IGCSE History

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• Introduction to IGCSE
• The Road to Affluence: USA 1917 - 1941 (A9)
  • 1917 - 1929
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• International Relations 1919-1939 (A8)
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• Revolution in China 1949 - 1996 (A14)
  • 1949 - 1976
    • China under Mao
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  • 1976 - 1996
    • The defeat of the Gang of Four
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• South-East Asia 1945 - 1900 (A15)
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• Conflict and Crisis is the Middle East 1946 - 1996 (A16)
  • Unit overview
  • 1946 - 1967
    • The creation of Israel
    • The impact of the war of 1948 - 1949
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    • The Six Day War
  • 1967 - 1996
    • International terrorism
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• The First World War (B4)
  • The Schlieffen Plan
  • Deadlock on the Western Front
  • Gallipoli
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• The USA 1917-1929 (B7)
  • The Roaring Twenties
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• China under Mao Zedong 1949 - 1959 (B10)
  • The creation of the Communist State
  • Land Reform
  • Communist society
  • The First Five Year Pan
  • The 100 Flowers
  • The Great Leap Forward
• The Changing Nature of Warfare (C3)
  • Unit overview
  • Warfare at the beginning of the 20th Century
  • Land warfare
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  • Atomic and nuclear weapons
  • Warfare at the end of the 20th Century
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The Great Leap Forward

One cause of the fall in agricultural production was the ‘Great Leap Forward’, which Mao announced in 1957. This was part of the Second Five Year Plan. The Great Leap Forward was an attempt to turn China into an industrial superpower within fifteen years by using the massive manpower of the country. This was followed Mao’s belief in the value of manual labour. Like Collectivisation, the Great Leap Forward was based upon Communes. Workers who had migrated to towns during the First Five Year Plan were sent back to their communes to work. A commune of 30,000 people might have sixteen brigades, who were each divided into eight work teams of 250 people. In the winter of 1957-8 these work teams were thrown into massive scheme of irrigation and water conservation.

The fundamental idea behind the Great Leap Forward was that industrial development could be achieved through the individual efforts of the ordinary Chinese people. It was not necessary, Mao believed, to go through the process of an industrial revolution. The Great Leap Forward also had other advantages in Mao’s eyes. Firstly, it would reinforce the rural community, which Mao believed was the main strength of China and the CCP. Secondly, it would avoid the creation of a class of ‘experts’, which Mao so distrusted.

So Mao appealed to the ordinary people of China to try to produce steel in their own backyards. All over China people began to set up backyard blast furnaces and produce steel. This was a disaster. The steel produced was often unusable as it was of very poor quality. What was worse, to produce steel, peasants neglected their crops that went to ruin. All over China the harvest was left to rot and this made the famine brought about by Collectivisation all the worse.

The most important reason for the failure of the Great Leap Forward was that it was nonsensical. Major industrial development needed capital investment, technology and planning; Mao rejected all of these as revisionist. He was afraid that if he allowed the creation of a class of experts he would lose control of the revolution. Mao’s personal pride and paranoia was allowed take precedence over common-sense and as many as 30,000,000 Chinese died of starvation as a result

The statistics of the Great Leap Forward were startling. Following Mao’s belief in the manual labour of the Chinese peasant, Communes dug the equivalent of 300 Panama Canals. But all of this effort was largely useless. At the same time national income fell by 29% and inflation rose from 0.2% to 16.2%.

The Great Leap Forward was the most spectacular of Mao’s failures. Surprisingly, however, it did not deter him from believing that the key to China’s successful development lay in the great mass of the Chinese people. In the 1960s, he continued to believe that he could use the support of the people to maintain his hold over China and prevent any form of progress of which he disapproved.

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