The Great Leap Forward

The Great Leap Forward attempted to bring about extremely rapid economic growth by using the labor of the Chinese massess. Proposed and enacted by Chairman Mao Tse Tung in 1958 the image shows Sichuan peasants using hoes and other farming equipment to ready a hill for rice cultivation. The Great Leap Forward failed to achieved the the planned objectives and disrupted normal agriculture as displaced farmers worked in land engineering schemes or ran home steel production shops. Added to this weather conditions of 1959 and 1960 leasd to widespread famine and witnessed a fall in Chinese population.

Source: Roger Pic, Paris. In The Nuclear Age. TimeFrame AD 1950-1990. (Time-Life Books, Alexandria, VA; 1990), p. 74.