Large Step ahead

The Large Step ahead ( Chinese simplified 大跃进, Chinese traditional 大躍進, Pinyin: Dà yuè jìn) is a Economic policy launched by Mao Zedong and implemented of 1958 at 1962. Originator of Large the Step ahead, Mao Zedong wants to give a new political orientation to the China. The purpose of this countryside which mobilizes by the Propagande and coercion the whole of the population is in record time to stimulate the production by agricultural collectivization, the widening of the industrial infrastructures and the completion of projects of public works of scale. Unrealistic person if it is not unreal, this program proves to be a fiasco, the China escaping from little from the complete collapse of sound economy.

Terrible the Famine which prevails in China between 1958 and 1962 consequently of this policy was so unexpected that one doubted his existence even. It appeared acquired that the state intervention of the Communist regime could put at its assessment the capacity to nourish the vast Chinese population and to put an end to the chronic food shortages which struck China during all its history. It is only in the middle of years 1980 that American demographers could have access to the statistics of the population after the policy of opening of China of 1979. Their conclusions were amazing: at least 30 million people had died of hunger during this episode of the history of the Popular republic - a figure ever under consideration before this date.

The figures still vary according to the works and from the Historien S, which correctly translates the mystery surrounding this event. Fairbank, which qualifies the Great Jump in front of “one of greatest cataclysms of the history of humanity”, advances the figures from 20 to 30 million ascribable deaths to the Famine and the Malnutrition. Marie-Claire Bergère speaks on her side of 15 million deaths.

China decided to engage in 1958 in a daydream of which it is not easy to release the causes. It is not obvious to include/understand why the Chinese Communist leaders who had engaged a few years before a very traditional industrial development program inspired by the Soviet experiment and with final rather effective are precipitated as from 1957 in one of the most original economic policies and most irrational that this century knew. And beyond the sequence of the events and the economic situation, it is essential to include/understand how the operation of the Chinese Communist regime made possible the birth of this monster which involved the death of tens of million people and its continuation during several years “towards and against all”.

Origins of Large the Step ahead

Questioning of Soviet socialism (1955-1957)

During the years 1950, the Chinese State sets up a Programme of redistribution of the grounds coupled has a Industrialization, with the technical assistance of the Soviet Union. Since the middle of the decade, the international situation was somewhat stabilized: the immediate threat of the War of Korea (against the the United States) and of the Guerre of Indo-China (against the France) moves away. Inside, the Bourgeoisie was dispossessed of its goods, the eliminated or imprisoned opponents. For the first time for fifty years, the China has extremely seemed to have a national and stable government.

However summer 1955 at the summer 1957 is held a virulent debate within the Parti which relates to the nature of the socialist project and its rate/rhythm.

The Chinese copied up to now the Soviet model with zeal since they devoted the greatest part of the investment in industrial development. In the years 1930, the Soviet had used the exportation of products agricultural to finance the machines and of technology necessary to the development of industry and to nourish urban labor forces in process of expansion. Million peasants had died in violences of the forced collectivization of the farms or the famine resulting from the will to take the farm surpluses intended to fill the objectives of industrialization. However the Chinese case differed on two essential points from the Soviet Union:

In 1950 the Chinese population is four times higher than that of the Soviet Union in 1920 and its standard of living is of half. How to sacrifice and exploit one crushing rural population to nourish a very minority urban population?
the agricultural Productivité of the Chinese peasant in 1958 is only half of that of the Soviet peasant of 1928. Whereas the Soviets wondered about the manner of controlling the farm surpluses, the China was confronted with the question them of creating .

The question arises of continuing or not an industrialization planned necessarily unbalancing for an old man and vast rural country. From this report at Mao the conviction is born that it is necessary to adapt this project to the Chinese situation. According to him, it would be less expensive and more effective to seek in the political stimulation of the farming community at least a supplement, perhaps even the substitute with a necessarily rare capital. Thus, the question of the capacity being ensured since 1949, it remains to be determined how to advance in the way of socialism. This debate is new for the leaders and earlier threatens the unit of the left realized twenty years around Mao.

