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. Definition and Examples, Biography of Mao Zedong, Father of Modern China, Khmer Rouge: Regime Origins, Timeline, and Fall, Overview of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, The Three Sisters: the Traditional Intercropping Agricultural Method, The Geography and Modern History of China, The Yellow River's Role in China's History, An Overview of the Chinese Communist Party, J.D., University of Washington School of Law, B.A., History, Western Washington University. Mao Zedong's Quotes Extra Facts Project Sources The Great Leap Forward. It was difficult. Chairman Mao just said ‘Forget it’. Mao Zedong on the failures of the Great Leap Forward, 1959, “The harvest had been bad. 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. Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. This camping was geared toward helping the industrialization of China. She has taught at the high school and university levels in the U.S. and South Korea. ‘Why are they not in the fields? And they ate their own children. He ate his own wife. 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. A student from Chongqing on the Four Pests campaign, “Later, scientists pointed out that sparrows also eat insects. “The essential content of agrarian reform is the confiscation of the land of the landlord class for distribution to the landless peasants. Lin Biao, January 1962, “What a good speech vice-chairman Lin has made. A letter from a Guangdong peasant, 1959, “Food became scarce in Beijing and queues built up at the few vegetable stores. There, he summed up its ethos as “more, faster, better, and more economical,” and the Great Leap Forward was set in motion. All work was shared on the communes; from childcare to cooking, daily tasks were collectivized. What does he want with chanting these liturgies all the time?” Peng Dehuai, 1958, “It was fun to wipe out the ‘Four Pests’. Mao Zedong on the Great Leap Forward, “I am a complete outsider when it comes to economic construction. 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!” Now it went above the knee. Nature Flowers Thought. 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.” The Great Leap Forward was not simply a whim of Mao Zedong, but the program of … If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. But deep down the soil is no good, too compact. If you have to fart – fart! One is emptiness, the other is blankness, with no encumbrances of any kind. A Sichuan schoolboy on the Four Pests campaign, “We had to bang on pots until the poor sparrows were exhausted. Why can’t other Party leaders be so perceptive?” So people are setting up more and more community canteens, nurseries, sewing groups…” In 1960, a widespread drought added to the nation's misery. In 1958 Mao Zedong announced the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to increase agricultural and industrial production. Peng Dehuai, 1959, “We must learn a lesson, not just complain or find fault. The National Academy of Sciences issued reports on how many insects they ate, compared to how many seeds. Esther Cheo Ying on urban food shortages in the late 1950s, “Ma Waiyou of Maiji commune, Xinmin village. Mao Zedong on farm collectivisation, 1955, “China has two advantages. They deserve far greater recognition of the horrible injustice they suffered. The Great Leap Forward, the second five-year plan of the Chinese revolution, was an attempt to develop rapidly both industry and agriculture. Between 1958 and 1960, millions of Chinese citizens were moved onto communes. Mao Zedong, 1959, “Even if there’s a collapse [in China’s food production] it’ll be alright. 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 … Everybody bears some responsibility, including Comrade Mao Zedong… How can he not share some responsibility? However, this plan backfired in a tragic fashion. It’s the spring planting season, isn’t it?’ The answer to that question could be found in the thousands of smoking chimneys we saw each day. Mao Zedong. Mao hoped to increase China's agricultural output while also pulling workers from agriculture into the manufacturing sector. Power Gun Political. Mao Zedong to Dr Li Zhisui, 1961, “The peasants do nothing but complain. Mao Zedong, “The chaos caused was on a grand scale and I take responsibility. It contains 183,984 words in 268 pages. We made ladders to knock down their nests and beat gongs in the evenings when they were coming home to roost. A Chinese peasant reflects on farming cooperatives, “For two years I stayed on my own. Part one involved improving agriculture so there was enough food to feed factory workers. Mao Zedong. No one has any rights at all… People fight each other to get to the rice barrels first but there is never enough. If we can reach 40 million tons in five years, we may possibly catch up with Great Britain in seven years. Peng Dehuai, 1959, “When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death. It wasn’t correct but we couldn’t help it, we had orders.” His words are always so clear and direct. When Mao … 150 Quotes from Mao Tse Tung Revolutionary Civil War Period 1926-1927. Some scholars have also included the years 1958 or 1962. We tried to do too much, we wasted part of our investments, we deferred certain essential tasks, and that is a mistake.” I remember a famous restaurant, the Lugaojian… their speciality was two salted sparrows on a stick… But after the Four Pests campaign, you couldn’t buy them any more.” 