Failures (meeting targets)

What allowed S to claim the plan was overfulfilled?

Large scale fraud on the par of local administrators

What happened to local party officials who failed to meet their production targets?

Demoted, sacked or in some cases put on trial and executed as enemies of the state

What did many local administrators have to do as they were under enormous pressure?

Lied about numbers of raw materials they were able to produce, creating the impression that targets had been exceeded

What actually happened?

Few production targets were achieved

What did centrally created targets do?

Caused problems in production because the targets related only to the quantity of production, local administrators were unconcerned about the quality of their work

What happened to a large proportion of materials produced?

Of such low quality that they were effectively useless

What happened due to the focus being on production rather than consumption?

The raw materials that were produced were never used and were allowed to decay