Lastly, this debate is closely related to the movements of revolts which agitate Eastern Europe since the death of Stalin in 1953 and the will of a peaceful coexistence between the East and the West promoted by Khrouchtchev. The destalinization started at the time of the XX {{E}} congress of the Communist party of Soviet Union and the Insurrection of Budapest of 1956 (which succeeds serious disorders in German Democratic republic and Poland) alarms Mao and marks the beginning of the divorce with the Soviet Union. The Déstalinisation poses problem with the Chinese leaders indeed because it reveals the hidden side of a model of which they wanted to see only successes. The relative political liberalization wanted by Khrouchtchev and the disorders which follow clarify the dangers of a relaxation of the mode in China.

Economic problems and embrittlement of the mode generated by the Foreground (1953-1957)

As of 1955, Mao is in favor of a specifically Chinese way of the Socialisme which is based on the farming community and passes in particular by an accelerated collectivization. The July 31st 1955 takes place the first speech of Mao since 1949 on the problem of the agricultural cooperativisation. He recommends an acceleration of the movement and critical highly certain comrades who “walk clopin-clopant, like a woman with the bandaged feet, and do not cease complaining, saying Ah! you go too quickly . ” For Mao, collectivization is necessary so that agriculture can contribute effectively to the industrialization of the country. It is the majority of the rural population which would ask for the installation of the co-operatives: “the socialist movement of mass is about to take a new rise in all the rural regions of the country”. A few months later it makes appear a work, the new tide of socialism in the Chinese campaigns , revealing of its operation to be pressed on a faction of the apparatus of the Party, the provincial leaders and young persons in charge to force the hand at the Central committee, very reticent with its projects. Vis-a-vis the application by the provinces of these co-operatives whose success is praised by the press, the leaders are obliged to approve in October a resolution to generalize the co-operatives before 1959 and 1960. The name given by Mac Farquhar to this movement of collectivization or rather of “cooperativisation” ( hezuohua ) is the “First Step ahead”, because it preceded what was to be later the strategy of the Great Jump.

As of the end of 1955, 70 million country hearths is concerned, 93 million in February 1956 and 110 in June million. With the end of the year, the near total of the 120 million country hearths “will be coopérativisés”. Compared to the already existing co-operatives, those will be broader, gathering hundred to two hundred and fifty families instead of about thirty and divided into production line teams. The peasants theoretically preserve the property of their grounds as well as a piece at private use. They are remunerated on the basis of their work. There is little revolt, and resistances are primarily passive. The extermination campaign of the “hidden” counter-revolutionaries developed in all the country in 1955 had undoubtedly an effect of intimidation.

The political consequences are considerable. This movement extended the capacities of the executives of the Party, installing a direct and daily authority on the peasants. The seizure of this one on the production and the agricultural incomes is total thanks to the effectiveness of its method of mobilization combining Propagande, emulation and constraint.

But this policy very quickly proves to be a total failure. This one did not come solely from collectivization but from the pressure productivist which it generated. Not only the grounds were collectivized but one also asked the farming community to make a new effort. What is a challenge because the executives miss technical training, and the romanticism and the inconsistencies of management cause mistrust then the reserve of the peasants. The workload intensifies whereas the executives remove the small holdings and the markets private. The defects of the co-operatives are thus revealed by the very excessive methods and ambitions of the “First Step ahead”.

The bad management, reinforced by an unfavourable climate, involve important losses during the summer 1956 (10 % of the production rots in the attics). The breeding also regresses. With the autumn 1956, the urban economy undergoes the by-effect of the agricultural crisis. The public authorities are obliged to reduce their investments and certain key sectors like public works. The failure of the “First Jump” is obvious and precipitates political step back.

Measures are taken to moderate the movement and open one period of relative economic liberalization and policy. The situation is not catastrophic bus of the emergency measures are taken, and only some distant zones will know the Famine. But psychological dimension is important because for the first time the credibility of the mode is reached. The doubt starts to be installed within the population on the methods and objectives of PCC, which had profited up to now from the sympathy of an avid country of peace and stability - that had brought to him the mode for the first time for one half-century.

Finally, the difference between this “First Jump” and the Great Jump are due less to the bottom than at the duration. Mao is not completely followed by his/her colleagues who prefer to check the effectiveness of this policy. The difference it is that the first jump did not last and was thus much less fatal.

As of April 1956, the Central committee pushes back the continuation of the agricultural program and claims a better management of the co-operative and a greater quality of production in industry. A directive warns against the excessive “adventurism” and investments, and decides to fight the impetuosity and excesses of collectivism. This policy of economic and social easing is supplemented by a liberalization political like answer to the economic crisis and social. One thus tries to leave the crisis by the appeasing. The co-operatives of more than one hundred hearths are divided and the capacities of the production line teams are increased. Twelve years the agricultural plan of Mao sinks in the lapse of memory, causing a tough resentment of this one with regard to its adversaries of the time.

