The Great Leap Forward

Farmers had to grow crops but also had to work to produce steel and iron in addition to infrastructure projects. This policy led to deaths of millions of Chinese peasants and what came to be known as the biggest famine in history. This was a huge failure for Mao, and threw off his position as leader.

Mao had lost power after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to modernize China’s economy by developing agriculture and industry which led to the deaths of nearly 13,000 people due to famine. Mao eventually stood down as Chairman of the People Republic

During the Industrial era, the government practiced a laissez-faire policy towards businesses, free land grants to railroads and a high tariff as well were established. All of these did not help the farmers at all because of their need to support themselves and their families. Life was hard in the west for the average farmer, most of which were barely making any money. Mary E. Lease states, “We went to work and plowed and planted; the rains fell, the sun shone, nature smiled, and we raised the big crop they told us to; and what came of it?” (Doc. 3). Lease continues by listing many different crops farmers grew but with very little money in return. For a group of people to put so much effort into one harvest but make virtually nothing from it is very disturbing. That is when many people realized their situation and after a year or so, gave up and went to work in a factory. Nowadays, almost everyone would agree with how dire the economic status was and that a change was needed. Moreover, farmers who used the railroads were affected economically. The distance between an eastern market and a mid-western farm is about one thousand miles or more. Before the introduction of the railroads, it was very expensive and very difficult to ship food at those great lengths. However, all that changed during the Industrial era. Farmers now had to only move their product to the closest train to bring it eastward, but that

In foreign relations, trade had a marginal value and foreign investment both inwards and outwards were essentially absent. One of the greatest failures of Mao’s notable project ‘Great Leap Forward’ in 1958 turned out to be one of the greatest failures as it was intended to collectivize all agricultural, industrial and service life under people's communes and militias’ control . The first consequence of this measure was an economic autarky that led to one of the worst famines of the twentieth century. Developments in international policy pushed China towards a gradual isolation and growing conflicts. Eventually China's international political and economic relations degenerated and led to a serious military confrontation with its main ally, the Soviet Union and fighting a border war with India in the 60s. Isolation, political and economic, reaches its highest levels with the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution in 1966 until 1976 .

This document shows how living conditions and independence did not improve for landowners. Landowners only lost their land and homes. It wasn’t fair how low classes were able to make more money when landowners couldn’t have better living conditions. Document 9 by an unknown person who was an economist made a line graph for people interested in China’s GDP to see how China’s GDP was at that time. This line graph shows how the quality of people’s life wasn’t improving because there wasn’t any jobs for them. The economy was very weak since there wasn’t enough jobs. Factories didn’t improve either they stayed the same because of the value of the materials. People couldn’t afford things because since there wasn’t jobs they didn’t have enough money to be able to buy things. The Communist China notes talks about the Great Leap Forward. The Great Leap Forward began from 1958 and ended in 1960. During 1959 through 1961 about 50 million people died of starvation. Mao forced people to work and it

In 1949 Mao Zedong and his communist revolutionaries had won control of China after a civil war that had lasted more than 20 years. Mao’s revolution was based on a society where the workers control the government. During this time China was a substandard country due to the years of war, disease, and natural disaster. To help make china stronger Mao called for couples to have more babies because babies equal more workers and more work leads to a stronger China. To help economically, people were forced to abandon farming and help aid an industrial China, thus known as The Great Leap Forward. With the replacing of farms, China was reconciled to food shortages, which then led to the killing of an estimated 30 million people. Therefore mao turned

Mao Zedong, the leader of China during the third quarter of the 20th century, organized two movements in his country in an attempt to develop China 's economy through the establishment of communism. Through The Great Leap Forward, Mao planned to change the layout of the Chinese economy by forcing collectivism on his country and implementing other ways to speed up production. Since this movement failed, he then implemented The Cultural Revolution. It consisted of the same goals but was carried out through violence and was also an utter failure. These two movements failed because of the lack of organization with which they were performed. This lack of organization manifested itself in a number of different ways. The government did not care about their people, the reforms themselves were not planned out in detail, the government did not think about the spontaneity of young people, they did not consider the effect violence would have on their country, they did not realize the decline in education that would result from the participation of students in the revolution, they did not plan well economically, they did not examine the negative effects of communes, and they did not foresee the large number of deaths that would plague their country. Although designed to rapidly increase China 's economic growth through communism, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution had the opposite effects and significantly diminished China 's economy. The two direct causes of the failure

In 1958, soon after the Anti-Rightist Movement, Mao Zedong announced "The Great Leap Forward" movement in attempt to increase agricultural and industrial production and modernize China's economy. The author of the book doesn't talk much

