Over just a few years, the Great Leap Forward also caused massive environmental damage in China. Now it went above the knee. ... Chan, Alfred L. Mao’s Crusade: Politics and Policy Implementation in China’s Great Leap Forward. He encouraged people to set up backyard steel furnaces, where citizens could turn scrap metal into usable steel. The results, unfortunately, were catastrophic. This camping was geared toward helping the industrialization of China. Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. I will not give up my convictions, even when I see the Yellow River.” In 1958 Mao Zedong announced the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to increase agricultural and industrial production. However, the extra work burden that neces… Why can’t other Party leaders be so perceptive?” A common slogan in the 1950s summed it up: “The Soviet Union’s today is our tomorrow.”At same time, however, one can detect within Mao’s policies and statements … All we have to do is give the peasants their own land, then everyone will have plenty to eat.” They do what they like. Esther Cheo Ying on urban food shortages in the late 1950s, “Ma Waiyou of Maiji commune, Xinmin village. And the fires that were visible each night over the horizon. The first Five-Year Plan for the future of China was launched by Mao Zedong in 1953, in which the Soviet Union was held up as the model for development. Post-Mao Views of the Great Leap Forward WILLIAM A. JOSEPH Wellesley College "Hell is paved with good intentions." It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.” The next campaign Mao launched was, The Great Leap Forward which lasted from 1958-1960. For Mao, the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) stands out. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.’ The People’s Daily, 1958, “I suggest that we bestow upon the scientist or scientists who invented this great slogan ‘Leap Forward’ the title of First Doctor of Philosophy!” The first autumn of the Great Leap Forward, in 1958, came with a bumper crop in many areas, because the soil was not yet exhausted. “The essential content of agrarian reform is the confiscation of the land of the landlord class for distribution to the landless peasants. The Great Leap Forward was a push by Mao Zedong to change China from a predominantly agrarian (farming) society to a modern, industrial society—in just five years. That is annoying. A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery. Mao Zedong, 1958, “The Chairman talks all the time about more, faster, better, and more economical results. What Is Totalitarianism? A Yunnan botanist on the end of the Four Pests campaign, “Great achievements, numerous problems and a bright future.” Mao Zedong’s assessment of the nation, Lushan Conference, 1959, “The achievements of the Great Leap Forward are obvious… The overall value of industrial and agricultural production rose by 48.8 per cent in 1958… Such a rate of growth is unknown anywhere in the world. Unlike the first plan, however, the driving force in the effort to achieve production targets for agriculture and industry was not to be a centralised State bureaucracy. In economic construction, like a child without experience, we declared war on the earth, unfamiliar with the strategy or tactics.” Search for More Suggested terms to look for include - diary, diaries, letters, papers, documents, documentary or correspondence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Millions also left the countryside to work in underground” The brush and branches we gathered were enough for all our firewood, we never had to cut the trees… I was only 10 or 11 during the Leap. Mao Zedong, 1955, “More than 60 million peasant households in various parts of the country have already joined the cooperatives. We collected scrap metal and pots while the grownups cut the trees. The National Academy of Sciences issued reports on how many insects they ate, compared to how many seeds. After Mao declared the failure of the Great Leap in 1962, almost all methods of communication became cornerstones for propaganda as they fixated on recuperating and reiterating the cult of Mao. There were shortages… Rations differed according to work done. Mao, the grim reaper. Only four to five inches on the surface are good. These farming strategies damaged countless acres of farmland and dropped crop yields, rather than producing more food with fewer farmers. Chairman Mao just said ‘Forget it’. Between 1958 and 1960, millions of Chinese citizens were moved onto communes. However, so many farmers had been sent into steel production work that there weren't enough hands to harvest the crops. He ate his own wife. Dense cropping and deep plowing stripped the farmland of nutrients and left the agricultural soil vulnerable to erosion as well. The result was a big mess of melted metal. Relationship: spouse. In those days one man’s word counted for everything.” We made ladders to knock down their nests and beat gongs in the evenings when they were coming home to roost. To mobilize this willpower, the Great Leap Forward, obviously, was accompanied by a concerted propaganda effort, the depth and breadth of which had hitherto not been seen. Mao also wanted to free China from the need to import steel and machinery. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. The Great Leap Forward was a push by Mao Zedong to change China from a predominantly agrarian (farming) society to a modern, industrial society—in just five years. The crucial slogan during the Great Leap Forward, a two-year campaign where Mao encouraged peasants to join together in collective farms. This was the period during which the communes were formed and some 600,000 “backyard,” small-scale steel furnaces were built to supply local needs all over the country. Speaking at The Independent Woodstock Literary Festival, Frank Dikötter, a Hong Kong-based historian, said he found that during the time that Mao was enforcing the Great Leap Forward … Some were sent to farming cooperatives, while others worked in small manufacturing. As the commune members squatted there, swollen with malnutrition and constipated from the grim diet, the pigs would jostle them with their snouts, trying to get at the excrement before it had even fallen from their bodies.” The Great Leap Forward was not simply a whim of Mao Zedong, but the program of … The whole school went to kill sparrows. The backyard steel production plan resulted in entire forests being chopped down and burned to fuel the smelters, which left the land open to erosion. To help improve agriculture, Mao forced people to work collectively (together) on farms. Mao's Great Famine (Complete) Historian Frank Dikötter recounts the horrific cost of China's "Great Leap Forward" between 1958 and 1962. Comrades, if you have to shit – shit! The program had two parts. The official death toll from the Great Leap Forward is "only" 14 million, but the majority of scholars agree that this is a substantial underestimate. A crowd of citizens push toward government station selling rice very cheap. Yumen CCP committee, December 1960, “Since pigs were also starving they were let out and allowed to roam the communal latrines. Wood can never burn hot enough to make steel.” While the First Five Year Plan had succeeded in stimulating rapid industrialisation and increased production, Mao was suspicious of Soviet models of economic development. Put organizations on a military footing, put actions on a war footing, put life on a collective footing, 1958 Asia Society, 13 October 2010. Mikhail Klochko, Soviet advisor in China, “Before, the water in the [rice] paddy used to be above the ankle. Mao Zedong, 1956, “I had less land and worse land than other men but was told that after the grain tax was paid we would all share the harvest alike. In Hongtai Commune alone there were 170 people who ate 125 corpses, as well as killing and eating five other people… In some cases, individuals barbarously consumed their own parents, children, spouses and siblings. It was an impossible goal, of course, but Mao had the power to force the world's largest society to … I thought that sounded alright.” Great Leap Forward. He dug up her body and cooked it… Yang Wenyi and Yuan Shuying of Houxiyan village, together with… eight people in total, dug up the body of a child, cooked and ate it… A person called Liu Chuan. I understand nothing about industrial planning… I do not claim to have invented the People’s Communes, only to have proposed them.” If we can reach 40 million tons in five years, we may possibly catch up with Great Britain in seven years. Children were taken from their parents and put into large childcare centers to be tended to by workers assigned that task. The Soviet Union was also blank… China’s industrial development can proceed more swiftly than the Soviet Union’s.” Then the farmers’ cooperative people came along. Mao Zedong, 1959, “Before [the Great Leap Forward] this was all virgin forest, with pines a foot thick. The next year, the Yellow River flooded, killing 2 million people either by drowning or by starvation after crop failures. Peng Dehuai, 1959, “We must learn a lesson, not just complain or find fault. He ate Chen Zaxi. With hindsight, the results were predictably bad. He criticised himself at the Shanghai Conference, admitting that he had been somewhat hotheaded… What is great about the Chairman is that he can figure out problems in time and make a quick adjustment.” Ronald Radosh. Mao’s ambition. As a result of the successful economic reconstruction that had taken place in the early 1950’s. Mao's 'Great Leap Forward' and the Power of History. Friday, 17 September 2010. The Great Leap Forward planned to develop agriculture and industry. Mao Zedong on farm collectivisation, 1955, “China has two advantages. At