Great Leap Forward

The Great Leap Forward was an industrialization campaign within China from 1958 to 1962, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). CCP Chairman Mao Zedong launched the campaign to transform the country from an agrarian society into an industrialized society through the formation of people's communes. The Great Leap Forward is estimated to have led to between 15 and 55 million deaths in mainland China during the 1959–1961 Great Chinese Famine it caused, making it the largest or second-largest famine in human history.

The Great Leap Forward grew out of Mao's push for rapid development through mass mobilization and a reaction against the Soviet development strategy. Anti-intellectual politics and the surge of less-educated radicals helped sideline technical constraints and dissent. The strategy relied on mobilizing peasants to sustain themselves while supplying grain, cash crops, and even steel for urban industry, without major new state investment. Famine worsened when procurement quotas were set using false reports from the countryside. After the 1959 Lushan Conference, anti-"rightist" campaigns intensified misreporting and coercive collection even as output fell, deepening rural famine.

In rural China, the campaign expanded mandatory collectivization and banned private farming; those who resisted were punished as "counterrevolutionaries". Authorities enforced restrictions through public struggle sessions, social pressure, and forced labor. In the early 1960s, Mao endorsed a period of economic "readjustment" and acknowledged responsibility for mistakes, while maintaining that the "three red flags" could not be challenged.

Background

The core goal of the Great Leap Forward was to increase industrial and agricultural outputs by using mass mobilization to raise labor inputs and therefore overcome China's lack of material, technological and monetary inputs. Before the Great Leap Forward, the Chinese government initiated land reforms that redistributed land from landlords to peasants, but these reforms still needed to attain the expected agricultural productivity. The old system of internal passports (the hukou) was introduced in 1956, preventing inter-county travel without appropriate authorization. Highest priority was given to the urban proletariat for whom a welfare state was created.

The first phase of collectivization resulted in modest improvements in output. Famine along the mid-Yangzi was averted in 1956 through the timely allocation of food-aid, but in 1957 the Party's response was to increase the proportion of the harvest collected by the state to insure against further disasters. Moderates within the Party, including Zhou Enlai, argued for a reversal of collectivization on the grounds that claiming the bulk of the harvest for the state had made the people's food-security dependent upon the constant, efficient, and transparent functioning of the government.

Hundred Flowers Campaign and Anti-Rightist Campaign

In 1957, Mao responded to the tensions which existed in the Party by launching the Hundred Flowers Campaign as a way to promote free speech and criticism. Some scholars have retrospectively concluded that this campaign was a ploy designed to allow critics of the regime, primarily intellectuals but also low ranking members of the party who were critical of the agricultural policies, to identify themselves.

By the time of the completion of the first 5 Year Economic Plan in 1957, Mao had come to believe that the path to socialism that had been followed by the Soviet Union was not appropriate for China. He was critical of Khrushchev's reversal of Stalinist policies and he was also alarmed by the uprisings that had taken place in East Germany, Poland and Hungary, and the perception that the USSR was seeking "peaceful coexistence" with the Western powers. Mao had become convinced that China should follow its own path to communism. According to Jonathan Mirsky, a historian and a journalist who specialized in Chinese affairs, China's isolation from most of the rest of the world, along with the Korean War, had accelerated Mao's attacks on his perceived domestic enemies. It led him to accelerate his designs to develop an economy where the regime would get maximum benefit from rural taxation.

The Anti-Rightist Campaign started on 8 June 1957. The main goal was to purge "rightists" from the CCP and China altogether. It was believed that approximately 5 percent of the population was still "rightists" (Political conservatives sabotaging the revolution).

