Question

One of the outcomes of the 1949 Chinese Communist Revolution was the Great Leap Forward. What was planned for this "Leap" to help China, and how did it turn out? Write your answer in a paragraph of at least 125 words.

Answer 1

The establishment of agricultural collectives that involved peasants sharing tools and draft animals and taking away private ownership of all farms. Farms became state-run communes. These plans were not popular, so the Chinese government held mandatory meetings where citizens were kept for days until they "voluntarily" agreed. Women were also given more rights, and foot-binding, child marriage, and opium addiction were put to an end. Grain and steel industrialization became key in the CPC's plan for economic development. People's communes, backyard steel furnaces in communes and urban areas, and irrigation became the norm. Villagers in the communes were unable to procure enough food to survive because they could no longer sell land as collateral for loans. However, these plans fell through and affected China for several years afterward. The Great Leap Forward of the People's Republic of China was an economic and social campaign by the Communist Party of China from 1958 to 1961. The campaign was led by Mao Zedong and aimed to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a socialist society through rapid industrialization and collectivization. However, it is widely considered to have caused the Great Chinese Famine. Chief changes in the lives of rural Chinese included the incremental introduction of mandatory agricultural collectivization. Private farming was prohibited, and those engaged in it were persecuted and labeled counter-revolutionaries. Restrictions on rural people were enforced through public struggle sessions and social pressure, although people also experienced forced labor. Rural industrialization, officially a priority of the campaign, saw "its development... aborted by the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward." The Great Leap ended in catastrophe, resulting in tens of millions of deaths, estimated from 18 million to 32.5 or 45 million.Historian Frank Dikötter asserts that "coercion, terror, and systematic violence were the foundation of the Great Leap Forward" and it "motivated one of the most deadly mass killings of human history". The years of the Great Leap Forward actually saw economic regression, with 1958 through 1962 being the only period between 1953 and 1985 in which China's economy shrank. Political economist Dwight Perkins argues, "enormous amounts of investment produced only modest increases in production or none at all. ... In short, the Great Leap was a very expensive disaster." In subsequent conferences in March 1960 and May 1962, the negative effects of the Great Leap Forward were studied by the CPC, and Mao was criticized in the party conferences. Moderate Party members like Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping rose to power, and Mao was marginalized within the party, leading him to initiate the Cultural Revolution in 1966.

Answer 2

The Great Leap Forward was a five-year economic plan executed by Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party, begun in 1958 and abandoned in 1961. The "Leap" resulted in 30–55 million deaths due to starvation, execution, and forced labor, along with massive economic and environmental destruction. The Great Leap Forward was the largest episode of mass killing in human history, and a clear example of the failures of socialism and economic central planning.

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