UnusuallyUsual wrote:What do you gents and gentesses think about the Great Leap Forward?
Do you believe Mao more or less copied what Stalin did in the USSR 1928-1932 or so?
Or is it something very different?
DId it succeed in any way whatsoever?
Was it just a horrible destructive famine-inducing catastrophe?
Did Mao intentionally murder tens of millions of Chinese?
It was a definite disaster and absolutely idiotic policy.
China was already doing well, undergoing slow but steady industrial development and its agrarian sector was functioning well enough. Peasants were able to produce enough food and there was not widespread starvation. Farmers were part of voluntary collectives or owned their own land. However the creation of massive communes resulted in widespread famine. Furthermore the goal of catching up with America and overtaking Britain was completely unrealistic.
The Great Leap Forward also involved hair brained schemes to make steel. One of them was getting people to make it in their backyards by smelting all the metal they owned. It took people away from their land and so agricultural production suffered while people all went to make steel. Another thing they did was shoot down birds which meant locusts were free to destroy their harvest.
Because there was no monetary incentive on the communes people did not work as well and that was another cause of the fall in productivity.
Mao should have stuck to Soviet style development which the CCP pursued for much of the 1950s up until the GLP. It brought the best results and China's GDP grew every year. The GLP was simply a result of Mao's impatience and his lack of gounded economic thinking.
Were the CCP trying to imitate Soviet collectivisation? I am not sure, that is a very good question. Both produced famine.
Was the destruction deliberate? I doubt it. More likely it was caused by incompetence, ideological fanaticism and a refusal to come to terms with reality.
- By wat0n
- By Potemkin