Assel Kuandyk

The Great Leap Forward was an economic plan launched from 1958 and early 1960s
by Chinese Communist Party under the leadership of Mao Tse Tung to turn China from agrarian
to industrialized state through organizing people into rural communes (Leonard, 2006). These
communes were given freedom to make their own economic policies based on the general rules
of general government policies. Mao Tse Tung believed that revolutionary change could be
reached by placing responsibility on masses by decentralization which, in turn, accelerate
countrys movement towards communism (ONeil et al., 2015). So, there were devolution of
states capacity and decentralization of industry in authoritarian regime.
However, Maos this initiative was unsuccessful. Chinese unskilled employees in rural
communes produced low quality steel by using their handmade backyard furnaces.
Ineffectiveness of communes and a shift from farming to small-scale industry affect negatively to
Chinese agriculture (ONeil et al., 2015; Leonard, 2006). The natural disasters made the
agriculture even worse. As a result, there was a famine, and approximately 20 million people
died between 1959 and 1962 from famine. These negative consequences of the Great Leap lead
to the forced resignation of Mao from the position as a Head of State (Great Leap Forward,
n.d.). The rural communes were split, and government centralized its power. The Great Leap
Forward was significant in Chinese history because contributed to Cultural Revolution lead by
Mao.
References
Great Leap Forward. (n.d.). Retrieved November 17, 2016, from
https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Leap-Forward
Leonard, T. M. (2006). Encyclopedia of the developing world. New York: Routledge.

O'Neil, Patrick H., Karl Fields, and Don Share. 2015. Cases In Comparative Politics. 5th ed.
New York: W.W. Norton & Company.