(Video) Arifa Akbar. Peng Dehuai, 1958, “It was fun to wipe out the ‘Four Pests’. Mao's aims The Great Leap Forward was China's second Five Year Plan. Mao believed that both had to grow to allow the other to grow. Some survivors of the Great Leap Forward are still alive today. So we stopped killing sparrows. Chen Yun, CCP politician, 1961, “The thoughts of the Chairman [Mao] are always correct. Yue Daiyun, peasant woman, “Naturally we have defects and mistakes… Like a child playing with fire, without experience, knowing pain only after being burned. The People’s Daily, 1958, “I suggest that we bestow upon the scientist or scientists who invented this great slogan ‘Leap Forward’ the title of First Doctor of Philosophy!” People ate corpses and fought for the bodies. It was an impossible goal, of course, but Mao had the power to force the world's largest society to … The Great Chinese Famine (Chinese: 三年大饥荒, "three years of great famine") was a period between 1959 and 1961 in the history of the People's Republic of China (PRC) characterized by widespread famine. The Great Leap Forward was supposed to be a five-year plan, but it was called off after just three tragic years. The first Five-Year Plan for the future of China was launched by Mao Zedong in 1953, in which the Soviet Union was held up as the model for development. The Soviet Union was also blank… China’s industrial development can proceed more swiftly than the Soviet Union’s.” Anxious commune leaders vastly exaggerated their harvests, hoping to curry favor with the Communist leadership. Put organizations on a military footing, put actions on a war footing, put life on a collective footing, 1958 Chairman Mao Zedong launched the campaign to reconstruct the country from an agrarian economy into a communist society through the formation of people's communes.Mao decreed increased efforts to … Mao announced a second Five Year Plan to last from 1958 to 1963. 2. Children were taken from their parents and put into large childcare centers to be tended to by workers assigned that task. Peng Dehuai, 1959, “We must learn a lesson, not just complain or find fault. The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images. “ Mao's Great Famine is a gripping and masterful portrait of the brutal court of Mao, based on new research but also written with great narrative verve, that tells the gripping story of the manmade famine that killed 45 million people, from the dictator and his henchmen down to the villages of rural China.” So people are setting up more and more community canteens, nurseries, sewing groups…” In economic construction, like a child without experience, we declared war on the earth, unfamiliar with the strategy or tactics.” It had political repercussions for Mao Zedong as well. Meat was almost non-existent and the cat population rapidly declined. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. It is as if a raging tidal wave has swept away all the demons and ghosts.” We collected scrap metal and pots while the grownups cut the trees. As the commune members squatted there, swollen with malnutrition and constipated from the grim diet, the pigs would jostle them with their snouts, trying to get at the excrement before it had even fallen from their bodies.” We did it for several days. These quotations have been selected and compiled by Alpha History authors. Most of the victims starved to death in the countryside. The Great Leap Forward, the second five-year plan of the Chinese revolution, was an attempt to develop rapidly both industry and agriculture. The Great Leap Forward was a push by Mao Zedong to change China from a predominantly agrarian (farming) society to a modern, industrial society—in just five years. As a result of the successful economic reconstruction that had taken place in the early 1950’s. But deep down the soil is no good, too compact. Mao Zedong, 1958, “The Chairman talks all the time about more, faster, better, and more economical results. Status: common peasant. Now it went above the knee. You’ll feel much better for it.” The peasants were carrying out the work of the [Communist] Party, working day and night at the mines and homemade blast furnaces… And we know the results: they did not obtain any more iron than before and there was much less bread and rice to go round.” Mao, the grim reaper. Simultaneously, it would expand China's economy. A common slogan in the 1950s summed it up: “The Soviet Union’s today is our tomorrow.”At same time, however, one can detect within Mao’s policies and statements … Why can’t other Party leaders be so perceptive?” If we can reach 40 million tons in five years, we may possibly catch up with Great Britain in seven years. With hindsight, the results were predictably bad. Dense cropping and deep plowing stripped the farmland of nutrients and left the agricultural soil vulnerable to erosion as well. As a result of the