Great Leap Forward Overview (大跃进)

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The Great Leap Forward occured at the start of Mao’s Second Five Year Plan which was anticipated to run from 1958-1963. The main impetus behind the Great Leap was to ‘catch-up’ with the industrialised economies of the West and transform China into a collectivised society based on socialist principles. The Great Leap equally emerged from Mao’s anti-rightist campaign as a re-assertion of his authority in the wake of the Hundred Flowers Movement which allowed criticism of the regime. Whilst the first five-year plan certainly succeeded in forging economic growth, the subsequent great leap was overambitious, triggering one of the greatest famine's in human history. The plan was abandoned in 1961.

First of all, the Great Leap and its failure should be situated in the context of worsening Sino-Soviet relations. In 1958, Soviet Aid remained vital, China lagging behind its major ally. Despite this Shen and Xia (2011: 861) comment on the audacious goals of the Great Leap:

‘In 1958, Mao proposed that China would overtake the United Kingdom economically in 15 years. In fact, his inner goal was to surpass the Soviet Union in the pace of socialist construction. For this reason, he had been considering the possibility of taking some different steps from those of the Soviet Union so that China could enter the Communist society ahead of the Soviet Union.’

After Stalin’s death in 1953, Mao attempted to build a relationship with his successor Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev openly denounced Stalinism as a personality cult at a conference in 1956 putting the Chinese in a difficult position when Mao’s popularity was at its peak.

Another ideological difference emerged vis-a-vis Khrushchev’s attitude towards people’s communes which were a vital part of the Great Leap Forward policy. In order to accelerate economic growth, Mao established communes whereby agricultural production would be collectivised, powered by sheer mass labour as opposed to complex technology. Conversely, the Soviet approach had been to use the profits from agricultural production to gradually purchase heavy machinery. Indeed, communes were an entity repudiated by Khrushchev who ‘remembered that the USSR had promoted similar follies in the 1930s, ‘but there was no excuse for the Chinese to be repeating our own stupid mistakes’. (Shen and Xia:2011: 865). The pair also clashed on numerous other issues, particularly the policy of peaceful coexistence with capitalist states, something advocated by Khrushchev but opposed by Mao.

Mao tested Khrushchev’s patience in 1958 by launching a military assault on the Jinmen islands, off the coast of Taiwan, without consulting him. Consequently, Khrushchev retracted scientific support for China’s ambitions to design an atomic bomb. Whilst the people’s communes were forged as an attempt to boost production in a more aggressive way than the Soviet Union, Khrushchev, in turn, cut off vital financial aid to China in 1960 which may have aggravated the famine.

Despite Soviet criticism, the idea of the commune was initially met with a large amount of enthusiasm from the masses. One of the iconic images of the communes stems from collective canteens. Canteens were a compulsory element of everyday life, private kitchens resolutely denounced as a manifestation of selfishness. The government also promoted the canteens as a form of women’s emancipation from housework. Source 1 depicts a typical image of joyous workers contented with bountiful food supplies. The reality of course was much more complex, and the kitchens were often badly mismanaged. Chang and Wen (1997:5) observe: ‘Because of overconsumption and waste, food was quickly exhausted. In one case, in the fall of 1958, peasants ‘‘in 20 days finished almost all the rice they had, rice which should have lasted six months.’ In 1958, there was actually a bumper harvest in Sichuan and yet food shortages were still reported there, suggesting the advent of communal kitchens were also an element in causing the great famine. Indeed, they were abandoned in 1961 despite Mao’s ardent backing.