In urban environment, measures are taken to restore the confidence of the social environments struck before by repression, the national middle-class and intelligentsia, in particular by revising certain lawsuits. In the prisons, the mode of detention becomes more human and the capacity endeavors to revive the faith of the intellectuals in socialism, according to the watchword “That hundred flowers open out, that hundred flowers compete! ”. The period which extends from the summer 1956 at the summer 1957 is certainly the best than knew the Chinese press until in 1978. One gives also an attention to the work conditions and the social relations within the company. The townsmen are regarded more as masses only it is necessary to invest in the economic or political fight but as of the citizens of which the fate must be improved.

The first social unrest and the explosion of criticisms against the mode (1957)

All these measurements are carefully controlled not to call in question the principles of the Communist regime. They aim before very restoring the prestige and the authority of the Party on a population disappointed by the recent errors. But at the same time as they improve the economic situation, they can also pass for an admission of weakness or from hesitation, facilitating instead of prohibiting it the expression of dissatisfaction. The easing involves the deterioration of the social climate then. The first social unrest which knew popular China since its foundation develops thus in the following months, preceding the explosion by criticisms to the favor of the Campagne of the Hundred Flowers.

In the campaigns, between 1956-1957, the revolts sporadic and are located, in the form of assassinations of frameworks, village turbulences, inscriptions avenger on the walls. It is rather the indiscipline which characterizes the rural situation: negligence of collective work, disrespect of the plans of culture, refusal to deliver the grain to the State, departure of the co-operatives. Many those are nothing any more but empty structures which shelter a progressive return with family agriculture.

In the working world one counts 29 strikes and 56 petitions in 1956, according to an internal report of the Federation of the trade unions. But the violent demonstrations are not very frequent. In its first years, the RPC knew less revolts than the majority of the other Communist regimes. The strikes have local causes in general and proceed in the mixed companies and the marginal layers of the working world. They are especially justified by wage conflicts or the exapepration against bureaucratic inertia ; they practically never take political character and are in general quickly alleviated by concessions of the authorities. In 1956, the strikes and the demonstrations multiply but the claims remain moderate. Dissatisfaction results in more ordinary and daily methods like the absenteeism with the meetings, the inscription on the walls, the gibes, or nonthe payment of the contribution to the Syndicat S (whereas adhesion is practically obligatory).

For the capacity this dissatisfaction does not represent any political threat. Only is threatened confidence of the population in the capacities of Communism to really transform its condition - what in the long term is more serious.

Political dissatisfaction revêt a political pace threatening only in two sectors: intelligentsia and youth, at the time of the opening to the criticism launched by the PCC itself. Indeed, to alleviate dissatisfaction and to fill the ditch growing which separates the population from the Party, and still to more take again the advantage within the Party after of being put at the variation following the failure of the First Step ahead, Mao lance the watchword of the Hundred Flowers. This countryside which had hitherto conveyed a very traditional liberalization campaign constitutes from now on a call to criticize the apparatus of the party. This countryside will be short, it will last a few weeks, sometimes a few days but will be explosive . Initially slowed down by reserves and resistances, the correction campaign starts an explosion of criticisms which the Party will be estimated constrained to repress.

Second half of May and the beginning of June 1957 are in the history of communist China the first moment when the word was released. It will be necessary to wait twenty years and the Printemps of Beijing so that the event reproduces. Of all shares in the educated categories of the population, one denounces the authoritarianism and the incompetence of the communist executives. The best experts of the country propose the economic errors made by the mode. One denounces also the wasting of money and labor, the imitation absurdity of the Soviet Union, the privileges whose the members profit from the Party. These criticisms are largely inspired by the ideas of freedom, democracy and progress. The intellectuals are not satisfied to denounce the errors of the mode; they want to be able to think of their origin: “the line is right but the Party is imperfect”.

