When Chairman Mao Zedong died from Parkinson’s disease.
The plan “The Great Leap Forward”
To increase food production 3 fold with half the labor and to increase steel production by using unneeded farm labor.
result
Poor land and labor management combined with misguided pest reduction attempts resulted in massive crop failures. Famine followed. Estimates of over 4o million dead.
result
forcing untrained workers to meet unrealistic quotas in homemade forages resulted in poor quality un-useable steel being used in infrastructure projects that failed or were abandoned.
The plan “The Cultural Revolution”
A naked attempt to hold onto power after the utter failure of the great leap. With Mao shut out of many of the day to day party operations he reached out to the disaffected youth blaming the ills of the day on the old party leaders (many of whom he had placed in power)
The results
After whipping up resentment and hostility finally he called for students to abandon their studies and form militia groups, raising an army of almost 11 million students to aid the Red Army in ridding the nation of these unwanted leaders and restoring Mao to absolute power. Student mobs then murdered teachers and school administrators, they destroyed Tibetan monasteries, Foreign diplomats were lynched. They attacked artists, scholars, and intellectuals, whenever Mao denounced one of his former comrades the students were there to bring the “people’s justice”
Untold Millions were killed, it took only 3 years to bring what was left China’s economy to ruin. Yet it was not enough to end the murder spree that lasted until this day in 1976 with the death of Chairman Mao,
From the BBC
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