Rash advance movement and anti-rash advance movement

In the early years of the New China, due to the lack of experience in financial and economic work, it was a common practice to include the fiscal surplus of the previous year in the budget of the current year. Because of the low level of budgeting in the fiscal sector and inaccurate estimates of economic development, revenues and expenditures were underestimated. However, no problems arose because the government usually managed to end the fiscal year with a surplus. In 1953, when China entered the first five-year plan period, the Chinese economy had improved and the Ministry of Finance still decided to include the fiscal surplus of the previous fiscal year as credit funds in the 1953 budget revenue to cover the current year's expenditures. As a result, budget expenditures were expanded and so was the size of the budget. At that time, only the Soviet expert Kutuzov warned the Chinese fiscal authorities not to use the fiscal surplus of the previous year, however, it was not heeded by the Ministry of Finance. In that year, the gross industrial and agricultural output grew by 21.3%, while the capital construction budget increased by 50% compared to the previous year, which led to an imbalance between production and demand. Such was the "small rash advance" () at the start of the first five-year plan period. The issue had caused widespread social controversy. This marked one of the first times people questioned Mao's authority. The faction of Li Xiannian, Chen Yun and others did not think it was appropriate to continue this practice, but they also had opponents. Li Xiannian finally decided to hold a collective meeting to discuss the issue, and after listening to the views of all parties, he decided to abolish the practice.

Nevertheless, the controversy over the use of the fiscal surplus persisted, which brought another reckless "rash advance" to China's economic development in 1956. At that time, China lacked consideration in three areas: capital construction, employee wages, and agricultural loans. This made the central treasury "tight" again. This drew the attention of Zhou Enlai, Li Xiannian, and others. At a state meeting held on 5 June 1956, proposals were made to curb impetuousness and rash advances, revise the 1956 national economic plan, and cut capital construction investment. Such was the anti-"rash advance" movement.

The excess of the first five-year plan gave the nation great confidence, and at the Second Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee, "go all out, aim high, and build socialism with greater, faster, better, and more economical results" () was adopted as the "General Line for Socialist Construction" in China. In 1955, Mao had already expressed his belief that socialist construction should achieve "greater, faster, better, and more economical" results. These led to the re-emergence of "rash advances", which further led to the reintroduction of policies and tendencies that had previously been overturned. Those who opposed Mao's policies were accused of not upholding the tenets of the "class struggle" under the people's cult of Mao.

Initial phase and resistance

Initial goals

Regarding agriculture, the Chinese government recognized the country's dilemma of feeding its rapidly growing population without the means to make significant capital improvements in agriculture. Viewing human labor as an underutilized factor of production, the government intensified the mobilization of masses of people to increase labor inputs in agriculture.

In November 1957, party leaders of communist countries gathered in Moscow to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution. Soviet Communist Party First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev proposed not only to catch up with but exceed the United States in industrial output in the next 15 years through peaceful competition. Mao Zedong was so inspired by the slogan that China put forward its own one: to catch up with and surpass the United Kingdom in 15 years. As with its approach to agriculture, the Chinese government attempted to compensate for its inability to invest in industry with mass mobilizations to increase human labor inputs.

During the Great Leap Forward, architectural projects were managed according to the strategy of the Three Simultaneities, a process that involved designing, preparing materials, and building at the same time.

The initial projects of the Great Leap Forward were accelerating the construction of waterworks on the North China Plain during the 1957-1958 winter and next the development of people's communes and crude forms of rural industrialization. Some Great Leap Projects had lots of long-term value to China's economy and continued to benefit China after The Great Leap Forward ended. Some of the projects included bridges, railroads, canals and reservoirs. However, some of these projects were completed quickly, resulting in errors and delays that did more harm than good.

The Great Leap Forward partially socialized reproductive labor though collective housework, childcare, and the collective canteens which included free or partially free food distribution.

Lushan Conference and the Anti-Right Deviation Struggle

The initial impact of the Great Leap Forward was discussed at the Lushan Conference in July–August 1959. Although many of the more moderate leaders had reservations about the new policy, the only senior leader to speak out openly was Marshal Peng Dehuai. Mao responded to Peng's criticism of the Great Leap by dismissing Peng from his post as the Minister of National Defense, denouncing Peng (who came from a poor peasant family) and his supporters as "bourgeois", Peng was replaced by Lin Biao, who began a systematic purge of Peng's supporters from the military. In total, over 3 million CCP members were purged or penalized during the campaign.

Organizational and operational factors

The Great Leap Forward campaign began during the period of the Second Five Year Plan which was scheduled to run from 1958 to 1963, though the campaign itself was discontinued by 1961. Mao unveiled the Great Leap Forward at a meeting in January 1958 in Nanjing.