that time, we only thought that they ate grain.” I had to see to everything myself. By 1958, these agricultural collectives had become the norm, and private ownership of land was abolished, with all households being forced into the state-operated communes. Mao Zedong’s campaign called the “Great Leap Forward” (1958–1961) (大跃进) aimed to transform China into a modern industrial nation and to prepare China for communism in the near future. Mao Zedong, 1959, “Even if there’s a collapse [in China’s food production] it’ll be alright. We tried to do too much, we wasted part of our investments, we deferred certain essential tasks, and that is a mistake.” The worst that will happen is that the whole world will get a big laugh out of it.” Chinese Revolution crossword for beginners. These quotations have been selected and compiled by Alpha History authors. Liu Shaoqi, 1950, “Landlords in general will only be deprived of their land and abolished as a social class, but they will not be physically eliminated… Therefore it is a stipulation that after their lands have been confiscated, the landlords will still be given shares of land… That way they can make a living by their own labour, reform themselves through labour and become new men.” known as the Great Leap Forward. Mao believed this program would allow him to win the race with the Soviet Union to achieve commu nism. This plan was called the Great Leap Forward. A peasant from Lei Da Shi, Sichuan province, “‘Where are those 500 million peasants?’ my Soviet colleague wondered. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) lead by Mao Zedong or Mao Tse-Tung considered it was a time for the Great Leap Forward. This was supposed to be the first step. 150 Quotes from Mao Tse Tung Revolutionary Civil War Period 1926-1927. There were many fewer sparrows after that. In the third year, I did not manage to finish my ploughing. I sweated my guts out. And they ate their own children. Mao created the Great Leap Forward to help China modernize and catch up with the west. It cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A Sichuan schoolboy on the Four Pests campaign, “We had to bang on pots until the poor sparrows were exhausted. The Great Chinese Famine (Chinese: 三年大饥荒, "three years of great famine") was a period between 1959 and 1961 in the history of the People's Republic of China (PRC) characterized by widespread famine. A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. Backyard Steel Furnace during the Great Leap Forward. Instead, Mao envisaged a decentralisation of control to local Party cadres whose task it would be to For both Chinese and westerners, failure to acknowledge the true nature of the Great Leap Forward carries serious costs. The Great Leap Forward was supposed to be a five-year plan, but it was called off after just three tragic years. People in the countryside began to starve. He relied, however, on nonsensical Soviet farming ideas, such as planting crops very close together so that the stems could support one another and plowing up to six feet deep to encourage root growth. This site was last updated on August 19th 2020. Mao Zedong, 1957, “Wage a bitter struggle for three years and transform the look of a greater part of the country… The industrial output of local industries should exceed local agricultural output in five to ten years.” Mao Zedong. Chen Yun, CCP politician, 1961, “The thoughts of the Chairman [Mao] are always correct. The peasants were carrying out the work of the [Communist] Party, working day and night at the mines and homemade blast furnaces… And we know the results: they did not obtain any more iron than before and there was much less bread and rice to go round.” Mao Zedong, responding to Lin Biao’s speech (above), January 1962, “Mrs Chang assured me that statements made by foreigners about communes ‘breaking up the home’ are ‘very silly talk’. Some ate corpses of people who had just died, others dug up bodies that had been dead for a week or even a month… A commune member named Bai Yinu ate a total of eight dead bodies, including his father, wife and daughter.” We have known for some time that Mao Zedong, founder of the People’s Republic of China, was one of the last century’s most brutal and vicious mass murderers. If you have to fart – fart! The period between 1958 and 1960 is known as the "Three Bitter Years" in China. Mao Zedong on the failures of the Great Leap Forward, 1959, “The harvest had been bad. James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson In the post-Mao reconstruction of the history of the People's Republic of China (PRC), two periods-the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960) and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution Add another eight years and we will catch up with the US.” Peng Dehuai, 1959, “When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death. Families had to meet quotas for