What was the Great Leap Forward and Mao’s vision under this policy? Here’s the document:
What was the Great Leap Forward and Mao’s vision under this policy? Here’s the document:
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Don’t the question (one paragraph) What was the Great Leap Forward and Mao’s vision under this policy?
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Transcribed Image Text:pannist Party of
in China ed by Mao Zedong and the Communist Party of China from 1958 to 1962. Its aim was to
Mao Zedong
Date
Name
Glossary
Primary Source:
Great Leap
Forward: was an
economic and social
campaign by the
Communist Party of
China
murder ever recorded.
article in History Today, summarizing what happened:
the country into giant people's communes. In pursuit of a utopian paradise, everythiars
utoplan: ideal
collective canteens, food, distributed by the spoonful a
to force people to follow the party's every dictate. As incentives to work were removed pon used
and violence were used instead to compel famished farmers to perform labor on por coercion
collectivized:
transferred privately
owned property to
ownership by the
people or
government
irrigation projects while fields were neglected."
A catastrophe of gargantuan proportions ensued. Extrapolating from published populatio
statistics, historians have speculated that tens of millions of people died of starvation. But n
true dimensions of what happened are only now coming to light thanks to the meticulou ne
the party itself compiled during the famine.
gargantuan: huge
extrapolating:
extending the
application of
something
What comes out of this massive and detailed dossier is a tale of horror in which Man oma
as one of the greatest mass murderers in history, responsible for the deaths of at least 45des
people between 1958 and 1962. It is not merely the extent of the catastrophe that dwarfe million
estimates, but also the manner in which many people died: between two and three milliondarler
were tortured to death or summarily killed, often for the slightest infraction. When a bo Victir
handful of grain in a Hunan village, local boss Xiong Dechang forced his father to bury him alve
The father died of grief a few days later. The case of Wang Ziyou was reported to the central
leadership: one of his ears was chopped off, his legs were tied with iron wire, a ten kilogram
stone was dropped on his back and then he was branded with a sizzling tool-punishment for
digging up a potato.
dossier: a collection
of documents
While the horrors of the Great Leap Forward are well known to experts on communism and
Chinese history, they are rarely remembered by ordinary people outside China, and have had
only a modest cultural impact.
1. Why We So Rarely Look Back on the Great Leap Forward
What accounts for this neglect? One possible answer is that most of the victims were Chinese
peasants-people who are culturally and socially distant from the Western intellectuals and
media figures who have the greatest influence over our historical consciousness and popular
culture. As a general rule, it is easier to empathize with victims who seem similar to ourselves.
But an even bigger factor in our relative neglect of the Great Leap Forward is that it is part of the
general tendency to downplay crimes committed by communist regimes, as opposed to
ight-wing authoritarians. Unlike in the days of Mao, today very few western intellectuals
actually sympathize with communism. But many are reluctant to fully accept what a great evil it
was, fearful-perhaps-that other left-wing causes might be tainted by association.
in China, the regime has in recent vears admitted that Mao made "mistakes" and allowed some
degree of open discussion about this history. But the government is unwilling to admit that the
mass murder was intentional and continues to occasionally suppress and persecute dissidents
who point out the truth.
authoritarians:
people who support a
form of government
with strict laws and
few, if any, citizens'
rights
This reluctance is an obvious result of the fact that the Communist Party still rules China.
Although they have repudiated many of Mao's specific policies, the regime still derives much of
| its legitimacy from his legacy.
II. Why It Matters. For both Chinese and westerners, failure to acknowledge the true nature of
the Great Leap Forward carries serious costs, Some survivors of the Great Leap Forward are still
alive today. They deserve far greater recognition of the horrible injustice they suffered. They also
deserve compensation for their losses, and the infliction of appropriate punishment on the
remaining perpetrators.
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