second five year plan 1958-62

When was it introduced?

The Second Five-Year Plan formed part of the Great Leap Forward, which was announced at the Eighth CCP Congress in May 1958.

What was introduced under the plan?

• While agriculture was to be modernised by the development of the People's Communes, ambitious new targets for industrial growth were to be pursued at the same time

• Mao called this' the Great Leap' because he was impatient at the relatively slow pace of economic progress made so far

• He now wanted China to become a modern industrial power without bothering to go through the normal phases of development that other leading powers had experienced

The movement of responsibility for economic planning

In February, the responsibility for economic planning had been moved from the state to the Party Instead

the organisational details were often left to the initiative of local cadres, and direction from above came in the form of slogans urging people on to greater efforts, mixed with threats against those who did not pull their weight

Targets were constantly being revised upwards, sometimes by Mao himself, sometimes from below, by keen officials trying to create a good impression.

Mao's reasons for launching it: economic

• industrialisation depended on agriculture becoming more productive and efficient in order to feed the industrial workforce, this would free up peasants, who would migrate to the cities to become urban workers themselves

• The speed with which farming had been collectivised and the encouraging early signs from the new People's Communes seemed to indicate that agriculture was progressing sufficiently rapidly by 1958 to encourage Mao to accelerate the demands on industry

• However, it was not as simple as that, because there was still a vigorous debate going on between conservatives and radicals in the Party

• Conservatives, like Zhou Enlai and Chen Yun, advocated a 'carrot' approach of rewarding high food producers with material incentives (in the form of more consumer goods and higher food prices), while radical hardliners called for punitive measures against low producers and the requisitioning of food (the 'stick')

• Mao initially considered this latter approach too risky, given that 70 percent of Party members were peasants

• Yet the problem with the cautious approach was that industry was not yet producing large amounts of consumer goods to offer the peasants, and the state simply could not afford to pay generous prices for the food

• It would therefore be wrong to see the launch of the Great Leap as purely the result of rational economic logic, because the arguments about the best way forward had not yet been won

Mao's reasons for launching it: personal

Mao's confidence was at a high: collectivisation had been achieved more rapidly than expected, there had been an impressive burst of activity on water conservancy schemes during the winter of 1957-58, and his provincial tour of early 1958 had been enthusiastically received.

Anxious to prove their credentials against the backdrop of the latest anti-rightist campaign, local cadres were eager to demonstrate the revolutionary fervour of the peasants in their locality, all of which helped to convince Mao that more ambitious schemes would be possible.

Mao's reasons for launching it: political

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

By moving from socialism to communism along the 'Chinese road, rather than following the Russian model, Mao hoped to demonstrate his credentials as the next leader of the communist world

The Great Leap Forward, with its commitment to developing industry and agriculture simultaneously, while also mobilising the peasantry en masse on construction projects, would do just that.

Mao's reasons for launching it: ideologically

the plan's reliance on mass peasant mobilisation fitted in with Mao's thinking, and the greater degree of decentralisation, compared to the first plan, gave more scope for local initiative to thrive, which also satisfied Mao's ideological preferences.

How the plan worked: backyard furnaces: why

• The chief method by which industry was to leap forward' was by the production of as much steel as possible, wherever possible

• Mao had already announced in the autumn of 1957 that steel production would quadruple inside the next four years, to reach 20 million tonnes per annum, a figure he proceeded to double as soon as he got back from Moscow at the end of the year

• Buoyed up by the apparent success of the water conservancy campaign of the previous winter, in which 100 million peasants had been involved in digging reservoirs and canals with minimal equipment, Mao hit on the idea of increasing steel production in a similar fashion. Every family was urged to construct their own backyard furnace and melt down their metal objects to produce 'steel'

How the plan worked: backyard furnaces: steel target

• The steel target for 1958 was raised from six to eight million tonnes at the Party Congress in May, and then again to 10.7 million tonnes in September

• Once it became clear that these targets could not be met by the existing conventional steel plants, Mao ordered the launch of the backyard furnace campaign

How the plan worked: backyard furnaces: outcome

• it became a national movement immediately

• In practically every town and village, people got involved, to such an extent that the night sky was turned red by the fires of so many improvised kilns, and by day smoke blotted out the sun

• In September 1958, 14 percent of China's steel came from local furnaces, but by October it was 49 percent and, at its peak, it is reckoned that a quarter of the population had abandoned their normal activities in order to take part

• This put an unsustainable strain on food production, and it proved necessary to close schools and deploy peasant shock brigades, made up of anyone available, in order to get in the harvest

• At this stage, the end of 1958, the leadership still thought that the harvest would be unbelievably good, and were deluding themselves that the steel being produced would be of usable quality

• It was not until the spring of 1959 that it became apparent to the leadership that the only decent steel being produced was in the large smelting plants, and that the home-made variety was useless

