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Smil, Vaclav. “China’s Great Famine: 40 Years Later.” BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.), vol. 319, no. 7225, 18 Dec. 1999, pp. 1619–21, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1127087/.

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China’s Great Leap Forward. Association for Asian Studies. (2023, June 16). https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/chinas-great-leap-forward/

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Great Leap Forward: What It Was, Goals, and Impact (Secondary)

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Great Leap Forward: What It Was, Goals, and Impact (Secondary)

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The Great Leap Forward was a five year economic plan led by Mao Zedong which aimed to rapidly industrialize China, gaining power against other industrialized nations. The Great Leap forward enforced farming collectivization and rural industrialization under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1958. To achieve Mao’s goals, private farming was abolished, forcing farmers to work on government controlled farms (collectives). In these farms, large-scale irrigation projects were implemented, but were constructed with little help from professional engineers. Along with these irrigation systems, new methods of agriculture were introduced, but these techniques were not proven. Furthermore, the extermination of sparrows under Mao Zedong’s orders led to large swarms of locusts ravaging these farms. Due to these factors, there was a sharp decline in crop yield which led to the Great Chinese Famine, and thousands died due to the intensive labor. Many families became desperate for food. As a result, millions died due to starvation, and some even to torture for trying to escape the poverty in China.

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Alphahis. (2018, July 19). Complaints of hunger from the Great Leap Forward (1959). Chinese Revolution. https://alphahistory.com/chineserevolution/complaints-hunger-great-leap-forward-1959/

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Sansan. Eighth Moon. 1985, www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjf2MSCsfCEAxV7OTQIHV0-D4cQFnoECBEQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Farchive.org%2Fdetails%2Feighthmoontruest0000sans&usg=AOvVaw18GbokotBJnyho3k16rhh8&opi=89978449.

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Team, T. I. (n.d.). Great Leap Forward: What it was, goals, and impact. Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/great-leap-forward.asp

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Alphahis. (2018b, July 19). “Long live the people’s communes” (1959). Chinese Revolution. https://alphahistory.com/chineserevolution/long-live-peoples-communes-1959/

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To what extent did Mao Zedong’s economic reform contribute to weakness in China?

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To what extent did Mao Zedong’s economic reform contribute to weakness in China?

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Li, Z. (2010). Private life of chairman Mao: The memoirs of Mao’s personal physician. Cornerstone Digital.

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To what extent did Mao Zedong’s economic plan, the Great Leap Forward, contribute to economic weakness in China?

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To what extent did Mao Zedong’s economic plan, the Great Leap Forward, contribute to economic weakness in China?

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“Long Live the People’s Communes!” (Primary)

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“Long Live the People’s Communes!” (Primary)

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The People’s Daily published this editorial in August 1959 which praised the progress within the first year of the Great Leap Forward and the People’s Communes. It praises the People’s Communes for spreading all across China, even developing in rural areas. With the roots of communes spreading, the communes would allow managing economic and social activities to be more effectively. Due to this progress, the People’s Communes were able to establish more collective farms, serving as a “great role in developing our rural economy and culture and in raising the living standards of our peasants”, working together to achieve the goal of a stronger economy. The use of backyard furnaces produced millions of tons of pig iron, increasing the production of metals and steel. Collective farms produced grain, but due to deficiency of manpower in some farms, crops were quickly harvested in order to maintain efficiency.

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Complaints of Hunger from the Great Leap Forward (Primary)

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Complaints of Hunger from the Great Leap Forward (Primary)

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A year into the Great Leap Forward CCP provincial committee in Shandong were sent many letters complaining of food shortages in the People’s Communes and villages. There were food shortages and decrease in crop production in the collectives, fear had spread among the people of China, many attempting to flee or have became ill. The lack of food caused starvation in many areas of China, making the people desperate for food, even traveling to other cities/areas with little money, hoping their situation will improve.

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Mobilizing the masses, Mao Zedong announced the formation of the People’s Republic of China, aiming to implement policies that benefit the people. This was unlike the Kuomingtang government which relied on the support of the Chinese elites. Modeling economic reform under the Soviet Russia, Mao sought to industrialize the cities, while establishing collective farms in the countryside. The first Five Years Plan was successful, China’s overall economy improving 9%, with agricultural output increasing by 4% annually, and industrial output increasing 19% yearly. Life expectancy became 20 years longer in 1957, 8 years after the CCP took power through the Cultural Revolution. Furthermore, the efforts toward investments in state-owned factories, urban development, land from landlords redistributed to farmers, and pooling resources and materials in collectives, with the help of Soviet planners were successful.

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The Private Life of Chairman Mao: The Memoirs of Mao’s Personal Physician by Li Zhisui (Primary)

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The Private Life of Chairman Mao: The Memoirs of Mao’s Personal Physician by Li Zhisui (Primary)

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Mao Zedong had access to all of government resources, which had taken from the people for the people to live a more frugal lifestyle. Mao Zedong, unlike the rest of the Chinese people, was living a life of “paradise” or luxury. This is because he was the leader of the CCP, the leader of China. While most of China suffered from starvation as a result of the Great Leap Forward, Mao was oblivious to the fact because he believed they were all living the same luxurious lives like him under the CCP.

“In a vast, continental country with a huge and poor population, Mao sought economic growth through mass mobilization, trying to substitute ideological fervor for material rewards. He froze the people’s standard of living at subsistence levels in order to build a massive, wasteful industrial structure. In doing so, he ignored realities that contradicted his vision. A farmer’s son from rural Hunan, he allowed himself to be deluded by vast Potemkin fields at the start of the Great Leap Forward. As Dr. Li says, why should Mao have doubted that the communist paradise had arrived when he himself was living in it? He thought there was more to learn about leadership from the pages of Chinese history than from textbooks of modern engineering. While people starved, he imagined that they had more than they could eat.”

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China’s great famine: 40 years later (secondary)

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China’s great famine: 40 years later (secondary)

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With fabricated reports of collective farm production to “fulfill” the demanding quotas, this was used as an excuse to be wasteful with grain, but to cover cover the fact that the production of grain had greatly dropped. The ignorance of the government caused one of the biggest famines, which could have been resolved by seeking foreign aid. If the Chinese Government had acted faster, the famine would have been ended much earlier, but instead they continued to enforce the economic policies of the Great Leap Forward.

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Eighth Moon: The True Story of a Young Girl’s Life in Communist China (Primary)

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Eighth Moon: The True Story of a Young Girl’s Life in Communist China (Primary)

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Under the Great Leap forward, goods became more scarce. This is because the CCP wanted to have the people of China to live more frugal lives, regulating resource distributions under the government, so they could devote more resources to the Great Leap Forward. Not just in Tientsin, but many other cities and villages were running out of resources. The collectives were not productive enough to provide to the needs of the people, which also contributed to the lessening of resources available to the people.

“With the growing scarcity of goods, I became more and more skeptical of the government's promise of higher standards of living and the advances that were being accomplished under the Great Leap Forward. I could only judge the country's progress by my daily experience on food queues. And it seemed that Tientsin had less and less instead of more and more.”