tons, more than 3 million of it was unusable.<ref name=":Zhu2">{{Cite book |last=Zhu |first=Tao |title=Red Legacies in China: Cultural Afterlives of the Communist Revolution |date=2016 |publisher=[[Harvard University Asia Center]] |isbn=978-0-674-73718-1 |editor-last=Li |editor-first=Jie |series=Harvard Contemporary China Series |volume= |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |chapter=Building Big With No Regret: From Beijing's "Ten Great Buildings" in the 1950s to China's Megaprojects Today |doi= |jstor= |editor-last2=Zhang |editor-first2=Enhua}}</ref>{{Rp|page=69}}

===Crop production experiments===
{{see also|Lysenkoism}}
[[File:People's daily 13 Aug 1958 .jpg|thumb|A ''[[People's Daily]]'' front-page report on 13 August 1958, that the Macheng Jianguo commune in Hubei had set a record in early rice]]

On the communes, a number of radical and controversial agricultural innovations were promoted at the behest of Mao. Many of these innovations were based on [[Lysenkoism|the ideas]] of now-discredited Soviet agronomist [[Trofim Lysenko]] and his followers. The policies included close cropping, whereby seeds were sown far more densely than normal on the incorrect assumption that seeds of the same class would not compete with each other. Yang provides data on the failure of close planting techniques, which reduced yields in Anhui from 400 jin per mu to less than 200 jin per mu due to overcrowded plants competing for nutrients and sunlight."{{sfnp|Yang|2012|p={{page needed|date=June 2024}}}}{{sfnp|Dikötter|2010|p=39}} [[Deep plowing]] was encouraged on the mistaken belief that this would yield plants with extra large root systems.{{Citation needed|date=March 2019}} Moderately productive land was left unplanted based on the belief that concentrating manure and effort on the most fertile land would lead to large productivity gains per-acre. Altogether, these untested innovations generally led to decreases in grain production rather than increases.{{sfnp|Hinton|1984|pp=[https://archive.org/details/shenfan00hint/page/236 236]–245}}

Meanwhile, local leaders were pressured into falsely reporting ever-higher grain production figures to their political superiors. Participants at political meetings remembered production figures being inflated up to 10 times their actual production amounts as the race to please superiors and win plaudits—like the chance to meet Mao himself—intensified. The state was later able to force many production groups to sell more grain than they could spare based on these false production figures.{{sfnp|Hinton|1984|pp=[https://archive.org/details/shenfan00hint/page/234 234]–240, 247–249}}

===Treatment of villagers===
[[File:Xinyang working at night.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|Commune members working fields at night using lamps]]
[[File:People's commune Nursery school.jpg|thumb|People's commune at a nursery school]]

The ban on [[private property|private holdings]] severely disrupted peasant life at its most basic level. Villagers were unable to secure enough food to go on living because they were deprived by the commune system of their traditional means of being able to rent, sell, or use their land as collateral for loans.<ref name="Mirsky2009" /> In one village, once the commune was operational, the Party boss and his colleagues "swung into manic action, herding villagers into the fields to sleep and to work intolerable hours, and forcing them to walk, starving, to distant additional projects".<ref name="Mirsky2009" />

Edward Friedman, political scientist, Paul Pickowicz, historian, and [[Mark Selden]], sociologist, wrote about the dynamic of interaction between the Party and villagers:
{{blockquote|Beyond attack, beyond question, was the systemic and structured dynamic of the socialist state that intimidated and impoverished millions of patriotic and loyal villagers.<ref>Friedman, Edward; Pickowicz, Paul G.; and Selden, Mark (2006). ''Revolution, Resistance, and Reform in Village China''. Yale University Press.</ref>}}

The authors present a similar picture to Thaxton in depicting the party's destruction of the traditions of Chinese villagers. Traditionally prized local customs were deemed signs of [[feudalism]] to be extinguished. "Among them were funerals, weddings, local markets, and festivals. The Party thus destroyed much that gave meaning to Chinese lives. These private bonds were social glue. To mourn and to celebrate is to be human. To share joy, grief, and pain is humanizing."<ref name="Mirsky2006">{{Cite magazine |last=Mirsky |first=Jonathan |date=11 May 2006 |title=China: The Shame of the Villages |url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2006/may/11/china-the-shame-of-the-villages/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151029192253/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2006/may/11/china-the-shame-of-the-villages/ |archive-date=29 October 2015 |magazine=The New York Review of Books |volume=53 |number=8}}</ref> Failure to participate in the CCP's political campaigns—though the aims of such campaigns were often conflicting—"could result in detention, torture, death, and the suffering of entire families".<ref name="Mirsky2006" />

Public [[struggle session]]s were often used to intimidate the peasants into obeying local officials; they increased the death rate of the famine in several ways. "In the first case, blows to the body caused internal injuries that, in combination with physical [[emaciation]] and acute hunger, could induce death." In one case, after a peasant stole two cabbages from the common fields, the thief was publicly criticized for half a day. He collapsed, fell ill, and never recovered. Others were sent to [[labor camp]]s.{{sfnp|Thaxton|2008|p=212}}

About 7% of those who died during the Great Leap Forward were tortured to death or summarily killed.<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Becker |first=Jasper |author-link=Jasper Becker |date=25 September 2010 |title=Systematic genocide |url=http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/6296363/part_2/systematic-genocide-.thtml |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120411230653/http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/6296363/part_2/systematic-genocide-.thtml |archive-date=11 April 2012 |magazine=[[The Spectator]]}}</ref> Benjamin Valentino notes that "communist officials sometimes tortured and killed those accused of failing to meet their grain quota".{{sfnp|Valentino|2004|p=128}}

However, J. G. Mahoney has said that "there is too much diversity and dynamism in the country for one work to capture&nbsp;... rural China as if it were one place." Mahoney describes an elderly man in rural [[Shanxi]] who recalls Mao fondly, saying "Before Mao we sometimes ate leaves, after liberation we did not." Regardless, Mahoney points out that Da Fo villagers recall the Great Leap Forward as a period of famine and death, and among those who survived in Da Fo were precisely those who could digest leaves.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Mahoney |first=Josef Gregory |year=2009 |title=Ralph A. Thaxton, Jr., ''Catastrophe and Contention in Rural China: Mao's Great Leap Forward, Famine and the Origins of Righteous Resistance in Da Fo Village'' |journal=Journal of Chinese Political Science |type=Book review |publisher=Springer |volume=14 |pages=319–320 |doi=10.1007/s11366-009-9064-8 |number=3}}</ref>