Vis-a-vis the extent of the dispute, the Central committee resolders itself and decides to repress the protestors hard. The countryside “antidroitière” dispatches between 400 000 and 700 000 “droitiers” in the camps of rehabilitation by work - which hardly differ from the camps of forced labor. Certain members of the Party are also punished to be influenced by the protesters. In the literary circles, the revolutionary writers are appointed as scapegoats (Ding Ling which already had been struck by the correction campaign of 1942 to the Yan' year will be sent in a camp of work and will be released in 1975). Repression falls down curiously on the communist executives generally assigned to the culture or the rural problems. It extends to the engineers and the graduate students of the secondary are exhorted to settle in the countryside.

As of 1950, one had started to purge the cities which sheltered intelligentsia “white”, “counter-revolutionaries”, “liberal” and “capitalist”. With the Countryside of the Hundred Flowers, Mao is overflowed and surprised by the extent of the dispute. The movement is a failure and it penalizes number of them like “droitiers”. It is during these events which it acquires the conviction that it cannot be pressed on the “experts” to make his revolution. Of 1957 date tough resentment that it dedicates to the intellectuals, mortified to have believed wrongly to be able to count on their red sympathies. It came from there to hold of the extravagant remarks: that the intellectuals were more the ignoramuses of the men, that the worship of the Technologie was fetishism… It did not remain to him any more that to fold back itself on the Chinese farming community, from which it resulted and to see in it the source of wisdom and the hope of the future. Moreover the city, which was the child cherished of the first years of the five-year plan, starts to displease. The resumption in hand of the cities proves more brutal but as more significant as that of the campaigns. The Hundred Flowers will mark the final divorce of Mao with the intellectuals and the beginning of his mistrust with respect to the city. Not only the urban life becomes more painful and more random, but the official design of the city starts to change. The large leading articles denounce “the great urbanization with the aveuglette” and one starts to start again rural industries which had suffered from the economic crisis. This starter of a new development policy, more adapted to realities, will be carried to the pinnacle during the Great Front Jump.

PCC has just wiped its first economic and political failures. The doubt extends in the population, the credibility of the Party is started. It cut intelligentsia which helped it to reach the capacity, and the mass is wary of its violence. Most serious is undoubtedly that the Party from now on is politically divided on its role, the rate/rhythm and the extent of socialization, the definition of the actors of economic development. The correction campaign worsens divisions within the mode. The crushing of the “droitiers” in June 1957 draws aside any threat of subversion but exacerbates the internal divergences within the Central committee and of the provincial committees. It is in an atmosphere of anti-intellectualism and charge that Large the Step ahead is announced. After during a few weeks having tried to change, the mode stiffened. For reasons less tactical than fundamental holding with the ideology and the history, it felt the threat of reality and answered him by a radical reaffirmation of its own project: to dominate, develop and transform China according to its sights. Side of Mao, his successive failures made only worsen its rancour; its next blow of political stop will plunge China in the catastrophe.

The impulse of a Chinese way of development by Mao

Doctrinal development

Large the step ahead is a reform program which conformed to the “general pattern of socialist construction of China” and defined the broad outlines of the second five-year plan (the 1958-1962 foreground being unrolled of 1953 to 1957) of socialist development. The goal of Large the Step ahead was to accelerate considerably the economic development and technique of the country while obtaining better results that those obtained during the first years of the mode. One hoped to be able to achieve this goal while carrying out a more effective use of the local resources for the simultaneous development of industry and agriculture. This led the party to intensify the mobilization and the endoctrination of the rural areas.

Official launch of Large the Step ahead

Large the Step ahead was centered on a new socio-economic system created in the urban campaigns and some spaces: popular communes ( people' S common ). At the end of 1958, 750 000 agricultural cooperatives had been gathered in 23 500 communes, made up on average of 5 000 families or 22 000 people. Each commune had control on all the means of production and operated independently of the others. The model provided that the communes are (theoretically) self-sufficing in what milked with agriculture, with small industries (of which famous basic steel foundries of course), at the schools, the administration and local safety ( milicia ). The system was as based on the hope as it would make it possible to release from the resources for work of infrastructure which had left integral the development plan.

The program was set up at various degrees of extremism according to the areas. The organization was generally paramilitary, the kitchens and the cribs became common. The emphase put on the community was opposed to the traditional model of the family. In certain areas, Community dormitories were even created to replace the family hearths (but all were quickly abandoned).

Triumphing socialism

At the beginning of 1959, signs of reserve of the population started to appear. The Party, which presented a report/ratio very positive but distorted production of 1958, which had to admit that it was exaggerated. The economic consequences of Large the Step ahead started to be felt: raw material shortages for industries, overproduction of goods of bad quality, deterioration of the factories and the infrastructures following a bad management and especially, complete demoralization of the population of which executives of the party on all the levels. Shortages of food appeared and degenerated into famine in several areas.

