From the communist victory in 1949, the Chinese people were subjected to various economic and social experiments under Mao Tse-Tung. This would culminate in the complete collectivisation and the beginning of the 'Great Leap Forward' campaign, which would kill tens of millions. It is just one of many destructive experiments undertaken by Mao.
INTRODUCTION
In the late 1950s, China would embark upon its most ambitious national campaign, which would become known as the Great Leap Forward. With the goal of propelling the newly formed Chinese nation into an era of self-sufficiency and prosperity – the entire population was to rally together, and advance the policies and proposals of Mao Tse Tung and the state.
The campaign would become arguably the worst man-made disaster in history, killing somewhere between 20 and 60 million people during its four year duration. Yet, to this day, many overlook the event as just one of many historical footnotes – When it was actually one of the key events of the 20th century, laying bare the deadly reality of collectivism in action.
Since the communist victory over the nationalists in 1949, the Chinese nation had struggled, and for many reasons, not least being the devastating consequences of the Japanese occupation in world war 2, quickly followed by civil war. After the communist victory, so called anti-feudalist campaigns swept across the country, in which wealthy landowners were stripped of their property, and had their land redistributed to the peasants under the demands of the state. Unsurprisingly, the productivity of the collective peasantry was nothing like the productivity of the original landowners. This was problematic for the budding communist country.
Nevertheless, Mao assured the party that sooner rather than later, he would be able to, not only destroy all feudalist and capitalist systems within the country, but also surpass all capitalist nations in terms of productivity and prosperity. Optimistically aligned with the worldview of Marx, he said that he would advance the socialist state within China, and have it completed within 15 years, thus achieving true communism. However to achieve such a great state, he would need to execute so called ‘leapfrog’ campaigns.
In the decade following the 1949 victory, Mao would implement cultural changes to bring about the complete control of national industry and agriculture. Fearing revolts against the government, peasants were initially allowed to retain land rights - either being able to retain original land, or possessing parts of seized land - so long as they joined collectives, in which state-owned tools and work animals were shared within the collective. Initially these collectives were small and local, constituting as little as 5 households. However, by 1953, a collective was to be between 20 to 40 households, and by 1954, 300 to 400 households. Finally, by 1958, Mao had eliminated private ownership altogether. Peasants were forced off what had been privately held land and into state owned and run farming communes.
Mao believed that this would be key in unlocking China’s potential as an economic power. The farmers were given specific targets for each harvest, to feed the cities, for exports, and an excess for famine relief stockpiles. They were forced into a compulsory relationship with the state, which would purchase a percentage of the grain at a fixed price. The progressive taxation on each household’s harvest and compulsory fixed-price sales to the state, was not prospering the farmer, nor the collectives. The grain that was purchased by the state was also used poorly. In the cities, rationing was introduced to curb what was deemed ‘excess consumption’, whilst grain prices on the market were artificially inflated for this same reason. Initially, this method saw some limited success, only in so much as the state owned grain reserves had successfully averted a famine. This limited example of success then led the party to the conclusion that the best way forward was to seize an even higher percentage of the farmers output.
OTHER CAMPAIGNS
During this period the economy was beginning to suffer greatly. Since 1949, the state had taken up the practice of including the fiscal surplus of the previous year in the following years budget. Fanciful estimates on economic development would then effect changes to the budget. This resulted in budget increases which did not match the actual demand of the market, leading to great inefficiency, and a misapplication of resources on a grand scale. Naturally, the people began to grow restless, and while the state momentarily revoked these policies, such economic mismanagement would expand even further.
In what seemed to be a short campaign of government transparency and humility, Mao encouraged constructive criticism from within the party. This included an openness to new ideas, allowing party members who were concerned to speak up and highlight what they believed were any serious issues. Soon thereafter, this campaign came to a halt, and Mao, in a stunning reversion, had all those who had critiqued his policies arrested. To this day, it is uncertain whether this was a deliberate trap, or Mao’s sudden change of heart. Regardless, any dissenting voices had been silenced, and fear gripped anyone in leadership who would dare criticise Mao. This would help set the stage for the unchallenged rollout of more extreme policies which Mao had in store.
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BEGINNING THE MOVEMENT
Mao and the party feared the current economic inefficiencies would spell the end for their quest for true communism. Thus, it was decided that the best way to boost the economy would be to maximise human labour, in an all out effort to quickly industrialise the countryside. This would be the beginning of the “Great Leap Forward” campaign.