A further failure of the Great Leap Forward stems from the anti-rightist movement and Mao’s purging of intellectuals from prominent positions into manual labour. This led to a lack of competent statisticians to manage the economy and set realistic targets for grain production and the like. What followed was dubbed an ‘exaggeration wind’. As Li (2011:87) states:

‘An important factor leading to the “wind of exaggeration” was the unrealistically high targets of agricultural yield set by the central and local government leaders before they launched the great leap forward. Mao required in October 1957 for example that the grain output had to reach 2000 catties (1 cattie =500 grams) per capita within five years. The following year, the central government further required that the country’s total grain output had to increase by 60-90%, - to 600-700 catties in 1958 […] to meet those goals, local cadres had to inflate their yield by several and even hundreds of times. Those who wanted to report their output honestly ran the risk of being denounced as “rightist conservatives” or “bound feet women”, a phrase Mao coined to ridicule the cautious economic planners in central government.’

Multiple propaganda posters were produced to encourage peasants to put all their energy into increasing production at a fanatical rate. Source 2 consists of a dragon boat emblazoned with the characters “多快好省” – greater, faster, better cheaper. In the meantime, the Taiwanese led by Chiang Kai-shek are depicted as a shipwreck.

Whilst many of the policies that characterised the Great Leap Forward were short-lived due to their ill-conceived and unrealistic nature, one of the more enduring elements of the plan was the idea of a People’s Militia. On the 29^th August 1958, in the wake of increasing tension with Taiwan, Mao announced the slogan ‘make everyone a soldier‘. Powell helpfully divides the goals of this campaign into both military and political spheres. He states: ‘From a military standpoint, the massive training program has been described officially as creating a "human sea" or "steel wall." It also seeks to provide a highly dispersed defence against nuclear attack (1960:100)’. This is the image projected in source 3, a propaganda poster from 1958 capturing an infinite mass of peasants garbed in a hybrid mix of farming/military attire. However, Powell also states: ‘In its basic objectives the campaign appears to be more political and economic than military. The aim is to utilise military organisation and discipline more effectively to control and mobilise the masses for production’ (1960:103).  Here, Mao not only capitalised on a turbulent international situation for domestic gain, but also managed to exert even greater control over people’s everyday lives.

While the Great Leap was firmly focussed upon rapid advances in production, the masses were also encouraged to partake in cultural creation, particularly in the domains of poetry and song. It was recognised that singing had a therapeutic quality that could alleviate the hard-labour peasants had to endure on a daily basis. Singing was also a means of reinforcing ideological dogma. Source 4 comprises several song-poems peasants (Chen: 1960). 

In Heaven there is no Jade Emperor. Nor is there a Dragon King in the sea.
I am the Jade Emperor,
I am the Dragon King. Hoy, you Three Sacred Mountains and Five Holy Peaks, Make way!
Here I come. 

We worship no god, nor temples build, Chairman Mao's love is greater manifold. Gods we destroy, and temples tear down,
Better than gods we worship the One Man. Mountains may shake, earth may quake but we dare not forget what the Chairman said.

The first song refutes Chinese creation mythology and the previous hierarchies present under centuries of monarchical rule. The masses themselves are imbued with the power to move mountains. The second refrain demonstrates how all-encompassing Mao’s personality cult had reached by 1960, he is endowed with a god like status as a benevolent ruler.

Whilst Mao may have gained a cult-like following amongst many peasants, the same cannot be said of high-ranking Communist Party officials, some of whom harboured severe doubts surrounding the supposed success of the Great Leap. In 1959, a meeting of top party leaders took place in the city of Lushan. Prior to the conference, defence minister Peng Dehuai wrote a letter to Mao outrightly critiquing the Great Leap Forward. Peng criticised mismanagement of the communes and the exaggerated figures relating to grain production. He repeated these criticisms at the conference itself. Mao interpreted this as a personal attack and was purged from the party. Prior to the conference, Peng had also travelled abroad to the Soviet Union and met with Khrushchev. In the context of worsening Sino-Soviet relations, this was framed as a plot to overthrow Mao.