The storm of Lushan (July 1959)

The business Peng Dehuai however will stop this evolution. This catastrophic business results from the meeting between the frankness from a large soldier and the fight to be able it inside the Party.

Summer 1959: Peng Dehuai is Minister for defense and member of the Political office of PCC. It is especially one of the founders of the popular Armée with release of China, and one of the founders of the mode. The man is respected for his courage and his outspokenness - which put it in conflict several times with Mao. He returns from a voyage of his native Hunan where he becomes aware of the tragedy of the GBA. The famine and the lies of the executives scandalize this wire of peasant. To the difference in the others which worry in silence, it exposes its criticisms in an open letter and several interventions at the time of the committee of work which proceeds in Lushan in July 1959. It criticizes there “fanaticism middle-class man” of its promoters, unbearable vocabulary in these times of quarrel with Moscow. “If the Chinese peasants were not good as they are, a long time ago that we would have known a Hungarian incident”. This intervention makes the effect of a bomb. Nobody had dared to address himself thus to Mao which chooses to interpret it as a personal attack and answers hard by requiring its resignation suggesting that the Soviet Union was behind these attacks (Khrouchtchev had criticized the Communes) and holds up the spectrum of a rebellion of the popular Armée with release and says itself ready to leave again in the maquis. It raises this way against Peng the reflex of unit of Management of the Party. Peng is abandoned. It is constrained to resign and present its self-criticism and assigned to residence. The army will know a violent purging in the following months.

This business will keep a bitter taste for the leaders of the PCC because they knew that Peng was right. From now on the question of the role of Mao will be in the center of the Chinese policy.

Two immediate consequences result from this incident: the purging of Peng sweeps the efforts to slow down the GBA and causes on the contrary a revival of this one; the relations sino-Soviet are at the edges of the rupture.

End and consequences of Large the Step ahead

The retirement (autumn 1960)

From the summer 1960, harvest is even more disastrous than the previous year. At the time of a conference of work of the Central committee with Beidaihe, Li Fuchan proposes a “readjustment”. In vain, but the idea makes its way. With the autumn 1960, majority of the leaders - of which Mao itself, apparently convinced by Zhou Enlai - decide finally the retirement and implement a series of documents to face the situation. Faintness gains the cities. In June 1961, Mao makes a self-criticism and makes the retirement official. He recognizes after the last events in Soviet Union that under a leadership dishonest person, a communist State can degenerate into operating system. He concluded that the GBA discredited the concept of progress exceptional carried out with the assistance of the mass but he reaffirms his conviction in the mobilization of the masses to prevent any kind of bureaucratic degeneration of the Revolution as what could be held in Soviet Union.

When the leaders admit finally the extent of the disaster, the half-measures are not enough any more. It is the survival of the country and the mode which is in question. Three “changes of course on the right” will be carried out as of winter 1960 which will restore the economic situation, like the reduction of the size of the communes, the restoration of the private pieces but will introduce new factors of discord with the correction campaign against the guilty of gauchists errors and authoritative leaders. But in July 1962, Deng Xiaoping pronounces two famous sentences: “If it increases the production, private agriculture is tolerable. It does not matter that the cat is black or white provided that it catches mice”.

In the cities one extends rationing, decreases the work hours. Per hour of the lunch the high-school pupils receive decoctions of sheets of trees and make a nap. The authorities diffuse many substitute but mortality increases. In the countryside the situation is more serious, most of the country knows the famine between 1960 and 1962. The provinces of North are touched by a three years dryness. Even in the more favoured areas as with the Guangdong, one lacks wood for the coffins.

The popular reactions are with the measurement of the tragedy, no rebellion does not become extensive. The relative popular passivity is explained initially by the concern of avoiding urgently, to escape the famine. But the communist apparatus supports the shock because the Army is there too to crush the riots, even if it also takes share with the revival of the production (120 000 soldiers are sent to the fields from March in September 1960).

The economic, ecological and human catastrophe

In the facts, the dash of the GBA increased instead of decreasing the privilege from which heavy industry profited. For example, the production of steel grows from 5,3 to 18 million tons thanks to the untrue statistics and with operation with full mode of the factories. The cost of this increase is not only financial but especially human: one exhausts the workmen and the industrialization of the campaigns causes a rural migration.