steel production, so in desperation, they often melted down useful items such as their own pots, pans, and farm implements. Dr. Kallie Szczepanski is a history teacher specializing in Asian history and culture. The Great Leap Forward was a movement in China that started in 1958 and lasted two years till 1960. Online Sources: Great Leap Forward China's Great Leap Forward, 1958-1961 ... Forgotten Voices of Mao's Great Famine, 1958-1962 by Zhou Xun. It was difficult. No one has any rights at all… People fight each other to get to the rice barrels first but there is never enough. Mao Zedong. Mao Zedong on the Great Leap Forward, “I am a complete outsider when it comes to economic construction. Mao hoped to increase China's agricultural output while also pulling workers from agriculture into the manufacturing sector. Great Leap Forward, in Chinese history, the campaign undertaken by the Chinese communists between 1958 and early 1960 to organize its vast population, especially in large-scale rural communes, to meet China’s industrial and agricultural problems. The Great Leap Forward, the second five-year plan of the Chinese revolution, was an attempt to develop rapidly both industry and agriculture. Power Gun Political. In Gansu they killed outsiders; people told me strangers passed through and they killed and ate them. None of my brothers would help me. Bhupesh Bhandari. As a result of the exaggerations, party officials carried off most of the food to serve as the cities' share of the harvest, leaving the farmers with nothing to eat. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another. Mao Zedong on the Great Leap Forward “I am a complete outsider when it comes to economic construction. Food rotted in the fields. “One of the many paradoxes of the Great Leap Forward was that everything was for sale, as bricks, clothes and fuel were bartered for food. Status: common peasant. ‘Why are they not in the fields? They killed him and ate him.” If we encounter any problems, any difficulty, it is because we have not followed the instructions of the Chairman closely enough, because we have ignored or circumscribed the Chairman’s advice.” In the end, through a combination of disastrous economic policy and adverse weather conditions, an estimated 20 to 48 million people died in China. But deep down the soil is no good, too compact. Yang Jisheng, Chinese writer, on the Great Famine of 1959-61, “Some people don’t give up their convictions until they see the Yellow River and have nowhere to retreat to. Mao Zedong's Quotes Extra Facts Project Sources The Great Leap Forward. Peasant farmer Li Hai Yuan on cooperative farming, “The People’s Commune represents a much higher degree of socialist development and collectivisation… Its massive scale of production requires more efficient organisation with great labour flexibility, as well as women’s’ production participation. For more info, visit Alpha History or our Terms of Use. "Dare to … If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. Steelworkers got the most in bulk and grain, but intellectuals got more meat, sugar and fats.” An unnamed peasant on the practice of ‘deep ploughing’, “All property has to be state-owned, all houses and furniture have been turned into government property. ISBN: 0300184042. In order to prove that China had made the “great leap” to an industrialized, rich, communist society, Mao ordered the complete collectivization of farms, factories, and most of society. Mao Zedong to Dr Li Zhisui, 1961, “The peasants do nothing but complain. Improving public health by eliminating the "four pests"—rats, mosquitoes, spar rows, and flies—was one initiative of the Great Leap Forward, but the In the three years that followed, a massive famine occurred. It was many years before we knew that sparrows are good birds. This reform programme included the establishment of large agricultural communes containing as many as 75,000 people. Under Mao, everything is great but they only eat porridge. Most of the victims starved to death in the countryside. 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.Mao decreed increased efforts to … Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend. In the period between 1949 and 1958, a policy of collectivization, where farmers would work in collectives and share tools and draft animals, was gradually introduced and implemented. (Video) Arifa Akbar. Nature Flowers Thought. “ Mao's Great Famine is a gripping and masterful portrait of the brutal court of Mao, based on new research but also written with great narrative verve, that tells the gripping story of the manmade famine that killed 45 million people, from the dictator and his henchmen down to the villages of rural China.” Mao announced a second Five Year Plan to last from 1958 to 1963. Him and ate them large childcare centers to be a five-year plan the... 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