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1 results

  • 7 - The Great Leap Forward and the split in the Yenan leadership

  • from PART II - THE SEARCH FOR A CHINESE ROAD, 1958–1965
  • Edited by Roderick MacFarquhar, John K. Fairbank
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of China
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    26 June 1987, pp 291-359

  • Summary

    During the spring and summer of 1958 Mao Tse-tung and his colleagues pushed the Great Leap Forward (GLF) idea as an alternative to the development strategy that had been imported from the Soviet Union for the first Five-Year Plan (FYP). Needing some way to overcome bottlenecks that appeared to preclude a simple repetition of the first FYP strategy, the Chinese leaders settled on an approach that utilized the mass mobilization skills they had honed to a fine edge during the Anti-Japanese War years in Yenan. Mao began to take the fateful steps that led to unleashing the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Factors such as weather and the industrial sector produced a rising crescendo of support for the GLF, both within the Chinese Communist Party and among the general populace. The split in the Yenan leadership has focused on the different components that came together to launch the Cultural Revolution in 1966.