The mania of the statistical objectives harms the quality of the production. Thus at least 3 million tons of steel left the blast furnaces into 1959 appears unusable. Many machines could never be started. Exhausted by the furnished efforts, the industrial instrument crumbles in 1961 and 1962. Industry will find its level of 1960 qu' as from 1966.

The agricultural catastrophe is sensitive since 1959 in spite of good harvests in 1958 thanks to the exceptional climatic conditions. The cereal production appears to increase by 185 to 195 million tons of 1957 to 1958 but since 1959, it falls to 175 million tons. In 1960, it plunges to 150 million tons. It will find only in 1963 its level of 1957 (in other more touched provinces, it will be necessary to wait until 1968 sometimes, as in Henan). In certain districts, the production will go down again in lower part of its level of 1949. The Chinese economy lost five to ten years, of the damage were irrevocable, the salinisation of the grounds, soils exhausted.

To marble Becker, a journalist, makes the account of this human drama in its work Hungry Ghosts thanks to the collection of testimonys in the province of Henan. 1960 are undoubtedly the darkest year of the history of China. The peasants were the main victims of the famine. The bodies lie in the fields in waste land, the survivors are too weak to bury them. They are with four legs to seek wild seeds to eat. Others are squatted in the ponds and ditches to drive out frogs and to collect grasses. Whereas it is the winter, people are slightly vêtus, clothing held by grass brushwood and lined straw. Some had the air in good health, the face bouffis by the oedemas, the others were of a skeletal thinness. Weakest collapsed without a word or in their sleep. It reigned an unusual silence because there were no more oxen, shot down, more dogs, eaten, the chickens and the ducks had been confiscated by the executives of the Party, it did not have there more birds, pursued and killed. More sheets and of bark on the trees, the rats and the mice eaten or died of hunger. More cries of babies, the women did not manage any more to give birth. The youngest children were sacrificed, especially the young girls because one gave their rations to the elder ones. There was no more wood with the doors and the windows, used like fuels for the small blast furnaces. More eiderdowns, eaten or confiscated. One could not make fire because one could not eat any more at the house with the collective canteens. Plates of kitchen, stoves and molten pans. When they managed to make wafers with grasses, they were beaten. Twice a day, they made the tail in front of the canteen for a bowl of hulled grain mixed with sweet potatoes and turnips, ears of ground corn and bad grasses. The old men were always with the back and did not have anything any more. The executives of the Party were parcelled out better. The first to die were the rich peasants and those too weak to work. One hid deaths to preserve the rations. Mao had sent teams of frameworks to leave to research the hiding-places. One beat those which ate seeds in the fields. The famine causes the reappearance of the cannibalism on large scales: the families exchange the children to eat them ( yizi er shi : to exchange the children to nourish itself, old Chinese expression), the human ones were transformed into wolf the night and cut parts in the corpses to eat. Those which revolted were cut down. The period of famine was called the Three Years of Natural Disasters at the time, because it was officially charged to the bad weather which prevailed at this time and amplified the agricultural crisis. This name is not used almost any more in China now since it is proven that the famine was much more due to a bad economic policy than with the natural phenomena. It is called now the “famine of the Great Jump”.

The GBA finishes without confrontation contrary at 1957 and the phase of liberalization but by moanings. These eight years between 1958 and 1965 are years of major transition in the Chinese revolution. Until 1949, the “unit of Yan prevails' year”, i.e. the consensus between leaders of the Party to conclude the transformation of China. As from 1949-1957, one sees the emergence of the conflicts but they are treated so as to preserve the unit within the elites and to maintain the dash revolutionary. In spite of the dispute near many citizens, the prestige of the Party and the new system remains large because their policies had made it possible to make China stronger and more rich person, while recognizing that it was necessary to break eggs to make an omelet. It is precisely this prestige which the Party lost between 1958 and 1965.

With the GBA, the mode compromised can be in a final way the credit of the communist ideas in the population and especially in the peasants, hostile with any attempt at recollectivisation. This disaster accelerated the political fractionation of the PCC. Two distinct models will be opposed in an intensive way until death of Mao: the first, inspired of the USSR and the criticism of the failures Maoists, combining absolute political authority and concern of objective realities, and the other, formed by the stubborn utopism of Mao. The only allies which remain to him are his wife, Jiang Qing, Lin Piao which replaced Peng Dehuai, Kang Sheng, Chen Po-ta. This fight between the two lines will plunge China in a new catastrophe. Open one period of empêtrement in political coalitions and intrigues of succession.