The Great Leap Forward was grounded in a logical theory of economic development and represented an unambiguous social invention. The central idea behind the Great Leap was that China should "walk on two legs", by rapidly developing both heavy and light industry, urban and rural areas, and large and small scale labor. The hope was to industrialize by making use of the massive supply of cheap labor and avoid having to import heavy machinery. The government also sought to avoid both social stratification and technical bottlenecks involved in the Soviet model of development, but sought political rather than technical solutions to do so. Distrusting technical experts, Mao and the party sought to replicate the strategies used in its 1930s regrouping in Yan'an following the Long March: "mass mobilization, social leveling, attacks on bureaucratism, [and] disdain for material obstacles". In the absence of material development inputs, Mao sought to increase development through voluntarism and organizational advantages brought about by socialism. Mao advocated that a further round of collectivization modeled on the USSR's Third Period was necessary in the countryside where the existing collectives would be merged into huge people's communes., since the country side was significantly poorer than the cities and the people were hands on workers.

People's communes

thumb|A canteen in a people's commune, 1958

An experimental commune was established at Chayashan in Henan in April 1958. Here for the first time, private plots were entirely abolished and communal kitchens were introduced. At the Politburo meetings in August 1958, it was decided that these people's communes would become the new form of economic and political organization throughout rural China. The communes were relatively self-sufficient co-operatives where wages and money were replaced by work points.

The commune system was aimed at maximizing production for provisioning the cities and constructing offices, factories, schools, and social insurance systems for urban-dwelling workers, cadres, and officials. Citizens in rural areas who criticized the system were labeled "dangerous". Later on, as more and more families linked together to form people's communes, peasants started to lose individual identities, since families were from vastly different communities with different cultural views, political views, family structures, and financial backgrounds, which created conflict regarding the means and modes of production. Some wealthier families who refused to join a people's commune might be labeled as rightists. Escape was also difficult or impossible, and those who attempted were subjected to "party-orchestrated public struggle", which further jeopardized their survival. Besides agriculture, communes also incorporated some light industry and construction projects. Harvests did increase in 1958. However this was because of exceptional weather, not, which a lot of officials mistook, as the result of hard work of the peasants (collectivization lowered the efficiency of labour and increased overconsumption), causing officials to raise the projected quota. This led to famine in the countryside since they were required to reach set harvest goals, leaving not enough food for themselves.

Industrialization

thumb|A minecart leading to the steel base, October 1957

Mao saw grain and steel production as the key pillars of economic development. He forecast that within 15 years of the start of the Great Leap, China's industrial output would surpass that of the UK. In the August 1958 Politburo meetings, it was decided that steel production would be set to double within the year, most of the increase coming through backyard steel furnaces. Major investments in larger state enterprises were made: 1,587, 1,361 and 1,815 medium and large-scale state projects were started in 1958, 1959 and 1960 respectively, more in each year than in the first Five Year Plan.

Millions of Chinese became state workers as a consequence of this industrial investment: in 1958, 21 million were added to non-agricultural state payrolls, and total state employment reached a peak of 50.44 million in 1960, more than doubling the 1957 level; the urban population swelled by 31.24 million people. These new workers placed major stress on China's food-rationing system, which led to increased and unsustainable demands on rural food production. Those between the ages of sixteen and thirty were considered ideal candidates for the militia, within the broader goal that every peasant aged sixteen to sixty should serve in the People's Militia (minbing). Peasants were working long hours, all year round, even contributed their own cooking utensils to be melted as a source of production. Officials at multiple levels inflated production figures, leaving central leaders poorly informed about conditions and encouraging further unrealistic demands.

The consequences of the Great Leap Forward were devastating, leading to one of the most severe famines in human history. The policies that diverted labor from agriculture to industrial projects, such as backyard steel furnaces, resulted in a catastrophic drop in agricultural output; consequently, food shortages became widespread. According to demographic studies, the famine caused an estimated 15 to 45 million deaths, with rural areas being the hardest hit. Ashton et al. (1984) highlight: "During the period 1958-62, about 30 million premature deaths occurred in China: deaths that occurred earlier than they would have on the basis of mortality trends for more normal years."

