Great Leap Forward
Chinese industrialization disaster
The Great Leap Forward was Mao Zedong's campaign to rapidly industrialize China from 1958 to 1962.
The program collectivized agriculture and pushed steel production through backyard furnaces, resulting in catastrophic famine that killed tens of millions.
The phrase now serves as a cautionary reference to disastrous top-down economic planning: Critics called the policy a Great Leap Forward in reverse.
Forced communal ownership transfer
- industrializationTransition to factory-based economy
- steel productionManufacturing iron-carbon alloy
- agrarian reformRedistributing agricultural land ownership
- mass mobilizationWidespread organized public activation
central planning · state ownership · economic development · self-reliance · production quotas · communal dining · class struggle
Extreme nutritional deprivation
- death tollTotal fatalities counted
- grain shortageInsufficient harvested crop supply
- malnutritionDisease from dietary inadequacy
- crop failureWhen fields yield nothing
hunger · mass mortality · cannibalism · survival · suffering
- purgeEliminate unwanted elements
- political campaignEffort to win election
- party leadershipThose directing a faction
- communiquéOfficial governmental announcement
Peasant-centered communist doctrine
- Marxism-LeninismState-led revolutionary socialism
- socialismCommunal economic control
- revolutionarySeeking fundamental systemic change
- propagandaBiased information for influence
ideological purity · utopianism · voluntarism · class consciousness · political education · rectification · cadre · struggle session
Maoist mass political campaign
- economic collapseCatastrophic failure of finances
- cautionary taleStory illustrating consequences
- totalitarianismState controls everything absolutely
- censorshipOfficial content restriction
collective memory · rehabilitation · historiography · lessons learned
collectivization
Forced communal ownership transfer
- industrializationTransition to factory-based economy
- steel productionManufacturing iron-carbon alloy
- agrarian reformRedistributing agricultural land ownership
mass mobilization · central planning · state ownership · economic development · self-reliance · production quotas · communal dining · class struggle
starvation
Extreme nutritional deprivation
- death tollTotal fatalities counted
- grain shortageInsufficient harvested crop supply
- malnutritionDisease from dietary inadequacy
crop failure · hunger · mass mortality · cannibalism · survival · suffering
Mao Zedong
- purgeEliminate unwanted elements
- political campaignEffort to win election
- party leadershipThose directing a faction
Maoism
Peasant-centered communist doctrine
- Marxism-LeninismState-led revolutionary socialism
- socialismCommunal economic control
- revolutionarySeeking fundamental systemic change
propaganda · ideological purity · utopianism · voluntarism · class consciousness · political education · rectification · cadre · struggle session · self-criticism
Cultural Revolution
Maoist mass political campaign
- economic collapseCatastrophic failure of finances
- cautionary taleStory illustrating consequences
- totalitarianismState controls everything absolutely
censorship · collective memory · rehabilitation · historiography · lessons learned
- 20th CenturyWorld War I aftermath, Cuban Missile Crisis, atomic bomb, New Deal, Nazi Germany
- communismMarx, Marxism, Leninism, Lenin, proletariat
- Communist ChinaCommunist Party, People's Republic, Gang of Four, Central Committee, Marxism-Leninism
- faminestarvation, mass starvation, hunger, famine victims, crop failure
- Mao's ChinaCultural Revolution, Little Red Book, Long March, Maoism, Red Guards
- Modern ChinaDeng Xiaoping, Xi Jinping, economic reforms, economic zones, opening up
Great Leap Forwardeconomic miracle
Rapid postwar prosperity surge
Marshall Plan · Wirtschaftswunder · economic boom · green revolution · New Deal
Great Leap Forwardprivatization
State sells public assets
laissez-faire economics · mixed economy · Washington Consensus