Great Leap Forward

views updated May 23 2018

Great Leap Forward Five-year economic plan begun by Mao Zedong in China in 1958. It aimed to double industrial production and boost agricultural output in record time. The plan mobilized tens of millions of workers to smelt steel in primitive pig-iron furnaces, but most of the steel was poor quality and useless. Collective farms merged into communes, but a succession of poor harvests dashed progress. After four years, the government admitted the failure of the plan.

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