During this rapid expansion, coordination suffered and material shortages were frequent, resulting in "a huge rise in the wage bill, largely for construction workers, but no corresponding increase in manufactured goods". Facing a massive deficit, the government cut industrial investment from to from 1960 to 1962 (an 82% decrease; the 1957 level was ).

Backyard furnaces

thumb|upright=0.75|Backyard furnaces in the countryside, 1958

The Great Leap Forward sought to revive folk technologies, including in the area of steel production. China's steel industry faced a shortage of imported iron and calls to increase production of "native iron" had begun in 1956. Efforts to improve steel production were a major focus of the Great Leap Forward.

The authors present a similar picture to Thaxton in depicting the party's destruction of the traditions of Chinese villagers. Traditionally prized local customs were deemed signs of feudalism to be extinguished. "Among them were funerals, weddings, local markets, and festivals. The Party thus destroyed much that gave meaning to Chinese lives. These private bonds were social glue. To mourn and to celebrate is to be human. To share joy, grief, and pain is humanizing." Failure to participate in the CCP's political campaigns—though the aims of such campaigns were often conflicting—"could result in detention, torture, death, and the suffering of entire families". Benjamin Valentino notes that "communist officials sometimes tortured and killed those accused of failing to meet their grain quota".

However, J. G. Mahoney has said that "there is too much diversity and dynamism in the country for one work to capture ... rural China as if it were one place." Mahoney describes an elderly man in rural Shanxi who recalls Mao fondly, saying "Before Mao we sometimes ate leaves, after liberation we did not." Regardless, Mahoney points out that Da Fo villagers recall the Great Leap Forward as a period of famine and death, and among those who survived in Da Fo were precisely those who could digest leaves.

Direct consequences

The failure of agricultural policies, the movement of farmers from agricultural to industrial work, and weather conditions suppressed the food supply. The shortage of supply clashed with an explosion in demand, leading to millions of deaths from severe famine. The economy, which had improved since the end of the civil war, was devastated, and in response to the severe conditions, there was resistance among the populace.

The effects on the upper levels of government in response to the disaster were complex, with Mao purging the Minister of National Defense Peng Dehuai in 1959, the temporary promotion of Lin Biao, Liu Shaoqi, and Deng Xiaoping, and Mao losing some power and prestige following the Great Leap Forward, during the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference in 1962, which led him to launch the Cultural Revolution in 1966.

Although actual harvests were reduced, local officials, under tremendous pressure to report record harvests to central authorities in response to the innovations, competed with each other to announce increasingly exaggerated results. These results were used as the basis for determining the amount of grain which would be taken by the State, supplied to the towns and cities and exported. This barely left enough grain for the peasants, and in some areas, starvation set in. A 1959 drought and flooding from the Yellow River in the same year also contributed to the famine.

During 1958–1960 China continued to be a substantial net exporter of grain, despite the widespread famine which was being experienced in the countryside, as Mao sought to maintain face and convince the outside world of the success of his plans. Foreign aid was refused. When the Japanese foreign minister told his Chinese counterpart Chen Yi about an offer of 100,000 tonnes of wheat which was going to be shipped away from public view, he was rebuffed.

John F. Kennedy was also aware that the Chinese were exporting food to Africa and Cuba during the famine. He said during the news conference on 23 May 1962, "Well, there has been no indication of any expression of interest or desire by the Chinese Communists to receive any food from us, as I have said at the beginning, and we would certainly have to have some idea as to whether the food was needed and under what conditions it might be distributed. Up to the present, we have had no such indication." But Kennedy said that the US provided food for about half a million refugees in British Hong Kong.

With dramatically reduced yields, even urban areas received greatly reduced rations; however, mass starvation was largely confined to the countryside, where, as a result of drastically inflated production statistics, very little grain was left for the peasants to eat. Food shortages were bad throughout the country, but the provinces which had adopted Mao's reforms with the most vigor, such as Anhui, Gansu and Henan, tended to suffer disproportionately. Sichuan, one of China's most populous provinces, known in China as "Heaven's Granary" because of its fertility, is thought to have suffered the highest number of deaths from starvation due to the vigor with which provincial leader Li Jingquan undertook Mao's reforms. There are widespread oral reports, though little official documentation, of cannibalism being practiced in various forms as a result of the famine.

