Great Leap Forward Analysis

The Great Leap Forward that Mao Zedong hoped would push China to the height of economic development had left the country in great economic and social devastation. Mao envisioned measures that would create the communist utopia: communal farms, communal land ownership, communal work force, usage of metal oven to encourage local steel production etc. His scheme not only failed to produce any valuable steel, but even led to a decrease in harvest production. Consequentially, potentially 40 million civilians died in the resulting great famine. (Yang, 1996)

Following the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution was started by Mao. The Cultural Revolution was a social-political movement that took place from 1966 to 1976 that witnessed a nationwide

There have been many different interpretations of Mao’s motive in carrying out the Cultural Revolution. Many others have argued that Mao was merely using ideology as a disguise to purge

It occurred to Mao that the peasants, who were his main revolutionary force, not only had to be politically conscious but also be professionally competent. As only by educating the peasants, can he close up the gap between the elites and peasants so as to undermine the elites. Mao realized that the peasants “must have its own army of technical cadres and of professors, teachers, scientists, journalists, writers, artists and Marxist theorists” for building socialism. Thus, Mao halt the university entrance examinations and enrolled large numbers of peasants and workers into institutes of higher learning during the Cultural Revolution. On the other hand, urban high school students were made to go work in the countryside, which was probably also Mao’s attempt to integrate the educated and illiterate. Mao’s Cultural Revolution also attempted to change gender stereotypes; conventional perception of women being passive and gentle were considered “bourgeois” by Mao. Therefore, during that period, women had hair and attire like men, and could interrogate and attack the counter-revolutionaries. (Honig 2002)

Destruction of the “Four Olds”, attainment of a pure society and abolishing social stereotypes and classes during the Cultural Revolution all reinforce the argument that Mao’s prime motivation was to achieve his ideological goals of a socialist