Talk

The great leap backwards?

In 1958 Mao Dezong started the program known as the Great Leap Forwards. The goal was to abolish the individual peasant farms and build farming collectives. The hope was that with optimized and organized labor there would be excess labor for activities such as steel production which would push the Chinese further along. However, rampant mismanagement and inefficiency created the largest man made famine that resulted in the death of over 30 million Chinese from 1958- 1960.

tidbits: The ideology in China during the 60's was Better Red than Expert extolling the communist practices even where the real experts should have been consulted (?). Deng Xiaoping's slogan was It doesnt matter if the cat is black or white; what matters is how well it catches mice. Deng dies in Feb, 1997. Jiang Zemin currently rules over the most number of people in the world.