Agriculture and Industry - The Great Leap Forward 1958-62 Flashcards
(13 cards)
Why did Mao launch the Great Leap Forward?
• Mao wanted to transform China into a great economic power
• Mao was optimistic due to successes of First Five Year Plan and Communist success in Cold War
• Mao wanted to achieve “ Walking on Two Legs”
• Wanted to promote power of the people through mass mobilisation
What were the few successes of the Great Leap Forward?
- Irrigation made land more fertile
- Urban spaces like Tiananmen Square were remodelled
What were the failures of Great Leap Forward?
- Targets were absurd, Ministry of metallurgy declared steel production would double to 20 million in 1962
- Mao believed that mobilisation of the masses would overcome any obstacles
- Anti Rightist Campaign meant that there were no intellectuals or experts to help economic planning
- Backyard furnaces were wasteful and produced poor quality steel
- Factories closed as workers starved leading to shortages of raw materials
What caused the Great Famine?
- GLF was a disaster for agricultual production
- Cadres refused to reveal the true conditions in communes
- ‘Wind of exaggeration’ caused inflated quotas and falsified figures
- Grain was exported to pay for heavy industry and as a free gift to other Communist countries
What was life like during the Great Famine?
- Rural death rate per 1000 increased from roughly 11 to 29 in two years
- 7.8 million died in Henan and 9 million in Sichuan
- 1 million died in Tibet as a result of purposeful requisitioning
- Peasants scavenged for food, ate toads, frogs and worms
- Birth rate dropped as women too malnourished to procreate
- Children and old were vulnerable
- Cannibalism reported
- Around 30 million dead
Which external factors contributed to the great famine?
- Typhoons in the South and droughts in the Yellow River
- Shandong 8/12 main rivers dried up
- Tensions between USSR and China led to Khrushchev recalling economic advisers, none left by Sep 1960
- Intellectuals had been purged during anti-rightist campaign
How far were Mao’s policies responsible?
- Terror led to officials concealing true conditions among peasantry
- No one dared to criticise Mao’s policy
- other party leaders responsible, leader in Henan built luxury villa’s for guests while people starved
What happened at the Lushan Conference 1959?
- Peng Dehuai voiced doubt at inflated grain output figures
- Mao felt betrayed and accused him of forming a ‘right opportunist clique’
- Peng was denounced, kicked out of party and put under house arrest
What did Mao do after the Great Leap Forward?
- Mao did take some responsibility for the failures of the communes and the ‘great catastrophe’ of backyard furnaces
- Mao chose to retire from day to day politics but remained as Party Chairman
Who took over from Mao?
- Liu Shaoqi as Premier (head of state)
- Deng Xiaoping as Party General Secretary
- Pragmatism and rationality took over from Maoist Utopianism
What did Liu Shaoqi say in a speech to party cadres?
- Jan 1962, addressed 7000 party cadres
- dismissed Mao’s claims that the GLF was a success and that the failures were due to weather
- declared that 70% of failures were man made
- criticised the GLF but not Mao personally
What reforms did Shaoqi and Xiaoping announce?
- Motto of ‘agriculture as the foundation of the economy’
- Communes scaled back, peasants granted more freedoms to produce what they wanted
- Peasants could use free market and cultivate unused land
- Industry emphasised profitability and supported agriculture
- Many intellectuals who had been imprisoned during the anti-rightist campaign returned to influence
- rural Maoist party cadres were downgraded and replaced by urban ones
Where Shaoqi and Xiaoping’s reforms successful?
- 1965 agricultural production had recovered to 1957 levels
- Private plots of land incentivised harder work
- End of 1962 tools were restored to pre GLF availability
- Light Industry grew at 27% per year
- Heavy Industry grew at 17% per year
- Production of consumer goods doubled from the 1957 level
