GREAT LEAP FORWARD
HI 168: Lecture 13
Dr. Howard Chiang
Mao and Khrushchev, 1958
OVERVIEW
- Marriage Reform
- Intellectuals
- Hundred Flowers and Anti-Rightist
Campaign
- The Great Leap Forward
- People’s Communes
- Backlash against GLF
- Great Famine
- Lin Biao and Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi
and Deng Xiaoping
MARRIAGE REFORM
- Marriage Law of the People’s Republic
of China on April 13, 1950
- Free choice of partners, monogamy,
equal rights for men and women, and
‘the protection of lawful interests of
women and children’
- Gave cadres the authority to act on
some of the worst cases of abuse
- A serious challenge to the authority of
the immediate and extended family
INTELLECTUALS
- distrust of ‘intellectuals’ (zhishi fenzi, 知
識分子, ‘knowledgeable elements’)
- Feng Xuefeng (馮雪峰), Hu Shi (胡適),
and Hu Feng (胡風) – 5 daggers: study
Marxism, live among the workers and
peasants, counter bourgeois ideology,
conserve national traditions, serve
politics enthusiastically
- Campaign against hidden counterrevolutionaries
HUNDRED FLOWERS
- Zhou Enlai, Premier of PRC 1949-76:
‘Report on the Question of Intellectuals’
- ‘sci & tech in socialist construction’
- ‘let a hundred flowers bloom and a
hundred schools of thought contend’
- Mao’s support – speech on May 2, 1956
- Feb. 1957, Mao spoke again – “On the
Correct Handling of Contradictions
among the People”
ANTI-RIGHTIST CAMPAIGN
- Students, journalists, historians, social
scientists, and other academic
researhcers – dissent and discontent
- Anti-Rightist Campaign – a revised
version of Mao’s ‘Contradictions’
- 4-700,000 ‘rightists’ – subjected to
public vilification, sent to farms where
contacts with peasants ‘cured’ them
- Deng Xiaoping, secretary-general
- 12,000 members of democratic parties
GREAT LEAP FORWARD
- 3 Red Banners: General Line for
Building Socialism, Great Leap Forward,
and People’s Communes
- May 5-23, 1958 Second Plenary session
of Eight Party Congress
- Lin Biao, Hongqi (Red Flag), Mao’s
‘Introducing a Cooperative’ (1958)
- Jun 22, Report on the Steel Output Plan:
1959 – 30 million tons
1962 – 50-90 million tons
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60_Q-kAZbXA
PEOPLE’S COMMUNES
- Aug 1958 Mao: Hebei, Henan, Shandong
- Small and rural communes (township) vs.
urban communes
- Qiliying (Seven League Camp) commune:
53,200 population; 1, 394, 303 hectares of
land; 56 advanced cooperatives; 38
production brigades; 298 production teams
- Communes replaced existing local
government at the township level
BACKLASH AGAINST GLF
- Nov. 28-Dec. 10, 1958: 6th Plenary
Session of the 8th Central Committee:
‘Resolution on Some Problems
Concerning the People’s Communes’
- Decentralization of power in the
communes and the restoration of
ownership and management to the
production team
- Mao replaced by Liu Shaoqi as chairman
of PRC
LUSHAN CONFERENCE
- Peng Dehuai replaced by Marshal Lin
Biao
- Peng’s attack on Mao
- Mao linked Peng with ‘revisionist’
- The 8th Plenum of the Eighth Central
Committee published on Aug 26 – some
success at reducing economic targets,
but ‘right opportunists’ lost their posts
Peng Dehuai
GREAT FAMINE
- Policy errors and the transfer of labor
from the land to impressive construction
projects of dubious practical value led
to a serious shortfall in the supply of
foodstuffs
- Bad weather and the withdrawal of the
Soviet technicians alone could not
account for more than 20 million excess
deaths that were recorded between
1959 and 1961
LIN-MAO & LIU-DENG
- Lin Biao & Mao Zedong:
- Selected Works by Sep. 30, 1960
- Quotations from Chairman Mao – the
‘little red book’
- Socialist Education Movement (196265) & PLA as model for everyone
- Liu Shaoqi & Deng Xiaoping
- drafted a series of weighty documents
with the most uninspiring titles – dull but
very practical
Lin Biao
Deng Xiaoping
Liu Shaoqi