The agricultural policies of the Great Leap Forward and the associated famine continued until early 1961, when the Ninth Plenum of the 8th Central Committee marked a shift toward a program of "adjustment, consolidation, filling out, and improvement" and began reversing the more extreme policies. The government contracted for grain imports in 1961 amid serious food shortages. As a result, China subsequently imported large quantities of grain between 1961 and 1963, primarily from Australia and Canada, which were used to secure urban food supplies and helped reduce grain procurement demands on rural producers.

Deaths by famine

The exact number of deaths by famine is difficult to determine, and estimates range from 15 million to 55 million people. Because of the uncertainties which are involved in estimating the number of deaths which were caused by the failure of the Great Leap Forward and the ensuing famine and because of the uncertainties which are involved in estimating the numbers of deaths which were caused by other famines, it is difficult to compare the severity of different famines. If an estimate of 30 million deaths is accepted, the failure of the Great Leap Forward caused the deadliest famine in the history of China, and it also caused the deadliest famine in human history. This extremely high loss of human lives was partially caused by China's large population. To put things into absolute and relative numerical perspective: in the Great Irish Famine, approximately 1 million people out of a total population of 8 million people died, or 12.5% of Ireland's entire population. If approximately 23 million people out of a total population of 650 million people died during the Great Chinese Famine, the percentage would be 3.5%. After the Great Leap Forward, mortality rates decreased to below pre-Leap levels and the downward trend begun in 1950 continued.

The severity of the famine varied from region to region. By correlating the increases in the death rates of different provinces, Peng Xizhe found that Gansu, Sichuan, Guizhou, Hunan, Guangxi, and Anhui were the hardest-hit regions, while Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tianjin, and Shanghai experienced the lowest increases in death rates during the Great Leap Forward (there was no data for Tibet). In some areas, people resorted to eating tree bark and dirt, and in some places cannibalism as a result of starvation. Peng also noted that the increase in death rates in urban areas was about half the increase in death rates in rural areas. According to Chinese government reports in the Fuyang Party History Research Office, between 1959 and 1961, 2.4 million people from Fuyang died from the famine.

Long-term impact

The long-term impact of the Great Leap Forward extended beyond immediate famine and loss of life. The policies and their disastrous outcomes led to significant changes in Chinese society and governance. In rural areas, the effects on education and women's labor roles were profound. The collapse of agricultural production systems and the communal structure led to a reevaluation of economic strategies in subsequent decades. Rural education suffered due to the upheaval, and while women were initially mobilized into the workforce, the ensuing chaos often negated these advances. Dali Yang explains, "The Great Leap Forward's failure necessitated significant policy shifts, leading to a more pragmatic approach in China's economic reforms."

File:Global famines history.jpg|Global famines history

File:Total number of deaths by age globally for both sexes combined 1950–2017.png|The Great Leap Forward produced a significant spike in the global number of deaths (1950–2017)

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Methods of estimating the death toll and methods of identifying the sources of the error

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="float: right; margin:10px; border:1"

|+ Estimates of Great Chinese Famine death toll

! scope="col" | Deaths<br>(millions)

! scope="col" | Author(s)

! scope="col" | Year

|15

|Houser, Sands, and Xiao

|2005

|18

|Yao

|1999

| 23 || Peng || 1987

| 27 || Coale || 1984

| 30 || Ashton, et al.|| 1984

| 30 || Banister || 1987

| 30 || Becker || 1996

| 32.5 || Cao || 2005

| 36 || Yang || 2008

| 38 || Chang and Halliday || 2005

| 38 || Rummel || 2008

| 45 minimum || Dikötter|| 2010

|43 to 46 || Chen || 1980

|55 || Yu Xiguang || 2005

Some outlier estimates include 11 million by Utsa Patnaik, an Indian Marxist economist, 3.66 million by Chinese mathematician Sun Jingxian () and 2.6–4 million by Chinese historian and political economist Yang Songlin ().

