jan 1, 1958 - The Great Leap Forward

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Mao started a new 5 year plan called the Great Leap Forward. He wanted to increase China's industrial output by a lot. The government told people it was a good idea to produce their own medals using backyard furnaces. The Great Leap Forward made China to be kind of like a huge camp. Children were cared for in nurseries when their parents worked long hours in the industrial work. Workers were sorted by gender, age, skill, type of job, and region. Single people lived in dormitories, and served food in mess halls. Like college and summer camp in one. This second 5 year plan failed miserably. the industrial output only dropped, and there were food shortages with over 20 million people starving to death. The government encouraged people to make steel in their own furnaces, but the steel was useless because of its poor quality. People said they could produce more wheat than they actually could. Because the government takes a lot of the food, they took all of it because the people didn't made enough. This was “artificial famine,” because the people brought that on themselves. The famine lasted for 3 years, it was the largest in history. The plan was abandoned in the early 1960s.

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