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The truth behind the famine: Why did the Great Leap Forward become one of the worst famines in human history?
In Chinese history, the Great Leap Forward is regarded as an economic and social movement that was full of ambitions but ended in failure. Between 1958 and 1962, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), under the leadership of Mao Zedong, attempted to transform from an agricultural society to an industrial one. However, this campaign resulted in a massive famine that killed at least 15 to 55 million people, making it one of the worst famines in human history.
The Great Leap Forward was initiated by many factors, including the purges of intellectuals, the rise of uneducated radicals, the need to find new ways of generating capital, and reactions to the sociopolitical consequences of Soviet development strategies.
In this context, Mao Zedong's expectation was to significantly increase rural food production and increase industrial activity. The core of this plan was the formation of people's communes, which aimed to pool human resources and factors of production to increase efficiency. Unfortunately, this movement often ignores basic economic principles and the opinions of technical experts.
Mao Zedong's top officials were afraid to report the economic disaster, while senior officials blamed the decline in grain production on bad weather, making the situation in Nanjing even worse.
As the policy progressed, local officials were frightened by the "anti-rightist deviation struggle", leading them to rush to complete or overfulfill the grain quotas required by Mao Zedong, which in turn resulted in nothing more than collecting false "surplus production." . As a result, countless farmers eventually died and starved. As this situation continued to spread, it gradually evolved into comprehensive collectivization of the countryside, a ban on private agriculture, and persecution of those who violated the policy.
Scholar Dwight Perkins pointed out that "huge investments have produced only negligible or no growth in production."
Although Mao Zedong admitted the disaster of the Great Leap Forward at the "Meeting of Seven Thousand People" in 1962, he did not abandon his policy, instead blaming the problem on faulty implementation and opposition from his opponents. This led to the subsequent socialist education movement and the launching of the Cultural Revolution, intended to re-consolidate his power. The consequences of the Great Leap Forward were not only economic decline, but also social unrest and suffering.
The background and original intention of the Great Leap Forward
When the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, China was an extremely poor country. Mao Zedong's goal was to fill China's development gaps through rapid industrialization and thereby create a powerful socialist country. The Great Leap Forward movement wanted to break away from conventional thinking about economic development in order to double production in the short term.
At that time, China had not fully realized the expected benefits of agricultural cooperation, and insufficient food production made it more difficult to implement official policies. Although the establishment of early agricultural cooperatives helped increase productivity, they still faced social dissatisfaction and farmers' protests. Many farmers simply could not accept such changes, and a sustained resistance movement quietly began.
Agricultural collectivization and its social changes
Since 1949, Chinese farmers have been conducting traditional agricultural production on their small plots of land. The Great Leap Forward policy required the nationwide implementation of agricultural collectivization. Under the high degree of control of the CCP, farmers' private property was gradually abolished and policies were forcibly advanced. In some areas, there were even fierce protests and resistance. For farmers, the movement was not simply economic reform, but a comprehensive transformation of their way of life.
The experimental abolition of private land and the introduction of commune kitchens drove a large number of social changes, but left most farmers living in poverty.
With the implementation of stricter management and taxation policies, farmers' livelihoods have been hit hard. This should not have been a change in the economic model, but instead it has evolved into a profound social crisis, affecting countless families. Fragmented. The anti-rightist movement in 1957 worsened this situation. Tens of thousands of intellectuals and opponents were persecuted, leading to the loss of trust in the CCP from all walks of life.
People’s collective production and social reshaping
The situation is still deteriorating. The people's communes envisioned by Mao Zedong were originally a hope, but there were huge operational problems. Under the collective work system, individuals who lack incentives cannot produce efficiently, leading to a vicious cycle of food shortages. Including improper technical measures and unachievable production targets, the socialist construction that was originally intended to be promoted turned into an endless disaster.
As the Great Leap Forward gradually came to a failed end, the collective economic system formed by this movement also began to collapse. This caused the food supply and government food rations that the underfed farmers relied on began to decrease, creating a more desperate situation. situation. The slogan of the year, "to bridge the gap between urban and rural areas and allow farmers to live an urban life" eventually became an unattainable dream.
Consequences: Reflections and Lessons
After experiencing a long period of famine, the Great Leap Forward left only social scars and confusion about the future. Mao Zedong's socialist experiment ultimately came at the cost of countless injuries and deaths. Many people are still thinking about why such great sacrifices failed to bring about the results they deserved. What profound lessons can be drawn from this dark history?
History is a mirror that reflects mankind’s pursuit of ideals but also its disregard for basic human nature and reality. In future development, can we truly remember those past lessons and prevent similar tragedies from happening again?
