The Great Leap Forward
How China's economic policies in the late 1950s lead to one of the greatest famine in human history.
Introduction
In the late 1950s, Moa Zedong passed a new economic policy in China. The Chinese citizens were told it was a great leap forward. What seemed like a rosy picture at first, turned dark quickly, and led to the greatest famine in human history killing over 30 million Chinese citizens.
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In a nutshell
In 1958, Mao Zedong enforced a new economic policy in China and called it the Great Leap Forward. At this time China was an agrarian society, with family-owned farmlands.
Under the policy, Chinese farmers were to forgo their privately owned land and band together into communes where they worked on land assigned by the state (a concept known as collectivism). Farmers were to grow steel in backyard furnaces, work in factories, and chase aggressive targets for grain production. Commune members including children were also encouraged to shoot and kill (among other creatures such as rats) sparrows, as sparrows were seen as enemies that threatened grain production. But no matter what role you played in the commune you were treated as equal and had equal rights over resources such as food.
Despite the initial success of these measures in 1959, each of these policies failed morbidly and caused the death of millions in the coming years. Moving farmers into communes meant dislocating tens of millions of farmers. Forcing farmers to work in factories, and produce steel in their commune backyard led to a dismal production of steel as the farmers had no experience in steel production. Chasing unrealistic targets for grains led to the overuse of soil, and experiments in grain production which were counterproductive, moreover, commune leaders began lying about the output in fear of missing these targets. Killing sparrows disrupted the ecological balance and caused locusts to destroy the grains.
The cumulative effect of these blunderous policies led to what is known as The Great Famine, killing over 30 million Chinese citizens.
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