exaggerations, party officials carried off most of the food to serve as the cities' share of the harvest, leaving the farmers with nothing to eat. For both Chinese and westerners, failure to acknowledge the true nature of the Great Leap Forward carries serious costs. Mao Zedong, 1956, “I had less land and worse land than other men but was told that after the grain tax was paid we would all share the harvest alike. Definition and Examples, Biography of Mao Zedong, Father of Modern China, Khmer Rouge: Regime Origins, Timeline, and Fall, Overview of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, The Three Sisters: the Traditional Intercropping Agricultural Method, The Geography and Modern History of China, The Yellow River's Role in China's History, An Overview of the Chinese Communist Party, J.D., University of Washington School of Law, B.A., History, Western Washington University. For more info, visit Alpha History or our Terms of Use. In that way, no one would lose anything but all would gain. Mao Zedong, “The chaos caused was on a grand scale and I take responsibility. At that time, we only thought that they ate grain.” Between 1958 and 1960, millions of Chinese citizens were moved onto communes. James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson In the post-Mao reconstruction of the history of the People's Republic of China (PRC), two periods-the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960) and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution Too terrible.” Call Number: HC430.F3 Z467 2013. Nature Flowers Thought. They deserve far greater recognition of the horrible injustice they suffered. Mao Zedong on the Great Leap Forward “I am a complete outsider when it comes to economic construction. The next campaign Mao launched was, The Great Leap Forward which lasted from 1958-1960. They do what they like. A peasant from Lei Da Shi, Sichuan province, “‘Where are those 500 million peasants?’ my Soviet colleague wondered. Films of the Soviet Union were even shown to peasants and ordinary Chinese to show them what to aspire to. Millions also left the countryside to work in underground” He encouraged people to set up backyard steel furnaces, where citizens could turn scrap metal into usable steel. The brush and branches we gathered were enough for all our firewood, we never had to cut the trees… I was only 10 or 11 during the Leap. A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery. This was also the era of massive irrigation projects — local, regional, and national in scope — that were to result in impressive gains in crop yields in subsequent years. Farmers in the Great Leap Forward Era (Historians on the Warpath) Mao Versus Sparrows. Comrades, if you have to shit – shit! Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. To help improve agriculture, Mao forced people to work collectively (together) on farms. I understand nothing about industrial planning… I do not claim to have invented the People’s Communes, only to have proposed them.” Mao's Great Famine (Complete) Historian Frank Dikötter recounts the horrific cost of China's "Great Leap Forward" between 1958 and 1962. Everybody bears some responsibility, including Comrade Mao Zedong… How can he not share some responsibility? ‘Why are they not in the fields? It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.’ Families had to meet quotas for steel production, so in desperation, they often melted down useful items such as their own pots, pans, and farm implements. In 1958 Mao Zedong announced the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to increase agricultural and industrial production. This page contains a collection of Chinese Revolution quotations about agrarian reform and the Great Leap Forward, made by prominent leaders, figures, observers and historians. He ate Chen Zaxi. 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. In the three years that followed, a massive famine occurred. Food rotted in the fields. Backyard Steel Furnace during the Great Leap Forward. Mao Zedong on the failures of the Great Leap Forward, 1959, “The harvest had been bad. Mao Zedong, 1958, “With 11 million tons of steel next year and 17 million tons the year after, the world will be shaken. If we encounter any problems, any difficulty, it is because we have not followed the instructions of the Chairman closely enough, because we have ignored or circumscribed the Chairman’s advice.” Part of an authoritarian regime is the dedication to ideological-based projects, even at the expense of economic or social progress. Lin Biao, January 1962, “What a good speech vice-chairman Lin has made. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.” Mao Zedong on farm collectivisation, 1955, “China has two advantages. And the fires that were visible each night over the horizon. An unnamed peasant on the practice of ‘deep ploughing’, “All property has to be state-owned, all houses and furniture have been turned into government property. If you have to fart – fart! Friday, 17 September 2010. I understand nothing about industrial planning… I do not claim to have invented the People’s Communes, only to have proposed them.” Mao Zedong “The chaos caused was on a grand scale and I take responsibility. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) lead by Mao Zedong or Mao Tse-Tung considered it was a time for the Great Leap Forward. Mao Zedong's Quotes Extra Facts Project Sources The Great Leap Forward. Some were sent to farming cooperatives, while others worked in small manufacturing. None of my brothers would help me. Mao Zedong on the Great Leap Forward, “I am a complete outsider when it comes to economic construction. Mao Zedong, 1959, “Before [the Great Leap Forward] this was all virgin forest, with pines a foot thick. Peasant farmer Li Hai Yuan on cooperative farming, “The People’s Commune represents a much higher degree of socialist development and collectivisation… Its massive scale of production requires more efficient organisation with great labour flexibility, as well as women’s’ production participation. By 1958, these agricultural collectives had become the norm, and private ownership of land was abolished, with all households being forced into the state-operated communes. Great Leap Forward, in Chinese history, the campaign undertaken by the Chinese communists between 1958 and early 1960 to organize its vast population, especially in large-scale rural communes, to meet China’s industrial and agricultural problems. Chinese Revolution crossword for beginners. Mao’s ambition. For Mao, the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) stands out. The Great Leap Forward planned to develop agriculture and industry. Speaking at The Independent Woodstock Literary Festival, Frank Dikötter, a Hong Kong-based historian, said he found that during the time that Mao was enforcing the Great Leap Forward … The Great Leap Forward was a push by Mao Zedong to change China from a predominantly agrarian (farming) society to a modern, industrial society—in just five years. 12. This plan was called the Great Leap Forward. Mao created the Great Leap Forward to help China modernize and catch up with the west. Mao Zedong. Li Lei, CCP cadre from Gansu province, writing in 1999, “Among 14 work units… 3,132 persons are suffering from oedema, which afflicts 25 per cent of the staff in the most seriously affected units… The illness has struck workers more than cadres, those employed in heavy physical labour more than light work, and those eating at communal kitchens more than those taking their meals at home.” The worst that will happen is that the whole world will get a big laugh out of it.” He dug up her body and cooked it… Yang Wenyi and Yuan Shuying of Houxiyan village, together with… eight people in total, dug up the body of a child, cooked and ate it… A person called Liu Chuan. The whole school went to kill sparrows. It’s the spring planting season, isn’t it?’ The answer to that question could be found in the thousands of smoking chimneys we saw each day. We made ladders to knock down their nests and beat gongs in the evenings when they were coming home to roost. The Great Leap Forward, the period from 1958 to 1962 that saw the deaths of an estimated 45 million Chinese, lacks the heft of horror associated with Hitler's and Stalin's genocides. In 1957, at the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution, this was held in Moscow, Khrush… Then the farmers’ cooperative people came along. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another. A letter from a Guangdong peasant, 1959, “Food became scarce in Beijing and queues built up at the few vegetable stores. They are simply superb. However, so many farmers had been sent into steel production work that there weren't enough hands to harvest the crops. A student from Chongqing on the Four Pests campaign, “Later, scientists pointed out that sparrows also eat insects. However, this plan backfired in a tragic fashion. Dr. Kallie Szczepanski is a history teacher specializing in Asian history and culture. Mao's 'Great Leap Forward' and the Power of History. We turned it over to the local steel factories to process further. In Hongtai Commune alone there were 170 people who ate 125 corpses, as well as killing and eating five other people… In some cases, individuals barbarously consumed their own parents, children, spouses and siblings. Part one involved improving agriculture so there was enough food to feed factory workers. Peng Dehuai, 1959, “When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death. She has taught at the high school and university levels in the U.S. and South Korea. Wood can never burn hot enough to make steel.” Mao Zedong. Mao hoped to increase China's agricultural output while also pulling workers from agriculture into the manufacturing sector. Unlike the first plan, however, the driving force in the effort to achieve production targets for agriculture and industry was not to be a centralised State bureaucracy. I sweated my guts out. We have had many natural disasters, a bad drought in the north. This Chinese Revolution website is created and maintained by Alpha History. Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. The Great Leap Forward (Second Five Year Plan) of the People's Republic of China (PRC) was an economic and social campaign led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1958 to 1962. They killed him and ate him.” Mao Zedong’s campaign called the “Great Leap Forward” (1958–1961) (大跃进) aimed to transform China into a modern industrial nation and to prepare China for communism in the near future. While the First Five Year Plan had succeeded in stimulating rapid industrialisation and increased production, Mao was suspicious of Soviet models of economic development. Mao also wanted to free China from the need to import steel and machinery. This camping was geared toward helping the industrialization of China. I had to see to everything myself. Liu Shaoqi, 1950, “When the Third Five Year Plan is completed in 1967, the yields for grain and many other agricultural products should be double or triple the highest yields before the People’s Republic was founded [in 1949].” The backyard steel production plan resulted in entire forests being chopped down and burned to fuel the smelters, which left the land open to erosion. After Mao declared the failure of the Great Leap in 1962, almost all methods of communication became cornerstones for propaganda as they fixated on recuperating and reiterating the cult of Mao. And they ate their own children. Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend. known as the Great Leap Forward. "Dare to … Thus the landlords as a class are abolished and the exploitative feudal land ownership system is transformed… This is the greatest and most thorough reform in thousands of years of Chinese history.” It was so dense that I was afraid to go in there at night. Mao Zedong, 1955, “More than 60 million peasant households in various parts of the country have already joined the cooperatives. Mao believed this program would allow him to win the race with the Soviet Union to achieve commu nism. Instead, Mao envisaged a decentralisation of control to local Party cadres whose task it would be to Yang Jisheng, Chinese writer, on the Great Famine of 1959-61, “Some people don’t give up their convictions until they see the Yellow River and have nowhere to retreat to. The United States in George Washington’s era was blank, so it could develop very rapidly. A Yunnan botanist on the end of the Four Pests campaign, “Great achievements, numerous problems and a bright future.” Traditionally, each farmer in China farmed his own piece of land. Search for More Suggested terms to look for include - diary, diaries, letters, papers, documents, documentary or correspondence. It contains 183,984 words in 268 pages. In the period between 1949 and 1958, a policy of collectivization, where farmers would work in collectives and share tools and draft animals, was gradually introduced and implemented. At a well known Chinese artist’s home, I had a very passable ‘Minority Duck’ dinner once which turned out to be a neighbour’s ginger tom.” Formerly the young wife in poorer families would have to work in the field and rush home to get the meals on a very slow stove, then stay up half the night to grind the grain… The husband would grumble if the meal wasn’t ready at once when he came home from work… ‘Now all this grumbling is over’, said Mrs Chang.” Under Mao, everything is great but they only eat porridge. Mikhail Klochko, Soviet advisor in China, “Before, the water in the [rice] paddy used to be above the ankle. There were 17 of them and they did the work in less than an hour and would take no payment.” The official death toll from the Great Leap Forward is "only" 14 million, but the majority of scholars agree that this is a substantial underestimate. Mao's Great Leap Forward 'killed 45 million in four years' The Independent. Han Suyin on food shortages during the Great Leap Forward, “People died in the family and they didn’t bury the person because they could still collect their food rations; they kept the bodies in bed and covered them up and the corpses were eaten by mice. In the third year, I did not manage to finish my ploughing. The next year, the Yellow River flooded, killing 2 million people either by drowning or by starvation after crop failures. Relationship: spouse. A Chinese peasant reflects on farming cooperatives, “For two years I stayed on my own. It was many years before we knew that sparrows are good birds. In 1960, a widespread drought added to the nation's misery. 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