The number of famine deaths during the Great Leap Forward has been estimated with different methods. Banister, Coale, and Ashton et al. compare age cohorts from the 1953, 1964, and 1982 censuses, yearly birth and death records, and results of the 1982 1:1000 fertility survey. From these they calculate excess deaths above a death rate interpolated between pre- and post-Leap death rates. All involve corrections for perceived errors inherent in the different data sets. Peng uses reported deaths from the vital statistics of 14 provinces, adjusts 10% for under reporting, and expands the result to cover all of China assuming similar mortality rates in the other provinces. He uses 1956/57 death rates as the baseline death rate rather than an interpolation between pre- and post-GLF death rates.

Houser, Sands, and Xiao in their 2005 research study using "provincial-level demographic panel data and a Bayesian empirical approach in an effort to distinguish the relative importance of weather and national policy on China's great demographic disaster" conclude that "in aggregate, from 1959 to 1961 China suffered about 14.8 million excess deaths. Of those, about 69% (or 10.3 million) seem attributable to effects stemming from national policies."

Cao uses information from "local annals" to determine for each locality the expected population increase from normal births and deaths, the population increase due to migration, and the loss of population between 1958 and 1961. He then adds the three figures to determine the number of excess deaths during the period 1959–1961. Chang and Halliday use death rates determined by "Chinese demographers" for the years 1957–1963, subtract the average of the pre-and post-Leap death rates (1957, 1962, and 1963) from the death rates of each of the years 1958–1961, and multiply each yearly excess death rate by the year's population to determine excess deaths.

Chen Yizi, a top adviser to CCP General Secretary Zhao Ziyang and former head of the Institute for Economic Structural Reform, concluded 43 million died in the famine after conducting a county-by-county review of deaths in five provinces and performing extrapolation. Chen was part of a large investigation group led by the Institute for Economic Structural Reform which "visited every province and examined internal Party documents and records".

Becker, Rummel, Dikötter, and Yang each compare several earlier estimates. Becker considers Banister's estimate of 30 million excess deaths to be "the most reliable estimate we have". Rummel initially took Coale's 27 million as a "most likely figure", then accepted the later estimate of 38 million by Chang and Halliday after it was published. Dikötter judged Chen's estimate of 43 to 46 million to be "in all likelihood a reliable estimate". He also claimed that at least 2.5 million of these deaths were caused by beatings, tortures, or summary executions. On the other hand, Daniel Vukovich asserts that this claim is coming from a problematic and unverified reference, because Chen simply threw that number as an "estimate" during an interview and because Chen hasn't published any scholarly work on the subject. Yang takes Cao's, Wang Weizhi's, and Jin Hui's estimates ranging from 32.5 to 35 million excess deaths for the period 1959–1961, adds his own estimates for 1958 (0.42 million) and 1962 (2.23 million) "based on official figures reported by the provinces" to get 35 to 37 million, and chooses 36 million as a number that "approaches the reality but is still too low".

Estimates contain several sources of error. National census data was not accurate and even the total population of China at the time was not known to within 50 to 100 million people. The statistical reporting system had been taken over by party cadre from statisticians in 1957, making political considerations more important than accuracy and resulting in a complete breakdown in the statistical reporting system. Population figures were routinely inflated at the local level, often in order to obtain increased rations of goods. During the Cultural Revolution, a great deal of the material in the State Statistical Bureau was burned.

According to Jasper Becker, under-reporting of deaths was also a problem. The death registration system, which was inadequate before the famine, was completely overwhelmed by the large number of deaths during the famine. In addition, he claims that many deaths went unreported so that family members of the deceased could continue to draw the deceased's food ration and that counting the number of children who both were born and died between the 1953 and 1964 censuses is problematic. However, Ashton, et al. believe that because the reported number of births during the GLF seems accurate, the reported number of deaths should be accurate as well. Massive internal migration made both population counts and registering deaths problematic, though Yang believes the degree of unofficial internal migration was small and Cao's estimate takes internal migration into account.

Coale's, Banister's, Ashton et al.'s, and Peng's figures all include adjustments for demographic reporting errors, though Dikötter, in his book Mao's Great Famine, argues that their results, as well as Chang and Halliday's, Yang's, and Cao's, are still underestimates. The System Reform Institute's (Chen's) estimate has not been published and therefore it cannot be verified.

