The Penguin History of Modern China by Jonathan Fenby

Author:Jonathan Fenby
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141917610
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2018-11-27T16:00:00+00:00

20

Leaping to Disaster

‘I have witnessed the tremendous energy of the masses. On this foundation, it is possible to accomplish any task whatsoever … there are still a few comrades who are unwilling to undertake a large-scale mass movement in the industrial sphere. They call mass movement on the industrial front ‘‘irregular’’ and disparage it as ‘‘a rural style of work’’ and ‘‘a guerrilla habit’’. This is obviously incorrect.’1

So spoke Mao in the summer of 1958 after launching his biggest and, to date, most disastrous initiative, the Great Leap Forward. In the following three years, it would cause deaths estimated at up to 46 million from coercion, forced labour and, finally, the worst manmade famine ever seen on earth. Politically and socially, the Leap marked the start of nearly two decades in which, under the Chairman’s baton, China’s Communist orchestra departed from the generally logical score it had pursued since 1949 to indulge in wild dissonances that would threaten to bring the whole revolution to a juddering close. To begin with, the Leap was not without sense, but, as political considerations took command, it became more of a vision than a rational economic programme, and unravelled into catastrophe.

The poor results of the first attempt at an economic bound ahead in 1956 had enabled the planners to implement an ‘anti-rash advance’ campaign to rein things in. Their chief, Chen Yun, the fifth-ranking member of the Politburo and an ally of Zhou Enlai, preached the need for balanced growth, with a more measured farming plan. This, he admitted, would take time. Mao did not want to wait.

The leader returned from his trip to Moscow at the end of November 1957 convinced that something new and different was needed to build up the economy and revitalize the revolution. The experience of the Hundred Flowers had closed the door on liberalization. Though CCP officials had shown their loyalty in rooting out ‘rightists’, the Chairman still saw them as an obstacle – ‘a bunch of zombies with a slave mentality’. The planners lacked zeal, he decided, and adhered to the Soviet model at a time when Mao thought China should be finding its own path. (In any case Moscow was not going to be able to supply what China needed given the resources it was now directing at Eastern Europe.)

The Chairman declared that what he wanted was rashness; only those who were ‘blazing red’ could be counted on as China set itself the target of surpassing Britain economically within fifteen years. Experts were to be disregarded – or positively discriminated against. As a sign of the way the wind was blowing, the state statistical bureau was virtually dismantled. Economic decision-making was decentralized to enable provinces to operate more independently. A vast irrigation programme was launched, using conscripted labour, as Mao called for big increases in grain output, and promoted campaigns on everything from forestation to the eradication of pests.2

Industry, notably steel, was the core concern. Ministers and provincial bosses vied to outbid one another in their forecasts; those who were more realistic were purged.

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