The Great Leap Forward and the Dazhai Commune

Mao’s attempt to accelerate economic change

The Great Leap Forward, launched in 1958, was Mao Zedong’s attempt to transform China rapidly into a powerful industrial and communist society. The campaign continued into the early 1960s, but its most devastating consequence was the famine of 1959–61.

The First Five Year Plan had expanded industry with Soviet assistance. However, China remained overwhelmingly agricultural, and rural living standards lagged behind those in towns. Mao wanted faster progress than cautious economic planning seemed to offer. He also wanted China to catch up with Western industrial powers, particularly Britain and the United States, and become less dependent on the Soviet Union.

Mao believed that China’s enormous population could compensate for its shortage of machinery and capital. Mass mobilisation meant organising millions of people to work towards ambitious production targets. For Mao, collective effort would not only increase output: it would help create a society in which people worked for the whole community rather than personal gain. This was an aim, not an achieved outcome.

Communes changed work and family life

From 1958, existing agricultural collectives were combined into much larger people’s communes, often containing at least 5,000 households. Land, tools and animals came under collective control. Commune leaders organised work and expected people to meet demanding production targets.

Communes also took over activities previously organised by families. Communal dining halls supplied meals; crèches cared for children; and homes cared for elderly people. Mao hoped that removing cooking and caring responsibilities would release more adults, including women, for productive work. Some communes went further, introducing communal sleeping arrangements.

These changes extended the state’s influence into everyday life. Eating together as a family and caring for relatives became harder where communal arrangements replaced household routines. People faced exhausting working hours and pressure from local leaders. Reduced individual rewards also weakened the connection between extra effort and personal benefit: working harder did not necessarily mean receiving more food or income.

Backyard furnaces: effort without expertise

Steel was essential for machinery, construction and industrial development, so increasing its production became a central goal. Alongside factory production, people were ordered to operate backyard furnaces in local communities. Household metal objects, including bowls and spoons, were collected and melted down.

However, producing usable steel requires suitable raw materials, controlled conditions and technical knowledge. Inexperienced workers could not reliably provide these. Much of the metal produced was unusable, so impressive-looking production activity did not necessarily add to China’s industrial strength. Useful possessions and labour were consumed without producing equivalent economic benefits.

The furnaces illustrate a central weakness of the Great Leap Forward: political enthusiasm was treated as a substitute for expertise. Ambitious targets encouraged people to concentrate on the quantity reported rather than the quality and usefulness of what they made.

Why farming policies reduced food production

Agricultural targets were equally ambitious. Farmers were instructed to use methods associated with Lysenkoism, including planting seeds unusually close together and deep in the soil. These methods ignored sound agricultural knowledge and reduced yields rather than increasing them.

The Four Pests campaign targeted rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows. Sparrows were attacked because they ate grain. Yet they also ate insects. Killing them allowed crop-damaging insect populations to increase, worsening the problems facing farmers.

Collective organisation did not solve these mistakes. Exhaustion, pressure to meet targets and weaker individual incentives damaged morale. Floods and droughts also disrupted harvests. Natural disasters therefore contributed to food shortages, but they operated alongside damaging government policies rather than explaining the catastrophe on their own.

False reports turned shortages into famine

Local officials were under intense pressure to demonstrate success. Reporting a disappointing harvest risked blame or accusations of lacking revolutionary commitment. Many therefore exaggerated grain production. Leaders received reports of abundant harvests when the actual supply was much smaller.

These false figures had deadly consequences. The government continued taking grain from the countryside and exporting food, including to repay Soviet debts, because it believed that supplies were plentiful. Grain that rural communities needed to survive was removed. Fear of criticising Mao’s policies also made it harder to expose mistakes and change course.

The famine was therefore more than a problem of poor harvests. Production fell, information about the shortage was distorted, and decisions based on that information left people with too little to eat. These factors reinforced one another.

The human and political consequences

The famine of 1959–61 killed tens of millions of people. Estimates vary, commonly ranging from roughly 30 to 50 million; there is no securely established exact total. Rural areas suffered most, although towns also experienced food shortages.

Starvation weakened people’s resistance to disease, with children and elderly people especially vulnerable. Birth rates fell, and desperate families searched for substitutes such as tree bark to survive. Together with exhausting labour and disruption to family routines, hunger made the Great Leap Forward a disaster across Chinese society, not simply a failure to meet economic targets.

The campaign also damaged Mao’s standing within the Communist leadership. Leaders such as Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping took a greater role in restoring the economy. Mao remained Communist Party chairman, but became less involved in day-to-day economic management.

Recovery measures reversed important features of the campaign. Communal arrangements were relaxed, private plots and markets were permitted, traditional farming methods were restored, and tools and fertiliser were supplied to rural areas. Agricultural production returned to pre-commune levels by 1965. These changes showed that practical incentives and workable farming methods could achieve what coercion and unrealistic targets had not.

Dazhai: the agricultural model Mao wanted China to copy

Dazhai, in Xiyang County, Shanxi province, provides a case study of Mao’s economic ideals. Although often called the Dazhai Commune, the community promoted nationally was a rural production brigade within the collective system.

Under Party secretary Chen Yonggui, villagers were organised into work teams to improve difficult mountain farmland. They cleared land, carried water over long distances for irrigation and built terraced fields—level steps cut into hillsides to make cultivation possible on slopes. These improvements were presented as evidence that determined collective labour could overcome poor natural conditions.

In 1964, Mao issued the slogan ‘In agriculture, learn from Dazhai.’ Dazhai became a national model after the Great Leap Forward’s main disaster, not the starting point of the 1958 campaign. Its promoted success suggested that collective farming and Maoist commitment could still deliver progress.

Dazhai embodied self-reliance, hard work and collective organisation. Chen’s leadership was celebrated as an example of politically committed villagers transforming their own environment. The model linked economic achievement to loyalty and revolutionary determination, rather than presenting farming as a purely technical activity.

What Dazhai reveals—and what it cannot prove

Dazhai helps explain the continuing appeal of Mao’s economic approach: organise people collectively, mobilise their labour and use a celebrated example to encourage others. It also shows the importance of propaganda in presenting policy as successful.

However, Dazhai’s achievements were promoted as a model for places with very different local conditions. Terracing and labour-intensive irrigation could not automatically provide the best solution everywhere. A policy suitable for one mountain community might be unsuitable elsewhere.

The official story of Dazhai’s self-reliance should therefore be distinguished from proof that Mao’s policies succeeded throughout China. Its national promotion in 1964 demonstrates Mao’s continuing commitment to collective effort. Set beside the famine, it also exposes the tension between an inspiring model of what policy was supposed to achieve and the wider experience of the Chinese people.

Great Leap Forward: aims and methods

• Launched in 1958: accelerate industrialisation, increase grain and steel production, catch up with Western powers and advance towards communism.
• Mass mobilisation: collective labour was intended to compensate for limited machinery and capital.
• Communes: collective farming plus dining halls, childcare and elderly care; greater control over work and family life.
• Backyard furnaces: local metal production, often without the expertise needed for usable steel.

Why it failed

• Unrealistic targets and reliance on enthusiasm rather than expertise.
• Flawed close planting and deep sowing reduced yields.
• Killing sparrows allowed crop-damaging insects to increase.
• Exhaustion and reduced individual rewards weakened productivity.
• Fear and pressure encouraged inflated harvest reports.
• Grain collection and exports continued despite shortages.
• Floods and droughts worsened the crisis; policy failures made it catastrophic.