Responsibilities

The implementation of the delirious strategy thought by Mao starts as of December 1957 with the launching of too ambitious objective. The Economic policy knows a true degeneration to which one can find two reasons:

the racing of the faction Maoist which finds in the provincial and local apparatuses even servile disciplined instruments.
the degradation of the relationship between the Party and the masses: the lessons of the first jump were not heard, the Party continues its plan under the cane of Mao by repeating and amplifying the same errors as at the time with the first jump.

The Parti adhered to the romantic idea that the people were going to allow the development of the production dominated, and that the spirit played a more important part in the production than the economic factor, than a population inspired could by simple pooling of its more effective labor forces being. For the Communists, they had succeeded in making the Long walk and seizing the power in China by crossing obstacles which one said insuperable, and this thanks to the mobilization of the masses. Mao thought that the Chinese could achieve another miracle thanks to the massive use of the labor. However this hard labor was wasted by the absence of improvement of the technique and the tools, a not calculated and ineffective mobilization.

Moreover, this movement did not cause the enthusiasm which propaganda sought to cause. The peasants badly agreed to be stripped of their material, their cattle to the profit of a vaster unit to the remote and badly known leaders, to see itself removing any private activity. They sometimes happened to them to take the initiative, the day before the communisation, to cut their trees, to cut down their animals, to sell their reserve of grains. It is known that at the beginning of Large the Step ahead the peasants feasted with all the meals with the risk to suffer from indigestion before the installation of the popular communes. The “success” of the Utopia was not possible that with the introduction of police terror in the company. The popular communes were a voluntary creation, the result of a political handling deliberated facilitated by servility on the population and its obedience with the authority.

The country revolts, however characteristic of the Chinese history, were extremely very few, perhaps because the peasants initially made confidence with the capacity, and that, when they realized of the effects of the policy, they were weakened too much by the Famine. Attacks of cereal trains however occurred. But when the militiamans, themselves conscious of the gravity of the famine refused to shoot at the rioters, their chiefs were condemned to death. Generally, repression was very severe for all the period.

In fact the local units ensure the control of the population and concretely direct the apparatus of production, on the instructions of the Center which lays down the orientations and the assignment of the means. Is delirious economic and the political lie compose the diagram of the GBA. Becker shows the tops of madness reached at the time of these three terrible years. The famine reinforced the privileges of the executives, outcome to a sclerosis even larger of the system. Lu Xianwen, secretary of the Party of the prefecture of Xinyang, one the most touched of by the famine, ordered meals of twenty-four dishes when it went in visit in the campaigns. After the plenum of Lushan, this model secretary declares that harvest reached 3,92 million tons, that is to say the double of reality. What means that the deliveries in the State will not leave practically anything any more to the peasants. In the district of Guangshan which depends on the prefecture, the executives declare a harvest of 239 280 tons and fix the deliveries at the State with 75 000 tons, whereas real harvest is only of 88 392 tons. Lu Xianwen, indicator that the peasants balk to lighten their grains, to avoid an unquestionable death, declares then: “There are cereal abundance, but 90 % of people have ideological problems”.

The more the posted figures were out of reach, and the more the lie became for the executives their only behavior possible because the doubling of the outputs in one year was not possible that on paper. The experts were not regarded as essential and qualified, each man could be to have his clean “expertise”. The mistrust of Mao compared to the bureaucratic centralism reinforced its will to decentralize the economy. After the dismantling of the central office of the statistics, the capacity sailed at sight, informed by exaggerated reports/ratios written by ambitious local executives which themselves hardly know what occurs. Decentralization goes so far instead of encouraging the diffusion of the best results of the provinces, one pushes with self-sufficiency. Certain provinces produced their own steel in the backs course. The prevalence of the local authority with omnipotent communes and multi-purpose (supervision of the brigades, financial management, health, cultural life, and all aspects of the country life) makes difficult the return to a methodical program of central management directed by the ministers and the specialists, necessary to any economic organization. The arbitrary and continual rise of the production targets constrained local authorities and power stations with a permanent improvisation. Vis-a-vis that, an avid plethoric bureaucracy of ambitions, concerned of its reputation and its career and which is afraid to lose its place of privileged person.