With a distaste for the Soviet model of overcoming economic problems through technology, Mao advised his party that the best way forward would be to simultaneously advance the cities and the countryside in light and heavy industry – being careful to avoid any class disparity through the proper management of communes. Ignoring the advice of any technical experts, Mao rejected the use of heavy equipment in rural areas, believing that the peasants - with their low wages - would be more efficient with light equipment (and of course it would be a cheaper proposition).
By this time the communes had reached a massive scale. Over 25-thousand scattered throughout china, with each boasting around 5-thousand households. A passport system was implemented which made escape from the commune virtually impossible, as each member of a local area was on a list, and anyone from another area was easy to identify and arrest. In such cases, early forms of the ‘struggle session’ were sometimes seen, known as ‘party orchestrated public struggle’, aimed at demoralising those who attempted escape or those who simply disagreed with the collective model.
CAMPAIGNS
The first and perhaps most destructive campaign to be rolled out as part of the great leap forward was the program for improving farming methods. Mao promoted a new approach to agriculture, which did away with ‘Westernised’ or ‘feudalist’ methods of growing crops. These were the methods of Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko, who believed that all of science was oriented around a class system. Lysenkos ideas had already resulted in massive failures, both in Russia and Ukraine. Inexplicably, these same failed theories of farming were rolled out in China. First, peasants were told to concentrate all their fertile soil into select fields, leaving moderately productive fields alone, believing that the concentrated fields, consisting of more fertile soil, would result in larger crop yields – as opposed to more fields with average soil. Secondly, ‘deep plowing’ was encouraged, under the pretext that seeds planted deeper would grow larger, stronger root systems - regardless of the type of seeds. Lastly, ‘triple seeding’ and ‘close seeding’ were encouraged, under the ridiculous assumption that plants of the same ‘class’ would not compete with one another. Unsurprisingly the same failure Lysenko had in the Ukraine, happened in China; crop yields were devastatingly low, and communes were unable to properly feed their members.
This devastation coincided with a crackdown on what was deemed ‘feudalist’ practices within the communes. This ranged from such things as owning equipment, to celebrating festivals, going to markets, or simply holding weddings and funerals. All of this was forcibly abolished. Those who continued these practices were either sent to labour camps, ‘struggled’ publicly, or simply executed. Depending on the commune, party members tasked with overseeing labour would sometimes torture and kill those who failed to meet grain quotas, whilst others overworked their commune population to death. In one case, a party overseer would work the peasants throughout the day, force them to sleep in the fields for a brief respite, before marching off, starving, to the next project. During the famines, it became increasingly common to see communes working throughout the night. These same peasants were then forced by their superiors to submit false and exaggerated claims of crop yields.
Matters grew even worse in what has become infamously known as the ‘four pests campaign’. This initiative by the government was an attempt to stop what they believed were crop losses to animals. The pests in question were flies, rats, mosquitos, and sparrows - with the primary focus on the sparrows, which were seen as the main culprit, consuming grain from wheat and other crops. The strategy for all of these pests was simple - completely eliminate all of them. For the sparrows, the state rallied the populace to head out and hunt sparrows with any and every means. From slingshots to simply clanging noisy pots and pans till the birds dropped out of the sky from exhaustion. The peasants invested immense amounts of time and energy riding the countryside of sparrows. Those who failed to kill many were shamed, whilst those who bought in large amounts were praised. And what was the result of this sparrow extermination experiment? As it so happened, the sparrows were not the primary pest. In fact, sparrows had very little impact on grain harvests. The real culprit causing most of the grain losses were locusts. With their natural predator gone, locusts thrived in never-before-seen swarms, consuming incredible amounts of grain, and exacerbating the already dire food shortage across the country.
To top it all off was the reallocation of certain countryside communes to the role of light industrial steel production. Completely rejecting expert advice, and having never even stepped into a steel mill, Mao began a campaign to roll out what were known as ‘backyard furnaces’; which were small make-shift blast furnaces. Communes were tasked with setting up as many of these as possible in order to produce steel, without the need for large factories and high paid employees. This idea had originated from a working example of such a village several months earlier. Zeng Xisheng, a party member, claimed that this example was producing high quality steel. Without question, Mao ordered the rollout of the ambitious project. Problems were immediate, not least of which was the output - the tiny furnaces were producing brittle pig iron, not quality steel. In 1959, months after the campaign began, Mao finally visited a proper steel works, where he was shown that high quality steel could only be produced using large, high intensity coal fire furnaces.