Causes of the famine and responsibility for it

The policies of the Great Leap Forward, the failure of the government to respond quickly and effectively to famine conditions, as well as Mao's insistence on maintaining high grain export quotas in the face of clear evidence of poor crop output were responsible for the famine. There is disagreement over how much, if at all, weather conditions contributed to the famine.

Significant amounts of agricultural labor had been transferred for steel production, resulting in a shortage of agricultural workers. Approximately 10% of crops could not be harvested as a result. During the course of his research, Yang uncovered that some 22 million tons of grain was held in public granaries at the height of the famine, reports of starvation went up the bureaucracy only to be ignored by top officials, and the authorities ordered that statistics be destroyed in regions where population decline became evident. Using Henan as an example, Yang documents that inflated reports claimed production of 1200 jin per mu, while the actual production was closer to 600 jin per mu, resulting in excessive grain requisitions and local starvation, nearly 6% of the population died. In the later book, Yang states, "36 million Chinese starved to death in the years between 1958 and 1962, while 40 million others failed to be born, which means that "China's total population loss during the Great Famine then comes to 76 million."

Economist Steven Rosefielde argues that Yang's account "shows that Mao's slaughter was caused in considerable part by terror-starvation; that is, voluntary manslaughter (and perhaps murder) rather than innocuous famine." Yang claims that local party officials were indifferent to the large number of people dying around them, as their primary concern was the delivery of grain, which Mao wanted to use to pay back debts to the USSR totaling 1.973 billion yuan. In Xinyang, people died of starvation at the doors of grain warehouses. Mao refused to open the state granaries as he dismissed reports of food shortages and accused the "rightists" and the kulaks of conspiring to hide grain.

From his research into records and talks with experts at the meteorological bureau, Yang concludes that the weather during the Great Leap Forward was not unusual compared to other periods and was not a factor. Yang also believes that the Sino-Soviet split was not a factor because it did not happen until 1960, when the famine was well under way.

Ashton, et al. write that policies leading to food shortages, natural disasters, and a slow response to initial indications of food shortages were to blame for the famine. Policies leading to food shortages included the implementation of the commune system and an emphasis on non-agricultural activities such as backyard steel production. Natural disasters included drought, flood, typhoon, plant disease, and insect pest. The slow response was in part due to a lack of objective reporting on the agricultural situation, including a "nearly complete breakdown in the agricultural reporting system".

This was partly caused by strong incentives for officials to over-report crop yields. According to Frank Dikötter, local officials frequently reported production figures 30-40% higher than the actual output to meet the central government's ambitious targets. The unwillingness of the Central Government to seek international aid was a major factor; China's net grain exports in 1959 and 1960 would have been enough to feed 16 million people 2000 calories per day. Ashton, et al. conclude that "It would not be inaccurate to say that 30 million people died prematurely as a result of errors of internal policy and flawed international relations."

Mobo Gao suggested that the Great Leap Forward's terrible effects came not from malignant intent on the part of the Chinese leadership at the time, but instead related to the structural nature of its rule, and the vastness of China as a country. Gao says "the terrible lesson learnt is that China is so huge and when it is uniformly ruled, follies or wrong policies will have grave implications of tremendous magnitude".

In the official Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People's Republic of China passed in 1981, the Chinese Communist Party called the purge of the so-called anti-Party clique of Peng Dehuai and others as "entirely wrong" and cut short the process of the rectification of "Left" errors. The 1981 Resolution also states that, "it was mainly due to the errors of the Great Leap Forward and of the struggle against 'Right opportunism' together with a succession of natural calamities and the perfidious scrapping of contracts by the Soviet Government that our economy encountered serious difficulties between 1959 and 1961, which caused serious losses to our country and people."

Despite the risks to their careers, some CCP members openly laid blame for the disaster at the feet of party leadership and took it as proof that China must rely more on education, acquiring technical expertise and applying bourgeois methods in developing the economy. Liu Shaoqi made a speech at the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference in 1962, stating that "[the] economic disaster was 30% fault of nature, 70% human error."

A 2017 paper by economists found "strong evidence that the unrealistic yield targets led to excessive death tolls from 1959 to 1961, and further analysis shows that yield targets induced the inflation of grain output figures and excessive procurement. We also find that Mao's radical policy caused serious deterioration in human capital accumulation and slower economic development in the policy-affected regions decades after the death of Mao."