According to Becker, he recalls that it is about a tragedy caused by political decisions and not, like wanted it the official version up to 1980, by “natural disasters” whose meteorologists denied the existence. Nobody leaves unscathed the tragedy, not even the leaders who will become during the years the 1980 symbols of the liberalization of the mode. Thus, Hu Yaobang, at the time general secretary of the League of the Communist youth, which had been sent by Mao to the Hunan, affirmed that there was no famine and criticized the policy of redistribution of the grounds inaugurated by Zeng Xisheng. He excused himself some in 1980. Zhao Ziyang does not draw any better since, tallies of agriculture in Guangdong at the time, he was the first to organize anti-dissimulation teams which forced the peasants to give their last cereals to the government. Thus it drew the attention of Mao. But the major responsibility returns to Mao and his stubbornness, especially after the Peng Business where it starts again the GBA. It could not recognize that Peng was right.

Abroad, the majority of criticisms on the Great Jump were the fact of observers based with HongKong. The author of the article “Clouded” (1959), W.E.B. Dubois, visited China during Large the Step ahead. He brought back no observation accrediting criticisms related to the famine induced by the Great Jump. Anna Louise Strong visited also China during this period and wrote When Serfs Stood Up in Tibet to report its observations. The book of Strong was also highly criticized for its very positive descriptions of the Chinese authority on the Tibet. It is only with beginning of the year 1980 that criticisms on the Great Jump became more precise: the civil servant of the US government Judith Banister published what was to become an essential article in China Quarterly . The estimates of the American press raised to 30 million the number of died of the famine resulting from the Great Jump.

Conclusion

The tragedy of Large the Step ahead, which because death from 30 to 40 million people, could be dissimulated in the world during twenty years. The secrecy of the “great famine of Mao” - according to the terms To marble Becker - will be well kept. The Cultural revolution, which however made an infinitely less number of victims, is always considered, as well in China as abroad, like the greatest catastrophe of the history of the Popular republic. It is only with beginning of the year 1980 that criticisms on the Great Jump became more precise. After the death of Mao and the Chinese economic reforms started under Deng Xiaoping, the consensus emerging within the Chinese government was that the Great Jump was a major economic disaster caused by the Culte of the personality under Mao Zedong, and one of its errors most serious since the foundation of the Popular republic of China.

The properly Chinese model intended to dissociate itself from the Soviet big brother desired by Mao is incontestably a product of orthodoxy Marxist-Leninist. If Large the Step ahead marked a rupture with the USSR, the program borrowed many elements of the history of the USSR: collectivization of the farms, worship of the productivity pointing out the Stakhanovisme, etc One knows the excesses caused by the Soviet working teams at the time of the requisition of the grains during the Communism of war. One knows less the history of the “anti-dissimulation teams” which were going to seek cereals allegedly dissimulated by the peasants in the Chinese villages. Becker also reveals that the “eight points” on agriculture establish by Mao into 1958 aimed in fact to apply the theories of Lyssenko to all Chinese agriculture (to plant tight, plow deep, etc), same most improbable (to cross the most astonishing species, in particular cotton and tomato in order to obtain red cotton!).

The GBA is thus the first serious failure of the mode. The line of fracture deepened within the Party. As from 1958, the Chinese Communist regime will evolve/move either at the rate/rhythm of its projections, but of its failures and its crises. Mao recognizes his responsibility and is withdrawn with Shanghai to repair its wounds… and to prepare its return. Mao is in anger to see his very decreased prestige and his authority, and his colleagues to run the counter to his policy. He is isolated capacity, confined with the guardian role of figure of the mode. Its obsession of the “degeneration” of the revolution - and the need for revivifying it, by the destruction of the existing structures if need be - also will not cease increasing. Thus, the failure of the GBA will lead to another operation of Mao to take again the reins of the capacity and to eliminate its adversaries within the apparatus from the Party: the diabolic machine of the Cultural revolution which will destroy the Party, will plunge China in chaos; it will make it possible Mao to return to the head of the empire of the medium until its death in 1976.

If one follows Domenach, three events are important in the history of popular China:

Large the Step ahead;
the Cultural revolution;
the political death of Mao.

The last two events are the direct consequence of the first. : “Large the step ahead thus constitutes at the same time the first serious failure of Communism in China and the starting point of a series of cataclysm politique1”.

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