The great leap foward

• Mao's self confidence after success in Hundred flowers and collectivisation
• Chinese nationalism - stop reliance on Russia
• Mao's desire to control peasants - not enough food in cities due to peasants greedieness andlack of obedience.
• Stagnated agricultural production, 1957 = 1% but 2% population increase.

• May 1958 official launch of great leap
• 

• 1st in Henan in 1958 April
• 1 Commune = 750,000 brigades. Briagade = 200 homes. All under government control.
• By December 1958 20,000 communes in China

Lifestyle in a Commune:

• Private plots and cattle abolished
• Private cooking and eating abolished
• Children cared for in communal kindergarten.
• Much more communal

Everything communal (baths, dining room, kindergarten, schools)

• Peasants had military approach to work
• A lot of control from party managers.
• Fear used to control (threat of violence)

The Militia......

• Inculded those 15 - 50
• Trained how to use weapons
• Fighting style approach to work

• Generate surpluss grain for gov. and workers
• Make industrial goods
• Mass mobilisation of labour
• Better efficiency
• Ideological victory

• Chinese scientists enthralled by him

1958, Mao introduces lysenkoism, a "constitution" based on Lysenko's ideas:

• Pest control (awful consqueences on grain. No birds left to eat insects an rats led to rats eating crops.Caused hunger in 1959. **4 no campaign (1957)
• Farmers had ridiculously high targets
• Mao steps down as chairman, replaced by Liu Sh. at Central committee meeting in Wuhan - also when commune success was announced in December

Lysenkoism was never stopped....

• Local party members were too scared to tell Mao it wasn't working
• Lysenoism continued to flourish, causing famine.

• Droughts and flood caused famine
• 1959 awful harvest due to lysenkoism
• Soil damaged due to farming methods - lack of food
• People sold themeselves for food
• 30 million deaths
• Peasants imprisoned for trying to return to old farming methods

1959.....

• Denouncing of Peng Dehuai
• Mao blamed the failure on incompetence of his officials

1960....

• Grain harvest fell by 143 million tonnes, yet China still giving grain to USSR (DEBTS)
• Natural disasters

Aim.....

• China industrial leader in 15 y ears
• "Backyard furncaes" - those in communes to smelt iron and steel
• People used metal furniture
• Metal produced NOT useful
• People had virtually no furniture left
• Mao only concerned with spectacle of it, and not economic value

Partial sucess......

• Big bridges and canals built
• Tianamen sq (1959)
• Proof to Mao his idea was GREAT
• China begins to develop nuclear weapons

Failures.....

• Mass mobilisation wasn't mass production
• Enthusiasm of people was not enough.
• Lack of planning due to lack of clever people

• Mao blamed it on bourgeois people in government trying to sabotage his efforts.

• 70% man made and 30% nature (1959, famine really kicks of)
• In towns food lower than in Autchwitz
• Grain procurement continued
• Sichuan 10 - 20 % of pop died - officials
• Cannibalism
• Children hung to death for stealing

• Spring 1958 people starting to doubt Great Leap
• Peng sent letter to Mao criticising great leap. Mao circulated letter behind Peng's back (July)
• 18th July 1959 - Krushchev gives speech criticizing Great Leap, Mao believes Peng briefed K.

30th July......

• Peng sacked as minister of defence as was Zhu De
• Denounced in from of many colleagues.
• Led to persecution of many "right opportunists"
• Mao had learnt nothing, by 1960 he was talking about extending the communes to the city.

By June 1960 Great Leap ends.