Successes and Failures of the 2nd Five Year Plan

When did the responsibility for economic planning move from the state to the party?

February 1958

Mao’s reasons for launching the plan

Economic? What approach did Conservatives want versus radicals?

• Industrialisation depended on agriculture becoming more productive and efficient in order to feed the industrial work force.

• Conservatives wanted a ‘carrot’ approach of rewarding high food producers with material incentives while radical hardliners preferred the ‘stick’ approach of punishing low producers or requisitioning food

• 70% of the party members were peasants so Mao did not want to use the stick approach but the industry was not yet producing larger amounts of consumer goods to offer peasants for the carrot approach

Mao’s reasons for launching the plan

Personal

Mao was very confident due to collectivisation being achieved more rapidly than expected, the success of the water conservancy schemes and his provincial tour of early 1958 being enthusiastically received.

This helped to convince Mao that more ambitious schemes could be possible.

Mao’s reasons for launching the plan

Political and ideological

• Politically Mao had just returned from Moscow determined to show the Soviet Union he could act independently of them

• Ideologically the plan’s reliance on mass peasant mobilisation fitted in with Mao’s thinking

Positives of the 2nd Five-Year Plan

• Massive irrigation terracing helped make agricultural land more fertile

• Construction projects helped to change the face of Chinese Cities

• Tiananmen Square was remodelled into a modern urban space

Negatives of the 2nd Five-Year Plan

• By 1962, China was only producing half the amount of heavy industrial goods and ¾ the amount of light industrial goods that were being made in 1958

• Quality control was particularly inadequate which caused major problems with export orders which had to be replaced when complaints about substandard goods threatened to ruin China’s reputation as a trading partner