Whilst the shortcomings of the Great Leap Forward were, by now, clear, Mao instead further pushed forward implementation of the plan to once again reassert his authority after Peng’s misgivings. As Bernstein (2006:421) notes: ‘Not until spring 1960 did Mao again express concern about abnormal deaths and other abuses, but he failed to apply the pressure needed to stop them.’ Peng’s well-intentioned attempt to put a halt to some of the foolhardy policies of the Great Leap actually had the opposite effect of intensifying them. Peng would be placed under house arrest and then imprisoned and tortured during the Cultural Revolution (Source 5) despite the vital role he played during the Chinese Civil War and Korean War. It would appear that Mao was focussed on maintaining his supremacy as leader to the detriments of addressing growing concerns relating to the welfare of the population. This was something lamented by Peng in a poem he wrote about the great leap:

The millet is scattered over the ground.  
The leaves of the sweet potato are withered. 
The young and old have gone to smelt iron. 
To harvest the grain there are only
      children and old women.
How shall we get through the next year? 

Despite Mao’s feigned ignorance, the horrific spread of famine could not be suppressed indefinitely. A report was given to Mao stating that in ‘Zunyi city commune, there were 1,000 cases of edema and 200 deaths, the result of a poor harvest, natural disasters and excessive grain purchases.’ (Bernstein: 3006:437).  It is possible that party cadres slowly decided to report minor outbreaks to gradually alert Mao to the wider situation. According to Bernstein, by March 1960, ‘Mao ordered distribution of a set of instructions issued by Guangdong's party committee on solving five problems in the communes: the communist wind, false reporting, use of force, corruption and waste.’ Yet, Mao did so under the impression that he was combatting isolated instances rather than an endemic, nation-wide crisis. Bernstein believes it was not until October 1960 that Mao was aware of the famine’s full extent. News of the famine spread worldwide and became a propaganda coup for Chiang Kai-shek exiled in Taiwan. Chiang ordered food supplies to be airdropped to the mainland as depicted by source 6, a stark contrast to the propaganda poster in source 3 which depicts the Taiwanese economy as ‘sinking.’

In short, the Great Leap Forward began in the context of both domestic and international power struggles, Mao wishing to reassert his domestic authority following the Hundred Flowers Campaign, whilst vying with Russia for leadership of the socialist world. Indeed, Mao himself admitted he devoted much more time to foreign affairs as opposed to domestic issues during the Great Leap (Bernstein:2006:442). Despite its numerous shortcomings, the Great Leap Forward was relentlessly rolled out to bolster Mao’s authority with party cadres unwilling to produce honest reports about grain production for fear of persecution. Mao’s quest for power took precedence over the population’s welfare. There are also multiple claims that Mao was prepared to accept the death of the masses as a price for economic progress. Alternatively, it could be that the fervour initiated by multiple mass campaigns in the fifties simply led to an unwillingness to grasp whether the Great Leap was realistic amidst a regime in which propaganda clouded the truth. For the next few years, Mao would remain as chairman of the Communist Party but retreat somewhat from the foreground whilst the country was run by Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping. Mao would however make a decisive return to political prominence in 1966 with the launch of the Cultural Revolution.

Bibliography

Bernstein, T. P. (2006) 'Mao Zedong and the Famine of 1959-1960: A Study in Wilfulness'. The China Quarterly (186), 421-445.

Chang, G. H. and Wen, G. J. (1997) 'Communal Dining and the Chinese Famine of 1958–1961'. Economic Development and Cultural Change 46 (1), 1-34.

Chen, S. H. (1960) 'Multiplicity in Uniformity: Poetry and the Great Leap Forward'. The China Quarterly (3), 1-15.

Li, H., (2011) Village China Under Socialism and Reform: A Micro History, 1948-2008. Stanford, Calif; London: Stanford University Press.

Powell, R. L. (1960) 'Everyone a Soldier: The Communist Chinese Militia'. Foreign Affairs 39 (1), 100-111.

Shen, Z. and Xia, Y. (2011) 'The Great Leap Forward, the People's Commune and the Sino-Soviet Split'. Journal of Contemporary China 20 (72), 861-880.