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's 'Great Leap Forward' and the Power of History. It was an impossible goal, of course, but Mao had the power to force the world's largest society to try. Mao Zedong. I will not give up my convictions, even when I see the Yellow River.” Anhui police report on cannibalism, 1960, “Cannibalism occurred in many places. It cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. Mao announced a second Five Year Plan to last from 1958 to 1963. Mao's Great Famine (Complete) Historian Frank Dikötter recounts the horrific cost of China's "Great Leap Forward" between 1958 and 1962. Some survivors of the Great Leap Forward are still alive today. Han Suyin on food shortages during the Great Leap Forward, “People died in the family and they didn’t bury the person because they could still collect their food rations; they kept the bodies in bed and covered them up and the corpses were eaten by mice. 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. It was many years before we knew that sparrows are good birds. Part of an authoritarian regime is the dedication to ideological-based projects, even at the expense of economic or social progress. 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. 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. I had to see to everything myself. Backyard smelters run by peasants with no metallurgy training produced such low-quality material that it was completely worthless. If you would like to suggest a quotation for these pages, please contact Alpha History. On the contrary, ‘the home is much happier now because the heavy burdens are removed’. Great Leap Forward. That is annoying. 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. What Is Totalitarianism? The Great Leap Forward was supposed to be a five-year plan, but it was called off after just three tragic years. Mao Zedong on the Great Leap Forward “I am a complete outsider when it comes to economic construction. Mao's Great Leap Forward 'killed 45 million in four years' The Independent. 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 Status: common peasant. It was so dense that I was afraid to go in there at night. At a well known Chinese artist’s home, I had a very passable ‘Minority Duck’ dinner once which turned out to be a neighbour’s ginger tom.” The Great Leap Forward planned to develop agriculture and industry. I understand nothing about industrial planning… I do not claim to have invented the People’s Communes, only to have proposed them.” Then the farmers’ cooperative people came along. Food rotted in the fields. Mao, the grim reaper. The crucial slogan during the Great Leap Forward, a two-year campaign where Mao encouraged peasants to join together in collective farms. 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. Add another eight years and we will catch up with the US.” But the temperature was too low. 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. They say that under Jiang Jieshi they suffered but had plenty to eat. Sky View Big. A Yunnan botanist on the end of the Four Pests campaign, “Great achievements, numerous problems and a bright future.” However, so many farmers had been sent into steel production work that there weren't enough hands to harvest the crops. In the third year, I did not manage to finish my ploughing. People in the countryside began to starve. Formerly the young wife in poorer families would have to work in the field and rush home to get the meals on a very slow stove, then stay up half the night to grind the grain… The husband would grumble if the meal wasn’t ready at once when he came home from work… ‘Now all this grumbling is over’, said Mrs Chang.” “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. Meat was almost non-existent and the cat population rapidly declined. The whole school went to kill sparrows. There were shortages… Rations differed according to work done. 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. He ate Chen Zaxi. 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.” Among 41 production brigades in ten communes of Linxia City, 588 people ate the remains of 337 others. Online Sources: Great Leap Forward China's Great Leap Forward, 1958-1961 ... Forgotten Voices of Mao's Great Famine, 1958-1962 by Zhou Xun. Mao believed this program would allow him to win the race with the Soviet Union to achieve commu nism. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.’ Li Lei, CCP cadre from Gansu province, writing in 1999, “Among 14 work units… 3,132 persons are suffering from oedema, which afflicts 25 per cent of the staff in the most seriously affected units… The illness has struck workers more than cadres, those employed in heavy physical labour more than light work, and those eating at communal kitchens more than those taking their meals at home.” Mao's aims The Great Leap Forward was China's second Five Year Plan. Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend. Some were sent to farming cooperatives, while others worked in small manufacturing. As the originator of the disaster, he ended up being sidelined from power until 1967, when he called for the Cultural Revolution. Mao also wanted to free China from the need to import steel and machinery. With hindsight, the results were predictably bad. The Great Leap Forward was born from Mao Zedong’s impatience for industrial and manufacturing growth (in his words, “more, faster, better, cheaper”).. The result was a big mess of melted metal. Mao Zedong, 1958, “The Chairman talks all the time about more, faster, better, and more economical results. Mao’s ambition. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.” All we have to do is give the peasants their own land, then everyone will have plenty to eat.” Dense cropping and deep plowing stripped the farmland of nutrients and left the agricultural soil vulnerable to erosion as well. 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. 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. You’ll feel much better for it.” They are simply superb. ISBN: 0300184042. (Video) Arifa Akbar. In the end, through a combination of disastrous economic policy and adverse weather conditions, an estimated 20 to 48 million people died in China. The Great Leap Forward, the period from 1958 to 1962 that saw the deaths of an estimated 45 million Chinese, lacks the heft of horror associated with Hitler's and Stalin's genocides. 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. It is as if a raging tidal wave has swept away all the demons and ghosts.” The next year, the Yellow River flooded, killing 2 million people either by drowning or by starvation after crop failures. Mao believed that both had to grow to allow the other to grow. 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. Under Mao, everything is great but they only eat porridge. 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.” A crowd of citizens push toward government station selling rice very cheap. In 1955, Mao was in a rural farming village to plan for the Great Leap Forward. Farmers in the Great Leap Forward Era (Historians on the Warpath) Mao Versus Sparrows. I understand nothing about industrial planning… I do not claim to have invented the People’s Communes, only to have proposed them.” Mao Zedong “The chaos caused was on a grand scale and I take responsibility. For more info, visit Alpha History or our Terms of Use. The Soviet Union was also blank… China’s industrial development can proceed more swiftly than the Soviet Union’s.” Millions also left the countryside to work in underground” 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. He encouraged people to set up backyard steel furnaces, where citizens could turn scrap metal into usable steel. At that time, we only thought that they ate grain.” [But] there was too much haste. We turned it over to the local steel factories to process further. I thought that sounded alright.” This was supposed to be the first step. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. In that way, no one would lose anything but all would gain. People ate corpses and fought for the bodies. 2. 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. Over just a few years, the Great Leap Forward also caused massive environmental damage in China. The Great Leap Forward was a movement in China that started in 1958 and lasted two years till 1960. Search for More Suggested terms to look for include - diary, diaries, letters, papers, documents, documentary or correspondence. The program had two parts. "Dare to … Improving public health by eliminating the "four pests"—rats, mosquitoes, spar rows, and flies—was one initiative of the Great Leap Forward, but the ... Chan, Alfred L. Mao’s Crusade: Politics and Policy Implementation in China’s Great Leap Forward. They killed him and ate him.” Dr. Kallie Szczepanski is a history teacher specializing in Asian history and culture. Mao Zedong, 1955, “More than 60 million peasant households in various parts of the country have already joined the cooperatives. Too terrible.” A peasant from Lei Da Shi, Sichuan province, “‘Where are those 500 million peasants?’ my Soviet colleague wondered. 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.” Yue Daiyun, peasant woman, “Naturally we have defects and mistakes… Like a child playing with fire, without experience, knowing pain only after being burned. In those days one man’s word counted for everything.” This page contains a collection of Chinese Revolution quotations about agrarian reform and the Great Leap Forward, made by prominent leaders, figures, observers and historians. Backyard Steel Furnace during the Great Leap Forward. 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 … Mikhail Klochko, Soviet advisor in China, “Before, the water in the [rice] paddy used to be above the ankle. 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.” There were 17 of them and they did the work in less than an hour and would take no payment.” These quotations have been selected and compiled by Alpha History authors. Instead, Mao envisaged a decentralisation of control to local Party cadres whose task it would be to Children were taken from their parents and put into large childcare centers to be tended to by workers assigned that task. 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. Liu Shaoqi, 1950, “When the Third Five Year Plan is completed in 1967, the yields for grain and many other agricultural products should be double or triple the highest yields before the People’s Republic was founded [in 1949].” A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another. The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images. 