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TSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > History > 1958-1962 Great Leap Forward

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• Collectivisation
  • Complement to industrialisation. Peasants had been encouraged to collectivise in 1949.

• Causes
  • Lack of labour
  • Increase in production

• Nature
  • Division of China
  • China's land divided into 70,000 communes.
  • Each commune divided into 750,000 brigades
  • Each brigade made up of 200 households.

• Centralisation
  • Methods, Sales and Prices dictated by CCP.
  • Presentation
    • Presented as response to the peasant's wishes
  • Had the state become the ultimate landlord?

• Effects
  • Famine
    • Greatest Ever
  • No incentives
  • Use of Lysenkoism
    • Made official policy in 1958
    • Universally enforced, even where unsuitable
    • All Chinese made to kill sparrows
      • Make noise
      • Sparrows die
      • Pests population grows exponentially
      • Eats crops
      • Rats Multiply
  • 20% Population of Tibet Wiped out
  • Exports Increased
  • Party officials reported that in fact production had increased, so exports followed suit.

• Motivation
  • Crassness?
  • Enforce Control?

• Industry
  • Backyard furnaces
  • Idea that mass labour could result in mass production
  • Primitive inefficient, poor quality furnaces and inputs used.
  • Good will did not produce steel.

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