Laura Campbell, Pat Driscoll Lauren Ranji, and Bryan Keevill Thesis: Mao’s Great Leap Forward failed to turn China into an industrial powerhouse, because it ignored agricultural development and caused famine and Mao did not consult experts on how to best modernize. The Great Leap Forward Laura Campbell, Pat Driscoll Lauren Ranji, and Bryan Keevill “ Mao was trying to achieve economic miracles by whipping people into a fever of enthusiasm. Everyone was supposed to work very long hours under difficult conditions to do things in months that would normally have taken years.” Mao speaking about the Great Leap Forward- “ The wealth of society is created by the workers and peasants, working intellectuals. If they take their destiny in their own hands and energetically tackle their problems instead of evading them, there is no difficulty in the world they cannot overcome.” A westerner living in Beijing- “Food became scarce in Beijing and Queues built up at the few vegetable stalls. Meat was almost non-existent.” E.Moise in ‘Modern China’- “ At this point, Mao and other leaders lost all sense of reality and began demanding even higher rates of growth. The situation soon began to get worse.”

Thesis Rationale Thesis: Mao’s Great Leap Forward failed to turn China into an industrial powerhouse, because it ignored agricultural development and caused famine and Mao did not consult experts on how to best modernize. The main goal of Mao’s Great Leap Forward was the industrialization of the countryside. Mao had hoped to accomplish this by using their huge population. The use of peasant labor was used to help avoid the need of experts. In 1957 Mao created people communes, they were collective farms that joined families together to challenge the traditional family unit. In some communes there was up to twenty five thousand peasants living there. Mao had all people working in factories or fields producing steel. He would “persuade” people to drop their crops and start manufacturing steel. Majority of the land that had been occupied by irrigation had been replaced with scale industries, and as a result it affected the food problems even more, causing twenty million people to die of starvation in two years. It also caused one of the worst famines in history Overall, the Great Leap Forward was a total disaster. Not only did it lead to millions of deaths, injuries, starvation, and famine, but Mao’s goals were not met due to the lack of money, technology, planning, and western assistance to help modernize and industrialize china.

Key Image in bottom left corner: Image in top left corner: During the Great Leap Forward Mao made farmers stop farming and start mining coal and working in industry. The farmers stopped farming and because there was no one making the food and the country faced one of the worst famines in the world from 1958-1962. Millions of Chinese people died during these years. Even though people were starving they made a lot of progress on industry. They were starting to modernize the country as much as they possibly could, but it resulted in a greater loss, than gain. Image in top left corner: When Mao started the Great Leap Forward in China he talked about industrialization, and modernization. Mao said the working class and the peasants created the wealth in society and if they work with everything they had they would become one of the most powerful nations in the world. Even though Mao believed this, his plan to make china into a modernized and industrialized country failed because he focused more on the industry side of things. This is how this primary source links back to the thesis because he didn’t focus on agriculture and put his people into a famine where millions died.

Key Image in top right corner: Image in the center: In order to do the things that Mao wanted to do and get done required long hours and very hard work. He wanted every thing to happen as quickly as it possibly could get done. He relied on the peasants to do all of the manual labor and finish what needed to be done in the farms and factories. This can be linked back to the thesis because it shows that in china Mao wanted to rush everything to modernize china, which isn’t the best way to do things, and could have been one of the reasons why The Great Leap Forward failed china. Image in the center: During the great leap forward Mao had ordered that all the people in China should start making steel and abandon their crops, which caused him to sacrifice both food and lives of millions of Chinese to bring substantial economic and industrial growth to China. This famine and massive economic and industrial growth caused a severe population loss in China during the late 1950’s. Up until the mid 1960’s the Chinese was finally able to begin to recover from the devastation of the famine and death.

Key Image in bottom right corner: The Great leap forward required a substantial amount of people in the workforce to attempt to reach Mao’s ultimate goal of a modernized and industrialized nation. The Great Leap forward was like Japan's Industrial revolution, but where Japan had balanced everything out, Mao had not. This Plan of Mao's required everyone of age and health to participate, this included all men, women, children and teenagers ages 13-17. His forms of propaganda led almost everyone to follow him, and to trust him. During this time the Chinese citizens wanted to do everything they could to help reach not only Mao’s goal but the entire nations goal. Because of Mao's influence the great leap forward was a failure, there were not enough bodied men and women free from Mao's influence that were able to grow the crops and raise the animals needed to feed the citizens of China, and this is exactly why Mao's plan crashed and burned, because both him and his followers looked away from the negatives and turned towards the positives.

Key Primary source written in blue: Primary source written in green: During the Great Leap Forward, Mao refused to have outside help, and he didn't want to use any real modern machinery to modernize China With Mao refusing to use those machines, he used people as manual labor to build things, make things, etc. Mao believed that in doing this it would make a stronger, more modern civilization Primary source written in green: The Great Leap Forward itself was also known as “making up 20 years in a day” Mao pushed his people to build new things and make new things to push China’s modernization ahead and to get results faster than ever seen before Mao would use those manual laboring people all the time, and essentially would work them to death. Primary source written in purple: While Mao was trying to modernize China, he essentially forgot to keep his humanity, and became so consumed with trying to make China better than other countries that he worked thousands of innocent people to death Mao also caused famine throughout China because there was so much work production being made that people weren't making enough food and people were starving to death, hence why this Great Leap Forward ultimately ended in failure. Primary source written in orange: Mao tired to modernize China by having people work in factories to make and manufacture steel. He persuaded everybody to abandon their crops and start making steel. As a result there was nobody to care for the crops leaving them to rot. This caused not only millions of people to starve, but caused people to die.