What is the Great Leap Forward?

The Great Leap Forward, a five-year plan of forced agricultural collectivization and rural industrialization implemented by the Chinese Communist Party in 1958, led to a significant economic contraction and 30 to 45 million deaths from starvation, execution, torture, forced labor, and suicide. It was the most considerable non-wartime mass murder effort ever.

Mao Zedong (Chair Mao) spearheaded the initiative. Mao aimed to swiftly transform China from an agricultural economy into a modern industrial civilization that could compete with Western industrialized nations.

Understand the Great Leap Forward

Mao unveiled the Great Leap Forward, a five-year plan to boost China’s economy, in 1958. He made the plan after seeing China and realizing the Chinese could do anything.

The plan aimed to collectivize agriculture and industrialize, with grain and steel manufacturing as core aims.

Agriculture

The Communist Party supervised production, resource allocation, and food distribution on collective farms, eradicating private-plot farming. The country soon adopted experimental, untested agricultural approaches and large-scale irrigation projects without engineering input.

These improvements reduced crop production due to unsuccessful trials and poorly built water systems. A statewide attempt to eradicate sparrows, which Mao wrongly believed were a major nuisance on grain fields, caused large locust swarms without sparrow predation. Grain output plummeted, and hundreds of thousands perished from forced labor and weather on irrigation building and community farming projects.

Famine spread over the countryside, killing millions. Some people ate tree bark and mud and cannibalized. Farmers who missed grain quotas sought to procure additional food or tried to flee and were beaten, physically mutilated, buried alive, scalded with hot water, and slaughtered with their families.

Industrialization

Urban regions saw large-scale governmental efforts to expand industrial production, and farmers and neighborhoods installed backyard steel furnaces. Steel production was to treble in the first year of the Great Leap Forward, and Mao predicted that China would surpass Britain within 15 years. Backyard steelmakers make worthless, low-quality pig iron. Disposing and melting metal tools, equipment, and household products fueled manufacturing.

Despite increased industrial investment and resource reallocation, manufacturing production did not grow due to planning and coordination errors and material shortages endemic in central economic planning.

Millions of “surplus” agricultural workers became steelworkers. Most males broke up families and left compulsory agricultural work for collective farms with women, children, and senior folks. Increased urban populations strained the food distribution system and forced communal farms to produce more grain for urban consumption. Due to misleading harvest data, collective farm administrators sent much of their grain to cities based on official requisitions.

While millions starved to death, China remained a net exporter of grain as Mao supervised grain exports and denied international food help to prove his plans were successful.

Great Leap Forward Effect

The Great Leap Forward failed miserably. Tens of millions died in a few years from famine, exposure, overwork, and execution. It separated men, women, and children and shattered traditional communities and lifestyles. Nonsensical farming techniques destroyed farmland and cut down trees for steel furnaces.

The 30–40% demolition of dwelling stock provided raw materials for collaborative projects. Industries used large amounts of capital goods and raw resources for projects that produced no finished items.

After three years of death and ruin, the Great Leap Forward ended in January 1961.

The Great Leap Forward Program’s Goal

The communist Chinese regime’s Great Leap Forward was a brief attempt to industrialize and collectivize its rural and agricultural sectors.

Great Leap Forward—What Happened?

The Great Leap Forward caused significant food shortages, famine, and hunger, killing tens of millions of Chinese.

Great Leap Forward Caused Famine?

Multiple circumstances caused this program’s failure. Bird control exacerbated insect populations that destroyed crops. Given China’s underdeveloped infrastructure, Great Leap Forward community farms had poor food distribution.

Overproduction of grain led to decay before delivery. The propensity to feed urbanites rather than rural peasants led to increased rural mortality rates.

How many died in the Great Leap Forward?

There is no definite quantity, but studies estimate 30–45 million deaths.

How Did the Great Leap Forward Affect China’s Economy?

Despite its social and human costs, China’s economy may have benefited from the Great Leap Forward’s irreversible transformation into a dominant industrial economy. China’s industrial, agricultural, investment, and construction production surged considerably after the program ended.

Bottom Line

The late 1950s and 1960s Great Leap Forward were China’s ambitious economic, urbanization, and industrialization initiatives. Unfortunately, the strategy failed. Mao Zedong’s disastrous attempt to convert small family farms into urbanized communes and encourage them into industrial production and away from agriculture killed 45 million people during the Great Leap Forward.

Conclusion

• Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party implemented the Great Leap Forward, a five-year economic plan, in 1958 and abandoned it in 1961.
• The idea was to modernize agriculture using communist economics.
• The Great Leap Forward caused enormous hunger and famine, not economic growth.
• Famine, execution, forced labor, and economic and environmental ruin killed 30–45 million Chinese.
• The Great Leap Forward is the greatest non-wartime mass massacre in history and a significant failure of socialism and economic central planning.