In 1949 china was under the expression of a communist state. The regime of china was set up in similarity to the regime of Vladimir Lenin in the Soviet Union. Mao Zedong was part of the communist party. He followed the vision of Karl Marx, by envisioning a society under his regime that all shared equal prosperity and communism. In order to bring this vision to reality, he wanted to eliminate all capitalism and its emphasis on property rights, profits, and free-market competition. In the 1950’s in the rural of china, Mao banned free markets, which involved peasants selling farm products. However the trade of capitalism still existed through the private enterprise of remnants. Mao was dissatisfied with the outcomes towards an economy of Marxism. So he strived for a stronger approach by coming up with the Great Leap Forward. However, after the intense economic development that china had suffered from the great leap forward, it left millions of individuals throughout china suffering from the masses and deaths from the collapse of the food system. Because of the major consequences that were suffered from this approach it was unable to be left unnoticed. So, in 1960 after Moa Zedong declined all responsibility towards the disaster from the Great Leap Forward, Lui Shao-chi and Deng Xiaoping were left to rectify and administer the crisis. However, their attempt to repair the economic damages towards china, only led to the reverse of Mao’s earlier policies. That were

The begins of Mao’s Cultural Revolution begins with the Hundred Flowers Campaign which took place during 1956-1957, the government embarks on this campaign with the hope that the tension between government and scholars can end, but this approach does not work and backfires. The next event which takes place in the Anti-Rights Campaign (1957-1958), this campaign disciplines those who spoke out during the Hundred flowers Campaign, a significant amount of people lots many jobs due to this and are sent away by government. This leads into the Great Leap Forward (1958-1959), this just happens to be one of Mao’s more intense programs of economic reform, in this program Mao’s main attempt was to modernize China’s economy, the consequence of this resulted in Mao’s having a temporary loss of power. He believed that all he needed to develop was agriculture and industry and believed that both

Around the time Ma Yin Chu began to publish articles on population, the Communist rule took over in China. The Communist were ruled by Mao Zedong. Mao directed most of his energy into the Chinese economy. In 1958, Mao created an economic plan called the great leap forward. This plan called for the people to use their will power to improve the economy. The lack of technology and capital made the plan back fire and lead the people into the great famine.

The Communist fervor that gripped mainland China under Mao Zedong’s rule had lasting effects on the economy and culture. In particular, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution devastated rural and peasant populations, leading to fatal consequences for a large portion of the chinese demographic. The Great Leap Forward was an attempt at socializing the chinese economy almost ten years after the People's Republic of China was established in 1949. Property and businesses were stripped from private owners by the government and given to community leaders to run with the help of community members. Unfortunately, revolutionary passion blinded community leaders and the government. The former over reported food production while the latter continued to support a failing economic structure and policy. This lead to the Great Chinese Famine, and a decline in economic productivity and revolutionary zeal. The Great Cultural Revolution was meant to reinvigorate the revolutionary spirit. Launched several years after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution targeted the youth. A successful propaganda campaign mobilized groups of mostly disadvantaged youth (red guards) and the working class to purge those antithetical to the movement. Millions were killed in the resulting class warfare which targeted capitalists, rightists, and landlords. The effects of these influential events are still explored in modern chinese cinema many years after their occurrence. An

This constituted China's Great Leap Forward, an attempt by Mao and the State to unify the nation under a common goal in order to overthrow Great Britain and other European giants in agricultural production. Entire communities toiled vigorously in order to drastically increase China's production output and demonstrate the nation's growing prowess against the powers of the West. The Great Leap Forward, despite its disastrous failure which cost over 2 million lives, was a clear denouncement of individual freedom, instead raising the status of communities and 'awarding' collective freedom.

China's Survival of Crisis Due to Economic Reforms In the years before 1976, many unwise policies were carried out which brought China into a crisis of communism, or a state in which communism was threatened. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were specifically the main causes of the crisis of communism and the mastermind between these two movements, Mao Zedong, can be held responsible for their initiation. The Great Leap Forward was a great economic failure. Years of famine and intense suffering came about as a result of this skewed project of Mao's.

In 1949 a powerful communist leader by the name of Mao Zedong came to power based on his idea for a, “Great Leap Forward.” This idea was meant to bring China’s economy into the twentieth century. He had assembled a revolutionary government using traditional Chinese ideals of filial piety, harmony, and order. Mao's cult of personality, party purges, and political policies reflect Mao's esteem of these traditional Chinese ideals and history. However, the product of this revolution created a massive national shortage in vital materials and initiated a wide scale famine to China’s people (Gabriel).