This investigation will discuss “What was the impact of The Great Leap Forward on China between 1958-1962?” This event led to a great famine in China and caused the death of over 45-50 million people. 80% of the death were due to starvation; the other 20% had other reasons. Mao Zedong introduced The Great Leap Forward because he wanted China to rapidly become more industrialized than other western industrialized nations.
The book “Mao’s Great Famine” by Historian Frank Dikötter is relevant to this investigation for it gives information about what went on during The Great Leap Forward which is mostly about the Great Famine that happened from 1951 to 1961. The book “Mao: The Unknown Story” by Historians Jung Chang, Jon Halliday and Jonathan Cape gives us information about the way Mao Zedong did things to rapidly make China more industrialize. They also give their perspectives on Mao Zedong. These books deeply investigate what went on and gives us information on the real story.
A value of origin of the book written by Frank Dikotter is that it portrays the human sufferings that is caused by the unrealistic high goals of Mao Zedong for China- to be able to catch up to Britain’s steel production in 15 years. A value of purpose is that it informs us about The Great Famine. In Mao’s Great Famine, historian Frank Dikötter pieces together historic facts giving evidence of the violence carried out in the name of Maoism. A value of content is that it is written by one of the trusted historian writer and gives a thorough detailed story of the great famine and the people of China. The limitation of the origin is that it is only talking about the great famine; leaving some information out. The limitation of the purpose and the limitation to the content is also just focusing on the great famine. This leads to the next source I am using.
A value of origin the book written by the four historians is that it gives information out of the great famine and talks more into the Great Leap Forward; the political and economic story of Mao Zedong impacting China with the Great Leap Forward. A value of purpose is that it talks about the real story of Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward impact on China- saying that he ruined China with this event. A value of content is that it is based on years of research, and on interviews with many of Mao’s close circle in China who have never talked before — and with virtually everyone outside China who had significant dealings with him. It investigates more into what Mao Zedong does other than rapid industrialization and collectivization of agriculture. The limitation of origin is that it does not include the voices of the people. It doesn’t have what the people said and felt during the event of the Great Leap Forward. The limitation of the purpose is that the purpose is only talk about the Mao’s intention and what he did which is a good limitation because that is all we need for this investigation. The limitation of the content is that it lacks the perspective of the people.
INVESTIGATION
Before the plan of The Great Leap Forward, China had been suffering from foreign invasions, civil wars, unequal treaties and political disorder. To defend themselves from such threats Mao Zedong introduced The Great Leap Forward in 1958. It is a five year plan campaign led by Chairman Mao Zedong to make China become modernized and industrialized through collectivization and industrialization of agriculture.He focused mainly on two things: Steel and Grain. He wants to show the Soviet Union that China have great ways to become economic fast, and their Chinese ways will have more success than the Soviet Union ways. Mao set impossible goals to surpass Britain in 15 years or less. Doing all of this industrializing and modernizing will transition China from socialism to communism -which is exactly what Mao wants. The way he does things was very violent and impossible. The five year plan ended earlier in 1961 because the plan was going the right direction causing so many losses (For example, 45-50 million people died due to being beaten or from starvation and diseases correlated to starvation from The Great Famine) but no gains from the Great Leap Forward. It made it so that The Great Leap Forward on China between 1958-1962 was one of the most chaotic and horrendous impact of China.
The plan for rapid collectivization of agriculture was to build communes (which is a group of people living together) for the workers. About 5000 families were put into one commune though there were series of commune. They had their homes, land and farm animals taken from them to clear up space for farming and so the government can be in control of it and use it for the nation as a whole. Private farming was banned for the transformation of a communist nation. To clear more space for farming, about 50% of the trees in China were cut down. The rivers also suffered from dams and canals built by farmers. For the collectivization of agriculture to be successful, Mao thought of killing all the useless and unneeded sparrows in China to protect the farms because sparrows eat grain seeds. This first step of collectivizing has already contributed to the start of the great famine. It ruined the food chain cycle; If a species is killed and gone then the food chain gets interrupted. The new agricultural productivity Mao introduced disrupted by climate events, natural disasters and population changes. Mao also did deep ploughing and close cropping which ruined the farms land.
