Great Leap Forward

Change in the economic policy of the People's Republic of China introduced by Mao Zedong under the second five-year plan of 1958 to 1962. The aim was to achieve rapid and simultaneous agricultural and industrial growth through the creation of large new agro-industrial communes. The inefficient and poorly planned allocation of state resources led to the collapse of the strategy by 1960 and the launch of a ‘reactionary programme’, involving the use of rural markets and private subsidiary plots. More than 20 million people died in the Great Leap famines of 1959 to 1961. See also China, the Great Leap Forward.