As a result of the successful economic
reconstruction that had taken place in the early 1950s under the First Five Year Plan, the Party
leadership headed by Mao Zedong considered the conditions ripe for a
Great Leap Forward in early 1958. The Great Leap was not merely a bold
economic project. It was also intended to show the Soviet Union that
the Chinese approach to economic development was more vibrant, and
ultimately would be more successful, than the Soviet model that had
been followed studiously until then.
The Chinese people were to go all out in a concerted
effort to surpass England in 15 (or even less) years and to make the
transition from socialism to communism at the same time, thereby
leaving the Soviet Union far behind. That, at least,
was the plan, which brought to an abrupt stop the earlier, more cautious
attempts to sustain the speed of China's recovery and further
development by Five Year Plans. The more radical members of the
leadership tried to outdo each other with more and more unrealistic
calls for "greater, faster, better, [and] cheaper" production. The
characters for this call are emblazoned on the sails of the ship in the
poster below. The poster also tries to impress on the population how
all this will improve their welfare, as opposed to that of the
Taiwanese, who are shown in the right-hand corner as suffering under
the GMD-regime and the presence of Americans.
On the basis of an exaggerated belief in the power
of ideology on human consciousness, the radicals were convinced that by putting "politcs in command", the
objective difficulties created by lagging industrialisation and
mechanisation could be overcome in a relatively short time. By relying
on willpower, and by giving supremacy to the human, subjective
dimensions of history, the people would be able to bring about a quick
transformation of the concrete obstacles they encountered in the
physical world. 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.
The Great Leap Forward took two forms: a mass steel
campaign, and the formation of the people's communes. On the one hand,
all the people in the country were organized to help produce the amount
of steel that was needed to attain the goal of surpassing England. Life
was militarized for this battle for steel.
Everywhere, small backyard
furnaces were built, where everybody pitched in in around-the-clock
shifts. Quota for the collection of used iron had to be met, cooking
pots were smashed, door handles were melted down in order to meet the
production demands. Only later it became clear that the quality of this
mass-produced people's steel was so poor that no use could be found for
it. The effects of this production battle proved to be disastrous for
the environment. On the poster below, on the left, rows of such small
backyard furnaces can be seen.
In the countryside, the various forms of rural
cooperatives were merged into huge people's communes. Rural life was
completely collectivized, including mess halls where free food was
supplied. Due to the excessive zeal of local officials, who were
whipped up in the general atmosphere of enthusiasm while at the same
time afraid to be branded as laggards, production figures that were
unrealistic to begin with, were fixed higher and higher. Moreover,
because everybody was involved in the battle to produce steel, labor
power was lacking to bring in the harvests. If these amounts of food
really could have been harvested, as the enthusiastic reports had
promised, "communism was just around the corner", as the general belief
in the autumn of 1958 seemed to be.
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By early 1959, it became clear that things were
running out of hand. As a result of the massive production drives in
steel and agriculture, both the production and transport sectors had become
severely dislocated. The reality of the Great Leap Forward corresponded
less and less with the picture painted in the reports to the
leadership. Some leaders, including Chen Yun,
started to express cautious warnings about the results of this "fever
in the brain" which held China in its sway, while the more radical
officials continued to proclaim imaginary victories in production.
Dissatisfaction climaxed at the Lushan Plenum in
July 1959. Originally, the meeting was intended to reign in the
"leftism" of the movement, but it turned into a showdown between
proponents of the movement (headed by Mao) and opponents (inadvertently
headed by Minister of Defense Peng Dehuai).
In a personal letter to Mao, Peng had criticized the extreme elements
of the movement. Mao interpreted the letter as a personal attack and had it
distributed for study and criticism by the other leaders present at
Lushan. As a result of the Plenum, Peng was dismissed from his posts
and replaced by Lin Biao. Instead of trying to find answers to the problems of the Great Leap, an anti-Rightist struggle was started.
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Despite the indications that the Great Leap had
failed to reach its objectives, the movement continued to be upheld.
During the celebrations of the Tenth Anniversary of the People's
Republic in October 1959, the "General Line of the Great Leap Forward,
the people's communes and the steel campaign" were reaffirmed. The
movement turned into a disaster when in the period 1959-1961 China was
struck by natural disasters. More than an estimated 30 to 40 million people
died in the ensuing famine.
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Moreover, as a result of the break-up
of the relations with the Soviet Union, China was confronted with total
economic collapse. The readjustment of the economy started in 1961, and
took place under the leadership of Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun
and others. Mao accepted the responsibility for the disasters and
withdrew to Shanghai. From here, he plotted his return to the pinnacle
of power, which resulted in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
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Sources:
China Famine 1959-61 [in Chinese]
Jasper Becker, Hungry Ghosts--China's Secret Famine (Henry Holt, 1998)
Li Rui, Lushan huiyi shilu [True Record of the Lushan Plenum] (Peking: Chunqiu chubanshe/Hunan jiaoyu chubanshe, 1989) [in Chinese]
Li Zhisui, The Private Life of Chairman Mao—The Memoirs of Mao's Personal Physician (London, etc.: Random House, 1996)
Roderick MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, Volume II: The Great Leap Forward, 1958-1960 (Columbia University Press, 1987)
Roderick MacFarquhar, Timothy Cheek, Eugene Wu (eds), The Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao—From the Hundred Flowers to the Great Leap Forward (Cambridge, etc.: Harvard University Press, 1989)
Peter J. Seybolt, Throwing the Emperor from His Horse -- Portrait of a Village Leader in China, 1923-1995 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996)
Frederick Teiwes and Warren Sun, China's
Road to Disaster—Mao, Central Politicians, and Provincial Leaders
in the Unfolding of the Great Leap Forward 1955-1959 (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1998)
s.r.landsberger@let.leidenuniv.nl
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