The Great Leap Forward was a Setback for China

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Today’s China is perceived as an economic powerhouse and a seriousl player in Asia and more broadly in the international arena. However, China’s path to both economic and political prominence has been long and tortuous.The Great Leap Forward was an attempt to modernize China economy so that by 1988, China would have an economy that rivaled America. The “Great Leap Forward” was a setback to China instead of an economy booster. The main reason this atrocity occurred was the advancement of China economy. The ‘‘Civil War’’ generated economic devastation. It also displaced the majority of Chinese people from their residency into a series of communes. Political decisions/beliefs took precedence over common sense and communes faced the task of doing things which they were incapable of achieving. Party officials would order the impossible and commune leaders, who knew what their commune was capable of doing or not, could be charged with being a "bourgeois reactionary" if he complained. Such a charge would lead to prison. Peasants were a huge part of this major atrocity and they were treated poorly. Food was scarce and declined rapidly during the “Great Leap Forward”." The Great Leap Forward was aimed at accomplishing the economic and technical development of the country at a vastly faster pace and with greater results. People did anything and everything to survive. The Great Leap Forward is one of the biggest genocides to date 20 to 30 million people died. My project is on my opinion of how I feel about the great leap forward in my own words.
Mao was born on December 26, 1893, in Shaoshan, Hunan Province, China, Mao Tse-tung served as chairman of the People's Republic of China from 1949 to 1959, and led the Chinese Communist Party fro...

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...erally felt united in the common cause of building up China (Fairbank and Goldman 369).Fully 8 years were wasted in terms of economic growth and the cost of opportunity loss was enormous. Considering that this setback occurred when other Asian countries were taking off economically(Chan3).
In late 1960, they abandoned the Great Leap Forward. Private ownership of land was reinstated and communes were cut down to a manageable size. Peasants also had the incentive to produce as much spare food as was possible as they could sell any spare that they had a market.If Mao would have not been so unreasonable and too extreme the people of China would have been able to keep a firm grasp on their farming needs.Therefore China wouldn’t have suffered so harsh of a recession, and people would have not been demortalized Mao had expected too much while the deadline was intimidating.

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