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.” On p.134 of Mao’s Great Famine, Dikotter quotes Mao as saying during the Great Leap Forward ‘When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death. 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. In economic construction, like a child without experience, we declared war on the earth, unfamiliar with the strategy or tactics.” Put organizations on a military footing, put actions on a war footing, put life on a collective footing, 1958 Anna Louise Strong, American journalist, 1964. 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’. Ronald Radosh. Thus the landlords as a class are abolished and the exploitative feudal land ownership system is transformed… This is the greatest and most thorough reform in thousands of years of Chinese history.” I sweated my guts out. 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. Only four to five inches on the surface are good. “ 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.” This reform programme included the establishment of large agricultural communes containing as many as 75,000 people. 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. In 1957, at the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution, this was held in Moscow, Khrush… Traditionally, each farmer in China farmed his own piece of land. Terrible. 12. 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. The period between 1958 and 1960 is known as the "Three Bitter Years" in China. 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.” Bhupesh Bhandari. The Great Leap Forward (Second Five Year Plan) of the People's Republic of China (PRC) was an economic and social campaign led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1958 to 1962. 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. Wood can never burn hot enough to make steel.” In the three years that followed, a massive famine occurred. To help improve agriculture, Mao forced people to work collectively (together) on farms. For both Chinese and westerners, failure to acknowledge the true nature of the Great Leap Forward carries serious costs. The United States in George Washington’s era was blank, so it could develop very rapidly. These farming strategies damaged countless acres of farmland and dropped crop yields, rather than producing more food with fewer farmers. None of my brothers would help me. While the First Five Year Plan had succeeded in stimulating rapid industrialisation and increased production, Mao was suspicious of Soviet models of economic development. 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. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) lead by Mao Zedong or Mao Tse-Tung considered it was a time for the Great Leap Forward. Relationship: spouse. For Mao, the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) stands out. Comrades, if you have to shit – shit! Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Steelworkers got the most in bulk and grain, but intellectuals got more meat, sugar and fats.” known as the Great Leap Forward. So we stopped killing sparrows. This site was last updated on August 19th 2020. The results, unfortunately, were catastrophic. Call Number: HC430.F3 Z467 2013. However, the Great Leap resulted in one of the greatest disasters in history. However, the extra work burden that neces… Mao Zedong, 1959, “Before [the Great Leap Forward] this was all virgin forest, with pines a foot thick. In Gansu they killed outsiders; people told me strangers passed through and they killed and ate them. We have had many natural disasters, a bad drought in the north. 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. Friday, 17 September 2010. There were many fewer sparrows after that. A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery. This Chinese Revolution website is created and maintained by Alpha History. Post-Mao Views of the Great Leap Forward WILLIAM A. JOSEPH Wellesley College "Hell is paved with good intentions." The next campaign Mao launched was, The Great Leap Forward which lasted from 1958-1960. 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 … Most of the victims starved to death in the countryside. 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. Asia Society, 13 October 2010. Mao Zedong. They do what they like. Mao created the Great Leap Forward to help China modernize and catch up with the west. As a result of the successful economic reconstruction that had taken place in the early 1950’s. 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. Films of the Soviet Union were even shown to peasants and ordinary Chinese to show them what to aspire to. Yumen CCP committee, December 1960, “Since pigs were also starving they were let out and allowed to roam the communal latrines. It was an impossible goal, of course, but Mao had the power to force the world's largest society to … Chinese Revolution crossword for beginners. This plan was called the Great Leap Forward. Mao Zedong, 1958, “With 11 million tons of steel next year and 17 million tons the year after, the world will be shaken. 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. Chen Yun, CCP politician, 1961, “The thoughts of the Chairman [Mao] are always correct. 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. 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