Nevertheless, Mao claimed that to cut the campaign short would dampen the ‘revolutionary spirit’ – so it continued. By this stage, the peasants - trying to meet ridiculous quotas - had exhausted whatever they were given for fuel. Thus, they began tearing down the forests across the countryside for fuel, and when this ran out, they turned to their own furniture, doors, and eventually wooden coffins for fuel. Likewise, pots, pans, random metal objects, and eventually their own tools were all smelted down into useless pig iron and slag. In order to meet the ridiculous quotas, labour had been redirected, including men who were supposed to working the fields growing food, as well as school teachers, factory workers, and even hospital staff. The campaign was quietly closed down one year later. During this experiment, deforestation had become rampant, communes had been torn apart for fuel, and essential workers such as farmers producing the food and hospital staff helping the sick were all occupied producing useless pig iron.
In all of these projects, from the campaign to combat pests, becoming a large-scale steel producer, to irrigation expansion, no trained professionals were consulted. This was deliberate, as Mao held an ideological anti-intellectualism and thus rejected this ‘bourgeois’ educated class. Mao had successfully removed any intellectual or political opposition from within the party before any of these campaigns got off the ground. The whole country was at the mercy of Mao’s wisdom, or lack thereof - not, one would suppose, a very ‘collective’ way of doing things.
The worst of these famines became known as the Great Chinese Famine. A direct result of party policies - most specifically the four pests campaign - this famine claimed the lives of millions – estimates range from 15 to 50 million. Many millions were also executed or worked to death during this brutal ‘leap’. It was also a time when party authorities, in charge of various regions, would compete with one another to claim the highest crop yields. These claimed results were then used by the central government to decide how much grain to take from the collectives. Increasingly exaggerated estimates meant the government ended up taking the majority of produce, exporting it across the world, whilst the citizens in many cases were left with nothing to eat - forced to scrounge leaves and tree bark.
Early in the campaign, the true nature of the suffering was withheld from Mao. When he was going to travel to the communes, party officials would prepare the fields ahead of time, working the peasants night and day to uproot neighbouring fields, and then replant individual stalks of grain into presentation fields to give the illusion of massive successes. Mao would be shown specially prepared fields and village facades to give the impression of abundance. Eventually however, he did indeed find out about the incredible struggle of the people. Tibet’s Panchen Lama had personally met with Mao, informing him of the mass starvation and suffering occurring across the Tibetan region. Unfortunately this first hand account did not move Mao to action. But once the famine became unavoidable for the party, Mao announced he would begin to eat less, to stand in solidarity with the hardship of the peasants. His reduced food consumption, however, did nothing to change the deadly policies that caused the catastrophe in the first place - those policies remained in place.
In 1962, John F Kennedy noted that they had been tracking large exports of Chinese grain to Cuba and Africa. He said that the Chinese leadership had not shown any desire to receive food from the Americans, although in Hong Kong over half a million refugees had arrived requiring food aid from the west.
RESULT
With tens of millions dead, the campaign and its constituent policies were finally put to rest in 1961 and 62. The casualty rate was impossible to ignore, too high to be reconciled, too damning for whoever was at the helm. The people were at breaking point. The party finally removed Mao from power. However, Mao would return after less than a decade, and reclaim power with the support of the youth.
The inability to admit faults, a disregard for logic, and a complete lack of care for his own people, Mao’s Great Leap Forward careered down the worst possible path. Mao had many opportunities to pull the plug on his great leap forward, the hard facts were presented to him more than once - yet this ideologue pressed on. This would be one of the deadliest campaign to ever occur in human history, with upper estimates reaching 60 million dead in less than four years. It made every authoritarian experiment before it pale in comparison, yet it would not prevent Mao from returning after several years in exile to seize power once again.
History, being at the whim of human nature, has a habit of repeating. The calls to collectives and ultimately centralise entire populations in the name of efficiency, sustainability, safety, equality, and so forth are all too common today. Yet as the Great Leap Forward demonstrated, forcing people into communal living, seizing their property, and exercising top-down control to achieve state goals, ultimately leads to destruction. Perhaps to some, this is the goal, but to the average person, avoiding such catastrophe is in their best interest. These ideas have been tested and have failed, and it’s probably time to put them to an absolute and final rest.
The Great Leap Forward