Search for More Suggested terms to look for include - diary, diaries, letters, papers, documents, documentary or correspondence. Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. With hindsight, the results were predictably bad. Mao Zedong, 1959, “Even if there’s a collapse [in China’s food production] it’ll be alright. Some scholars have also included the years 1958 or 1962. Mao's aims The Great Leap Forward was China's second Five Year Plan. 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. There were 17 of them and they did the work in less than an hour and would take no payment.” Mao Zedong's Quotes Extra Facts Project Sources The Great Leap Forward. Mao Zedong. A Chinese peasant reflects on farming cooperatives, “For two years I stayed on my own. I remember a famous restaurant, the Lugaojian… their speciality was two salted sparrows on a stick… But after the Four Pests campaign, you couldn’t buy them any more.” 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.” Mao's 'Great Leap Forward' and the Power of History. 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. The first autumn of the Great Leap Forward, in 1958, came with a bumper crop in many areas, because the soil was not yet exhausted. However, this plan backfired in a tragic fashion. This site was last updated on August 19th 2020. Now it went above the knee. We did it for several days. In that way, no one would lose anything but all would gain. Terrible. What does he want with chanting these liturgies all the time?” Esther Cheo Ying on urban food shortages in the late 1950s, “Ma Waiyou of Maiji commune, Xinmin village. For more info, visit Alpha History or our Terms of Use. Films of the Soviet Union were even shown to peasants and ordinary Chinese to show them what to aspire to. 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. People in the countryside began to starve. This Chinese Revolution website is created and maintained by Alpha History. ‘Why are they not in the fields? In the three years that followed, a massive famine occurred. Traditionally, each farmer in China farmed his own piece of land. Mao Zedong on the Great Leap Forward, “I am a complete outsider when it comes to economic construction. 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. 2. ISBN: 0300184042. 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. 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.” He ate Chen Zaxi. But the temperature was too low. Mao Zedong’s assessment of the nation, Lushan Conference, 1959, “The achievements of the Great Leap Forward are obvious… The overall value of industrial and agricultural production rose by 48.8 per cent in 1958… Such a rate of growth is unknown anywhere in the world. These quotations have been selected and compiled by Alpha History authors. Food rotted in the fields. Anxious commune leaders vastly exaggerated their harvests, hoping to curry favor with the Communist leadership. But deep down the soil is no good, too compact. If you have to fart – fart! It had political repercussions for Mao Zedong as well. (Video) Arifa Akbar. So people are setting up more and more community canteens, nurseries, sewing groups…” I had to see to everything myself. Steelworkers got the most in bulk and grain, but intellectuals got more meat, sugar and fats.” 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. Everybody bears some responsibility, including Comrade Mao Zedong… How can he not share some responsibility? In order to prove that China had made the “great leap” to an industrialized, rich, communist society, Mao ordered the complete collectivization of farms, factories, and most of society. Liu Shaoqi, 1950, “Landlords in general will only be deprived of their land and abolished as a social class, but they will not be physically eliminated… Therefore it is a stipulation that after their lands have been confiscated, the landlords will still be given shares of land… That way they can make a living by their own labour, reform themselves through labour and become new men.” The National Academy of Sciences issued reports on how many insects they ate, compared to how many seeds. We have known for some time that Mao Zedong, founder of the People’s Republic of China, was one of the last century’s most brutal and vicious mass murderers. The Great Leap Forward was supposed to be a five-year plan, but it was called off after just three tragic years. The Great Leap Forward was not simply a whim of Mao Zedong, but the program of … 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. Among 41 production brigades in ten communes of Linxia City, 588 people ate the remains of 337 others. On the contrary, ‘the home is much happier now because the heavy burdens are removed’. She has taught at the high school and university levels in the U.S. and South Korea. That is annoying. Status: common peasant. Relationship: spouse. A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery. 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. It was difficult. They killed him and ate him.” “One of the many paradoxes of the Great Leap Forward was that everything was for sale, as bricks, clothes and fuel were bartered for food. His words are always so clear and direct. 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. 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. Some were sent to farming cooperatives, while others worked in small manufacturing. Why can’t other Party leaders be so perceptive?” In the third year, I did not manage to finish my ploughing. I thought that sounded alright.” Friday, 17 September 2010. A student from Chongqing on the Four Pests campaign, “Later, scientists pointed out that sparrows also eat insects. There, he summed up its ethos as “more, faster, better, and more economical,” and the Great Leap Forward was set in motion. People ate corpses and fought for the bodies. 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 What Is Totalitarianism? In the end, through a combination of disastrous economic policy and adverse weather conditions, an estimated 20 to 48 million people died in China. 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.” 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. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.” Instead, Mao envisaged a decentralisation of control to local Party cadres whose task it would be to The Great Leap Forward was born from Mao Zedong’s impatience for industrial and manufacturing growth (in his words, “more, faster, better, cheaper”).. The results, unfortunately, were catastrophic. “ 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.” Mao Zedong on farm collectivisation, 1955, “China has two advantages. Over just a few years, the Great Leap Forward also caused massive environmental damage in China. However, the extra work burden that neces… The result was a big mess of melted metal. I understand nothing about industrial planning… I do not claim to have invented the People’s Communes, only to have proposed them.” And they ate their own children. The period between 1958 and 1960 is known as the "Three Bitter Years" in China. In those days one man’s word counted for everything.” Backyard Steel Furnace during the Great Leap Forward. We have had many natural disasters, a bad drought in the north. I sweated my guts out. It was an impossible goal, of course, but Mao had the power to force the world's largest society to … Mao Zedong on the failures of the Great Leap Forward, 1959, “The harvest had been bad. If we can reach 40 million tons in five years, we may possibly catch up with Great Britain in seven years. Comrades, if you have to shit – shit! Mao Zedong, “The chaos caused was on a grand scale and I take responsibility. Too terrible.” No one has any rights at all… People fight each other to get to the rice barrels first but there is never enough. He encouraged people to set up backyard steel furnaces, where citizens could turn scrap metal into usable steel. Part of an authoritarian regime is the dedication to ideological-based projects, even at the expense of economic or social progress. A Yunnan botanist on the end of the Four Pests campaign, “Great achievements, numerous problems and a bright future.” Ronald Radosh. Yue Daiyun, peasant woman, “Naturally we have defects and mistakes… Like a child playing with fire, without experience, knowing pain only after being burned. Mao's Great Leap Forward 'killed 45 million in four years' The Independent. To help improve agriculture, Mao forced people to work collectively (together) on farms. Mao Zedong. Power Gun Political. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.’ Simultaneously, it would expand China's economy. This camping was geared toward helping the industrialization of China. Peng Dehuai, 1959, “We must learn a lesson, not just complain or find fault. 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 official death toll from the Great Leap Forward is "only" 14 million, but the majority of scholars agree that this is a substantial underestimate. Under Mao, everything is great but they only eat porridge. Mao believed this program would allow him to win the race with the Soviet Union to achieve commu nism. In economic construction, like a child without experience, we declared war on the earth, unfamiliar with the strategy or tactics.” 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. 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.” A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. 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. They deserve far greater recognition of the horrible injustice they suffered. Most of the victims starved to death in the countryside. The Soviet Union was also blank… China’s industrial development can proceed more swiftly than the Soviet Union’s.” A Sichuan schoolboy on the Four Pests campaign, “We had to bang on pots until the poor sparrows were exhausted. However, so many farmers had been sent into steel production work that there weren't enough hands to harvest the crops. It was so dense that I was afraid to go in there at night. Mao, the grim reaper. Millions also left the countryside to work in underground” Mao created the Great Leap Forward to help China modernize and catch up with the west. Between 1958 and 1960, millions of Chinese citizens were moved onto communes. Sky View Big. We made ladders to knock down their nests and beat gongs in the evenings when they were coming home to roost. In 1958 Mao Zedong announced the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to increase agricultural and industrial production. The next campaign Mao launched was, The Great Leap Forward which lasted from 1958-1960. These farming strategies damaged countless acres of farmland and dropped crop yields, rather than producing more food with fewer farmers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. 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. Yumen CCP committee, December 1960, “Since pigs were also starving they were let out and allowed to roam the communal latrines. Mao’s ambition. It is as if a raging tidal wave has swept away all the demons and ghosts.” Only four to five inches on the surface are good. 150 Quotes from Mao Tse Tung Revolutionary Civil War Period 1926-1927. Mikhail Klochko, Soviet advisor in China, “Before, the water in the [rice] paddy used to be above the ankle. Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend. Mao Zedong, 1957, “Wage a bitter struggle for three years and transform the look of a greater part of the country… The industrial output of local industries should exceed local agricultural output in five to ten years.” Mao Zedong, 1958, “The Chairman talks all the time about more, faster, better, and more economical results. In 1960, a widespread drought added to the nation's misery. Lin Biao, January 1962, “What a good speech vice-chairman Lin has made. 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. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. When Mao … Put organizations on a military footing, put actions on a war footing, put life on a collective footing, 1958 Then the farmers’ cooperative people came along. Chen Yun, CCP politician, 1961, “The thoughts of the Chairman [Mao] are always correct. Chinese Revolution crossword for beginners. The Great Leap Forward planned to develop agriculture and industry. Mao announced a second Five Year Plan to last from 1958 to 1963. 12. 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 … Dr. Kallie Szczepanski is a history teacher specializing in Asian history and culture. The program had two parts. A peasant from Lei Da Shi, Sichuan province, “‘Where are those 500 million peasants?’ my Soviet colleague wondered. Anna Louise Strong, American journalist, 1964. 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. You’ll feel much better for it.” Mao hoped to increase China's agricultural output while also pulling workers from agriculture into the manufacturing sector. Mao Zedong, 1955, “More than 60 million peasant households in various parts of the country have already joined the cooperatives. 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. Anhui police report on cannibalism, 1960, “Cannibalism occurred in many places. It contains 183,984 words in 268 pages. Chairman Mao just said ‘Forget it’. 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. We tried to do too much, we wasted part of our investments, we deferred certain essential tasks, and that is a mistake.” 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 … Hands to harvest the crops sidelined from power until 1967, when he called the! 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