Soon after, there was a famine. The death of starvation started in February of 1958. Over 13,000 death occurred when it hit summer. There was starvation and diseases spreading. The animals were dying due to diseases and because they were being killed too rapidly for feeding the important people like Mao himself. Historian Dikotter argues that even though it’s wrong, when it comes to survival you must do whatever you can to survive. To survive, people stole things from each other to have food to eat, sold their clothes or sold their kids for little amount of money just to feed themselves and in hope for their kids to at least be taken cared by people with money. Parents had a hard time selling their kids because everyone else was suffering too. Some people ate other people just to survive. They tried to find whatever they can to survive. For example, greens, tree barks, infected animals, and soil. Eating soil made it hard for defecation so people also died from that. Lots of people ate things they didn’t know what it was and was poisoned. People who worked for food got very little. The most they got were rice water and the water they drink were unhealthy and a muddy green. Historian Dikotter says another reason why there is no food to eat is because the state takes a huge amount of the countrysides grain. They don’t know that Mao is starving his people. Tan Zhenlin, the man in charge of the agriculture collectivization order the cadre (people who are in charge of making sure the farmers do their work) to take the grains before the farmers eat them. Mao ordered to feed half of the people and let the other half died. He said it is better for half of the people to survive than die. The week and the sick were killed for there to be food for more people. People were dying rapidly- millions died in less than a year.
For radical collectivization and steel production, pots, pans, tool- anything that was steel were put into furnaces to increase the steel output. Factories collected bad steel and so the quality of the steel goods were bad. The transportation wasn’t good either. Because of high demands, the factories did things in a rush just so there would be something to give to the government. Historian Dikotter says the attemptation to transition to communism resulted in the greatest demolition of property in human history. He argues that it was worse than the bombing of World War II. About 40 percent of the housing turned into items for the making of production. The peoples houses were broken down so there could be fertilizer, canteens, straighten roads and so that the people would live in the communes. Workers had to leave their homes to work on the construction and production. This was all for nothing, for in the end they had no gain from this.
To Mao, the state matter more than the people. Historian Chang and Halliday and Cape argues that the workers who worked in the factories and weren’t treated well. They work all day long and night and sometimes they wouldn’t be able to sleep. They were poorly fed, clothed and they had to deal with the weather conditions no matter what it was. If you didn’t do a good job then you’d starve. Many were beaten with a leather whip and killed. Sick workers had to work too. Cadres were the one to beat the workers. For punishment, they would get thrown in ponds, eat shit, hair pulled off, burned by needles, boiling water poured on them, burying them alive, working naked or bare-chested, kneeling on stones or broken glass,etc. It didn’t matter if you were rich or not; workers were all treated the same. If you were too sick to work then you couldn’t eat. Many who couldn’t take the punishments and torture committed suicide. 3 to 6 percent of the death committed suicide in the Great Leap Forward- which is about 3 million people.
In conclusion, for the useless movement of The Great Leap Forward, the impact on China was the great famine, loss of 45-50 million people, homes and nature. The people suffered horribly and China had no gain from it. The historians both agreed in different ways that The Great Leap Forward was a chaotic and horrendous impact of China. Reading through the two books, I would agree. It was so horrendous and detailed I wonder if I wanted to continue reading what happened.
REFLECTION
Researching this topic for an actual historian is a lot of researching trying to find primary sources if you can- which for this topic it was interesting and somewhat easy to find because there was actually primary sources to look at. The type of researches available for my question were articles and books. How my sources taught me about doing history is that you have to be really interested in learning it and willing to be able to find the sources to make it into history. The methods they used were looking into the real story from survivors and looking up what went on and even quoting from Mao himself. Mao even wrote a book with a Historian! The challenge I faced were getting the books. They were books from far places but it was quickly solved. The way I wrote this investigation was to find my sources and books. Once I found it, I read through all of them and highlighted what was important for each paragraph. After doing that, I would structure my paper on what my subtopics would be about. I then would put all the information I learned in there. How I chose if my sources were reliable was checking who they were by. I mostly chose sources written by a historian and that is how I chose them. I knew my topic was historically important because it’s called The Great Leap Forward and in the the Great Leap Forward was the great famine. It was one of the biggest catastrophe of China. That is how I knew. The role of the historian is to inform us about history.