Therefore, it was proposed that the peasants should be brought under Party control by the establishment of agricultural collectives which would also facilitate the sharing of tools and draft animals.

It was realized that Mao's policy of using a state monopoly on agriculture to finance industrialization would be unpopular with the peasants. Sending government officials to work in the countryside, 1957īefore 1949, peasants had farmed their own small pockets of land and observed traditional practices-festivals, banquets, and paying homage to ancestors. This would allow the state to buy at a low price and sell much higher, thus raising the capital necessary for the industrialization of the country.Īgricultural collectives and other social changes A more radical faction led by Mao Zedong argued that the best way to finance industrialization was for the government to take control of agriculture, thereby establishing a monopoly over grain distribution and supply. A moderate faction within the party and Politburo member Liu Shaoqi argued that change should be gradual and any collectivization of the peasantry should wait until industrialization, which could provide the agricultural machinery for mechanized farming. Within the Party, there were major debates about redistribution.

In the agricultural sectors, crops deemed by the Party to be 'full of evil', such as opium, were destroyed and replaced with crops such as rice. Immediately, landlords and wealthier farmers had their land holdings forcibly redistributed to poorer peasants. In October 1949 after the defeat of the Kuomintang, the Chinese Communist Party proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China. Background Ī Great Leap Forward propaganda painting on the wall of a rural house in Shanghai In addition, dozens of dams constructed in Zhumadian, Henan during the Great Leap Forward collapsed in 1975 (under the influence of Typhoon Nina) and resulted in the 1975 Banqiao Dam failure, with estimates of its death toll ranging from tens of thousands to 240,000. He initiated the Socialist Education Movement in 1963 and the Cultural Revolution in 1966 in order to remove opposition and re-consolidate his power. Mao did not retreat from his policies instead, he blamed problems on bad implementation and 'rightists' who opposed him. In 1959, Mao Zedong ceded day-to-day leadership to pragmatic moderates like Chinese President Liu Shaoqi and Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping, and the CCP studied the damage which was done at conferences which it held in 19, especially at the ' Seven Thousand Cadres Conference'. In short, the Great Leap was a very expensive disaster'. Economist Dwight Perkins argues that 'enormous amounts of investment only produced modest increases in production or none at all. . The Great Leap was one of two periods between 19 in which China's economy shrank. aborted by the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward'. Rural industrialization, while officially a priority of the campaign, saw 'its development . Restrictions on rural people were enforced with public struggle sessions and social pressure, and forced labor was also exacted from people. Private farming was prohibited, and those people who engaged in it were persecuted and labeled counter-revolutionaries. The major changes which occurred in the lives of rural Chinese people included the incremental introduction of mandatory agricultural collectivization. Millions of people died in China during the Great Leap, with estimates ranging from 15 to 55 million, making the Great Chinese Famine the largest or second-largest famine in human history. Higher officials did not dare to report the economic disaster which was being caused by these policies, and national officials, blaming bad weather for the decline in food output, took little or no action. Local officials were fearful of Anti-Rightist Campaigns and they competed to fulfill or over-fulfill quotas which were based on Mao's exaggerated claims, collecting non-existent 'surpluses' and leaving farmers to starve to death. Mao decreed that efforts to multiply grain yields and bring industry to the countryside should be increased. CCP Chairman Mao Zedong launched the campaign to reconstruct the country from an agrarian economy into a communist society through the formation of people's communes.

The Great Leap Forward ( Second Five Year Plan) of the People's Republic of China (PRC) was an economic and social campaign led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1958 to 1962.

Great leap forward