Why did "The Great leap Forward" fail?

Question

Why did the Mao Zedongs "The Great Leap Forward" campaign fail?

No, I'm pretty sure his name is Mao Zedong, so you should check your facts...

Answer 1

It failed because of the massive starvation resulting in the deaths of millions of Chinese. Inflated agricultural figures were fed from local leaders to policy planners in Beijing and they diverted attention from agriculture to heavy industry. Furthermore you can't change the values of an agrian society in five years nor can you push the development of heavy industry in a country that has no real history of it (at least in a modern western kind of thought)

Everyone was to have a backyard furnance with which to manufacture steel, a critical need for China. This of course failed as manufacturing steel in your backyard will only yield poor quality steel which can't be used for much of anything. This was eventually, and very quietly phased out from the program.

Intellectuals who could see that this plan was going to fail were tennative about speaking out against it. Mao had launched the 100 flowers campaign prior to this and used it to find those who would challenge him and exile/imprision/execute them.

Peng Dehuai, then defense minister, spoke out against the programs and its problems. Mao quickly removed Peng from his post and installed Lin Biao, a hardliner within the party in his place. This was the impetous for another one of Mao's programs the Cultural Revolution.

And on a side note there are mulitiple ways of translating and spelling the names of Chinese leaders/things. The good old Wade-Gilles style and the modern Pin Yin style. So technically you are both right.

Answer 2

Basically because it was a leap forward into the unknown while destroying the foundation of the past, the learning of the past and the wealth of the past.

Chairman Mao was reacting not for the good of the country or of the people he led, but rather, he was leading the great leap forward out of his own fear of death, his own paranoia, and his own lack of vision for the a realistic future.

He chose to kill or exile into collectives anyone who had any intelligence at all, meaning anyone who would oppose him in any way shape or form. He killed teachers, professors, politicians, governmental functionaries, leaders, thinkers ... in short, he killed or exiled anyone who could have truly led China into a bright future ... and as soon as the naive and idealistic youth who served him so blindly realized, through a growth in experience and maturity, exactly what was happening, how Mao was making things worse, then they repented and abandoned Mao and his paranoia.

Answer 3

Because I remember Dr. Sun Yat Sen and Gen. Chiang Kai Shek rose up against him and awakened the people and there the leap went to a downfall already.

Answer 4

Yeah, he develop into the author of the finished bounce and he positioned it in position. once you're insinuating that Obama is a Maoist and has carried out his personal type of communism, then i might want to opt to confirm the collectivized farms that you're seeing. also, the Cultural Revolution and the finished bounce ahead were 2 diverse issues.

Answer 5

Because every economy based on central planning has always failed. Particularly when technical skill and investment in modern production means is replaced with political slogans....... Which is exactly what we'll get if Madam Hilary gets elected.

Answer 6

Just for the record... it was Mao Tse Tung. Read the book and find out for yourself

Answer 7

hello