In the following years, the Yellow River flooded, which killed two million people either through drowning, or starvation due to low crop yields.Since farming was left behind, farmers were forced to exaggerate the results of their harvests, but this eventually backfired as party officials took most of the food to serve in the city, leaving the countryside to starve.Moreover, millions of farmers were forced to work on steelmaking in an attempt to double its production, causing a scarcity of food.Due to nonsensical farming methods introduced by Mao, farmlands were exhausted and lost their nutrients, leaving them vulnerable to erosion as well.
The backyard steel production caused massive forests to be chopped down and burned, and used as a fuel to smelters, which eventually resulted in soil erosion. After years of implementation, GLF had disastrous effects on the environment of China. Furthermore, agriculture implementers opted to exterminate sparrows, which were considered as pests on grain crops, but this resulted in massive locust swarms because there was a lack of natural predation due to the absence of sparrows. Large-scale irrigation projects, without enough consultation from experts, were likewise quickly executed in the countryside. They destroyed acres of farmland and reduced the crop harvest. His farming ideas included planting crops very close together so the stems could support one another and ploughing up to six feet deep to enable root growth, but such strategies had the opposite result. Mao also introduced a Soviet-inspired farming method to the agriculture sector, hoping that this would increase agricultural output. This resulted in low-quality materials as well. However, families had to meet a quota of steel production, so had to melt even their useful items such as pots and pans. As a result, Chinese people were required to set up backyard steel furnaces, where scrap metal could be made into usable steel. In addition, Mao aimed to produce China’s own steel and machinery, instead of importing. At the end of 1958, around 700 million people had been placed in approximately 26,000 communes, and 98% of farmers were members of cooperatives. Each subdivision had specific designated work. The commune’s population was also subdivided: twelve families composed a work team and twelve work teams composed a brigade. Moreover, the commune provided for all the needs of the families-schools, nurseries, health care, and even entertainment-for adults to focus on their work. The communes varied in geographical size, but an estimated 5000 families lived in each commune. In order for this plan to work, Chinese citizens were forced to surrender their land to the government, thus moving them into communes, where they lived together sharing responsibilities, and where everything was collectivized. He believed that fueling the workforce would help the industry sector to prosper so it could provide modern tools that, in turn, would help the agricultural workers. Before the eventual implementation of the GLF program, otherwise known as the Second Five-Year Plan, Mao intended for the Chinese people to focus on two primary tasks: agriculture and industry. Key Facts & Information OBJECTIVES AND IMPLEMENTATION #THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD DOWNLOAD#
See the fact file below for more information on the Great Leap Forward or alternatively, you can download our 21-page The Great Leap Forward worksheet pack to utilise within the classroom or home environment. This initiative was led by Chairman Mao Zedong, who originally hoped to transition the country from an agrarian society into a modern and industrialized one, but it ended disastrously and catastrophically, particularly for rural areas. Initiated by the Communist Party of China (CPC), the Great Leap Forward (GLF), which took place in 1958-1961, was a five-year economic plan, aimed at solving China’s agricultural and industrial problems. Download the The Great Leap Forward Facts & Worksheets.
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