The Great Leap Forward

Great Leap Forward
"Great Leap Forward" in Simplified (top) and Traditional (bottom) Chinese characters
Simplified Chinese	大跃进
Traditional Chinese	大躍進
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Dà Yuèjìn Wade–Giles Ta4 yüeh4 chin4 IPA [tâ ɥê tɕîn] Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Daaih yeuk jeun Jyutping Daai6 joek3 zeon3 Southern Min Tâi-lô Tuā io̍k tsìn

The Great Leap Forward (Chinese: 大跃进; pinyin: Dà Yuèjìn) of the People's Republic of China (PRC) was an economic and social campaign by the Communist Party of China (CPC) from 1958 to 1962. The campaign was led by Chairman Mao Zedong and aimed to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a socialist society through rapid industrialization and collectivization. However, it is widely considered to have caused the Great Chinese Famine.

Chief changes in the lives of rural Chinese included the incremental introduction of mandatory agricultural collectivization. Private farming was prohibited, and those engaged in it were persecuted and labeled counter-revolutionaries. Restrictions on rural people were enforced through public struggle sessions and social pressure, although people also experienced forced labor. Rural industrialization, officially a priority of the campaign, saw "its development... aborted by the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward."

It is widely regarded by historians that The Great Leap resulted in tens of millions of deaths. A lower-end estimate is 18 million, while extensive research by Yu Xiguang suggests the death toll from the movement is closer to 55 million. Historian Frank Dikötter asserts that "coercion, terror, and systematic violence were the foundation of the Great Leap Forward" and it "motivated one of the most deadly mass killings of human history".

The years of the Great Leap Forward saw economic regression, with 1958 through 1962 being one of two periods (the other being the Cultural Revolution) between 1953 and 1976 in which China's economy shrank. Political economist Dwight Perkins argues, "enormous amounts of investment produced only modest increases in production or none at all. ... In short, the Great Leap was a very expensive disaster."