jan 1, 1958 - Second five-year plan

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-Mao’s government announced a second Five-Year Plan called the GREAT LEAP FORWARD.
-Chinese government prayed to increase industrial output to the point where it matched that if the West.
-To get to this goal, China brought modern machinery and ran it almost continuously.
-The government encouraged people to produce their own iron and steel in small backyard blast furnaces.
-The Great Leap forward made a big farm communities called peoples comunes.
-Single people lived in dormitories, meals were served in mess halls, and kids were cared for in nurseries while their parents worked long hours in the fields and factories.
-As many as 20 million people starved to death between 1958-1960.
-Communes were ordered to make steel
-The steel was useless because it would break and wouldn't last because they made the steel in their backyards by themselves and using metal they could find, when it should be made in a factory where it can be made to be durable and more useful.
-The comunes saying that you can produce this much food and exaggerating about the amount is a problem because the government will say well that's to much and take out a cut of the food and it is too much because they were lying about how much food they grew.
-The peasants were not being fed and starving because the comunes did not have enough food for them and also because the government would take away the comunes food and it would be too much because of the exaggerations and the peasants would starve which created the Great Famine.

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