the great leap forward

The Great Leap Forward (The Great Leap Forward (1958) was but one example of the Communist vision of social transformation, which was very idealistic but often full of paradoxes. It marked the triumph of the populists over the technocrats. And it was to implement the populists' vision of social transformation and economic development. The Great Leap Forward was to transform China in economy and education.

1. Economic transformation:

The populists led by Mao wanted to develop Chinese economy in a distinctly different way from the West. This position was made even clearer after 1956, when the Soviet Union under Krushchev wanted to revise Stalin's Communist policies and introduce certain Western practices into Soviet economy. To show that China would not fall for the same mistake, Mao wanted to prove that China could develop its economy faster not only than the Soviet Union, but also than England in 15 years. In Nov.1957, The People's Daily, the Communist Party organ, criticized Chinese economy as too conservative. In 1958, the Great Leap Forward policy was decided upon at the Communist Party congress. It was determined that Chinese economic development would take one day as twenty years in the West, and quotas for steel and grain output were set.

The Great Leap Forward tried to use simple mass mobilization techniques to achieve high industrial and agricultural output that were achieved through highly developed technologies in Western countries. For instance, to increase steel output, every household was asked to donate their iron pots and pans to where they worked, and their employers, be it a hospital, school, or factory, all built their own backyard furnaces to make steel. Understandably, the steel made in such a way was of low quality and useless. No one dared to criticize this Communist policy and there was much fraud in reporting industrial and agricultural achievements. In the countryside, decisions to dramatically increase agricultural produce led to much fraudulent report on the agricultural output. One false newspaper report had a baby sitting on top of wheat stalks in a wheat field, indicating the wheat stalks were so thickly grown that they could hold up a baby. When the frauds finally came to light it was too late: instead of the dramatic increase in agricultural output as the propaganda had it, Chinese granaries were all emptied in 1958. A drought that started in 1959 added to the catastrophe and led to three years of famine which resulted in the deaths of between 25 to 30 million people.

2. Educational transformation:

At the beginning of the People's Republic of China, the technocrats held the upper hand in education. Liu Shaoqi, vice chairman of the state, introduced elite academic degrees such as Associate Doctorates and research fellows from the U.S.S.R. He also prolonged the school system to cram in more content because high schools were considered inadequate preparation grounds for college freshmen. In 1955, universities were extended from four years to five or six years. Medical colleges were extended to eight years. The Ministry of Education passed a plan to designate key schools, implemented in the 1960s and 1970s, and directly supported them, enabling them to have excellent facilities, better trained teachers, new curricular forms, and brighter students through competitive examinations. A dual track educational system was introduced: starting from the fifth year in primary school, children had the option to go on to vocational schools or regular schools that were bound for universities.

The populists under Mao wanted to popularize education in the countryside. To do so they wanted to reduce primary school education from six years to five years, so that at least rural children would finish primary school. They also abolished the dual track educational system so vocational and regular schools offered identical curriculum.

3 Consequences of the Great Leap Forward

During the Great Leap Forward, The People's Commune replaced peasant collectives, and all private farmland and farm tools in the countryside became state owned. The people's commune replaced the village as the organizing unit of peasants' lives. Since China defined itself a socialist state, the first stage of Communism, where private property still remained to a small extent, and salaries and a market were still necessary, during the GLF, the Communist government launched a campaign to "race into Communism," establishing communal canteens that served free meals to peasants throughout the Chinese countryside. Their counterparts in the cities: canteens and daycare centers, would charge fees, though not very high by market standards. (Yang, chap.7) Before long, granaries throughout China were depleted because of the communal free canteens. In 1959, China was hit with a severe drought, which precipitated the end of the downfall of the Chinese countryside. Rural canteens were closed, but the whole country suffered from a famine that lasted for three years. Food was severely rationed in the cities, but in the countryside many people simply starved to death. The estimated death toll in the wake of the Great Leap Forward was 25-30 million people.

The destructiveness of the GLF eclipsed the power of the populists, again launching the technocrats to the forefront in Communist leadership. By 1964, the technocrats were allowing a limited amount of private market economy and private ownership. They also revived the two-track educational system. A new wave of confrontation between the technocrats and populists was waiting to begin.

4. The Populist vision and Chinese reality

The populists visualized a leveled Chinese society, but they themselves perpetuated a class society. For one thing, they established a socialist bureaucracy: in which the wage differences were artificially low between the lowest (18th level) and highest (1st level) of cadres. But there existed an enormous gap of privileges between cadres of different levels: cadres above a certain level would be equipped with personal chauffeurs and vehicles, access to rare foods and other luxuries at incredibly low prices, access to privileged housing paid by the state, access to plane rides and sleepers on trains, bodyguards, access to privileged schools for their children, household helpers paid by the state, etc. Privilege was augmented by the ration system introduced in 1959 (Yang, chap.8), when money alone could not get one very far, food was rationed, but the privileged ones sometimes had access to food that others did not. The Chinese salary system also contributed to social privileges as the state decided the salary of every one in society, usually according to seniority in work and social standing.

The contrast between the privileged and the underprivileged remained obvious. In her privileged and sheltered early years, Rae Yang recounted the story of two underprivileged students in her privileged school where most kids came from similar backgrounds: government cadres. (Yang, chaps.7 & 11) The second one, Jin (chap.11), a very bright boy from a poor family background, had to quit the prestiged No.101 Middle School in Beijing in order to help with his family in the People's Commune, where every one earned "points" for a day's work (from 1 to 10), and the points were then converted to pay at the end of the year.

5. The youth and political movements

Even children were not allowed to escape from political movements. Yang's high school, No.101, started a thought reform movement in the early 1960s, where the students were taken to factories and communes and had peasants and workers come visit their school and talk to them, too. Children were encouraged to expose their "third layer of thought," perhaps something similar to the "subconscious" or very private level of thought. What was special about it was it was obviously initiated by individual teachers in the school in response to the political movements in the country at large. Political movements were becoming a pervasive culture in China.