A dramatic decline in grain output continued for several years, involving in 1960–61 a drop in output of more than 25 percent. Causes of this drop are found in both natural disaster and government policy. The Great Leap Forward period also marked the initiation of China's rapid growth in tractor and fertilizer production.

The successful construction of the Daqing oil field despite harsh weather conditions and supply limitations became a model held up by the Party as an example during subsequent industrialization campaigns. During its 1960 construction, Oil Minister Yu Qiuli mobilized workers through ideological motivation instead of material incentives, focusing enthusiasm, energy, and resources to complete a rapid industrialization project. The project also delivered critical economic benefits because without the production of the Daqing oil field, crude oil would have been severely limited after the Soviet Union cut off supplies as a result of the Sino-Soviet split.

Large-scale irrigation projects begun during the late 1950s as part of the Great Leap Forward continued to grow rapidly until the late 1970s.

During the Great Leap Forward, control of state-owned enterprises was largely decentralized, with control being transferred to local governments from the central government. This process of decentralization also significantly increased the power of local Party organizations. This was a wave of "great leap forward" in higher education. Many of the newly established universities, however, were affiliated with people's communes and were directly transformed from local middle schools.

Mao stepped down as State Chairman of the PRC on 27 April 1959, but remained CCP Chairman. Liu Shaoqi (the new PRC Chairman) and reformist Deng Xiaoping (CCP General Secretary) were left in charge to change policy to bring economic recovery. Mao's Great Leap Forward policy was openly criticized at the Lushan party conference by one person. Criticism from Minister of National Defense Peng Dehuai, who, discovered that people from his home province starved to death caused him to write a letter to Mao to ask for the policies to be adapted. Liu stated:

During the discussion of the Third Five Year Plan, Mao made similar statements about the Great Leap Forward having "extended the infrastructure battlefront too long", acknowledging that it was "best to do less and well".

The failures of the Great Leap Forward also informed the government's approach to the Third Front construction campaign which followed a few years later and which built basic industry and national defense industry in China's interior. Rather than adopting the Great Leap Forward's approach of locally developed projects, the mass mobilizations of the Third Front were centrally planned.

In addition, according to historian Philipp Brigham, the failures of the Great Leap Forward significantly contributed to the Cultural Revolution, which is another pivotal event in modern Chinese politics that happened later in Chairman Mao's regime. Specifically, he posits that one of the main objectives of the Cultural Revolution was to extricate Chairman Mao and the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party from the responsibility for the Great Leap Forward. According to Brigham's explanation, Chairman Mao and the central committee tried to incite through the Cultural Revolution that the Great Leap Forward had failed despite the right direction from above due to inadequate leadership of the local cadres.

Cohorts born during the famine showed higher infant and early life mortality, but exhibit a "mortality crossover" pattern, with mortality rates leveling off or even dropping relative to non-famine cohorts beyond a certain point. This could be explained by the combined effects of initial debilitation, in which malnutrition and hardship increase early deaths, and selection for robustness among famine survivors resulting in fewer later deaths.

Family planning

The devastating Great Chinese Famine, which resulted in the deaths of approximately 30 million people, may have influenced the Chinese leadership's decision to implement the one-child policy.

Cultural impact

Consistent with the Great Leap Forward in agriculture and industry, authorities promoted the New Folksong Movement and the Peasant Painting Movement, from which hundreds of thousands of new artists emerged. Through the New Folksong Movement, millions of new folk songs and poems were written and collected. As part of the Peasant Painting Movement, peasant artists decorated village walls with Great Leap Forward-themed murals.

The Great Leap Forward also prompted a wave of the New Guohua Campaign in which the state commissioned landscape artists to paint new production projects; select paintings of the campaign were taught in schools, published widely as propaganda posters, exhibited in museums, and used as the backdrops of state events.

On 9 March 1958, the Ministry of Culture held a meeting to introduce a Great Leap Forward in cinema. During the Great Leap Forward, the film industry rapidly expanded, with documentary films being the genre that experienced the greatest growth. The total number of film-screening venues, including both urban cinemas and mobile projection units which traveled through rural China, radically increased.