Great Leap Forward
The Great Leap Forward took place in China from 1958-1961 and was lead by Mao Zedong, who had the goal of transforming China from an agrarian society to a socialist society through collectivization and industrialization. One of the largest changes that Mao imposed on the people of China was mandatory agricultural collectivization. Private farming was prohibited, and those that did participate in farming were persecuted and many times killed. Restrictions on farmers were enforced publicly. Mao believed that grain and steel were the biggest hopes of production for China. Millions of people became state workers due to this new industrial investment. However, the steel that was produced was low in quality and mostly useless. The amount of state workers continued to grow, which created problems within China’s food rationing system. As they encouraged the production of steel, production of crops dropped. The years within the Great Leap Forward actually ended up seeing economic regression instead of growth, much to Mao's disappointment. This lead to criticism of Mao from the rest of his party, and he was marginalized within the party until he began the Cultural Revolution. The enormous investment that Mao made in the China’s industrial growth ended up bearing little to no fruit, creating a famine which ended up killing over 30 million people, the deadliest famine in the world.