• The backyard furnace campaign was cut back, but not abandoned, for fear of losing face, so peasants continued to melt down their pots, pans and other metal household objects into worthless 'steel, which was taken away by the authorities and buried out of sight

• Not only was the campaign economically damaging in deploying people on futile activity to the detriment of producing food, it also had negative ecological consequences, since it led to the destruction of vast swathes of woodland to supply fuel for the furnaces

• This, in turn, led to faster soil erosion and worse flooding, thereby increasing the need for water conservancy schemes

How the plan worked: Decentralisation

• While the central government remained very much in control in China, a key change from the First Five-Year Plan was the move to decentralise economic activity

• The idea of this was to give more freedom to local Party officials, the cadres, to harness the energies of the masses, who Mao regarded as China's greatest single asset

• Mao had become convinced that if state bureaucrats continued to control planning, it would merely hold back the pace of chang

• If China was to advance at the required speed, it would need the cadres to unleash the potential of the millions of peasants and workers who he believed were eager to participate in transforming the country

How the plan worked: State-owned enterprises

• Those enterprises that had remained initially in private hands after the Communist takeover in 1949 had been nationalised early in 1956, and were now known as state-owned enterprises (SOEs)

• Prices, output targets and wages were set by the state, and there was no longer any bargaining for better conditions between employers and workers

• While workers enjoyed guaranteed jobs and wages (the so-called iron rice bowl'), as well as certain medical and educational benefits, the system as a whole was inefficient because it removed incentives to work harder

• in a similar situation to that in the People's Communes, state control brought demotivation: whether the SOE was efficiently run or not did not matter to workers or management, since any surplus went straight to the state

Construction projects: water conservancy projects

• The term 'Great Leap Forward' was first used to describe the water conservancy projects that were launched in late 1957, and which involved millions of peasant workers by the end of that year

• Mao saw the masses as China's main asset, and argued that sheer numbers could achieve the desired result without needing access to advanced machinery

Construction projects: work brigades

In much the same way that the old emperors had built the Great Wall, work brigades were sent out from the communes to construct dams and reservoirs using only the most rudimentary equipment - shovels, baskets and carrying poles.

Construction projects: disastrous irrigation schemes

• Some of the new irrigation schemes were total disasters because they were not thought through properly beforehand

• The Three Gate Gorge Dam, designed to control the flow of the Yellow River and reduce the damage caused by silt deposits, was perhaps the most ambitious, but within a year it was being rebuilt

• By 1961, twice as much mud was being deposited downstream, and foreign visitors were banned from going near the dam

• All over China, hundreds of smaller projects were instigated, and although some were relatively successful, the cost in terms of lives lost and labour taken away from farming was colossal

• In many areas, the disruption of existing drainage patterns caused by building new irrigation systems led to an increase in salinisation, which reduced the productivity of the land

• Flood control and irrigation schemes to ease drought needed serious attention if Chinese agriculture was to become more productive, so the water conservancy schemes made theoretical sense

• However, the same cannot be said of the methods used to carry them out: expert advice (which the Soviet specialists offered) was welcomed when it speeded things up, but technical issues that threatened to cause delays were normally brushed aside

• Mao's response when doubts arose about the design of the Three Gate Gorge Dam was to write an editorial in the People's Daily newspaper, entitled What is this trash?' His main criterion for judging the success of a project was the cubic tonnage of soil that had been shifted, which helped to stimulate competition between provinces, but was hardly a true reflection of a project's worth

Successes and failures of the Second Five-Year Plan: outcome

• in terms of producing manufactured goods, the plan failed alarmingly

• By 1962, China was only producing half the amount of heavy industrial goods and three-quarters the amount of light industrial goods that were being made in 1958, at the start of the plan

• Soviet experts had provided much-needed guidance during the First Five-Year Plan, but Khrushchev withdrew them all together in 1960, when the Sino-Soviet split worsened

• Lack of clear planning lay at the heart of the plan's failure

• Mao made no secret of his own lack of scientific and technical knowledge

• He relied on intuition and assumed that the massive deployment of manpower was an adequate substitute for informed planning and direction from above

• While there were some eye-catching successes, notably the construction of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, and, in 1964, the development of nuclear weapons, the main picture was of haphazard development in which the basics were often neglected

• China continued to lack the necessary levels of technical and managerial know-how to move forward at the speed the leadership wanted, but it cut corners to fulfil targets on time

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

The Lushan Conference, July 1959: why it was called upon

The Party gathering at Lushan was officially called by Mao to assess the progress of the Great Leap Forward as it reached the end of its first year.

The conference had important consequences at both economic and political levels. As far as the economy was concerned, it meant the Great Leap Forward would continue apace. Before Lushan, there had been signs that Mao was considering moderating aspects of the Second Five-Year Plan

- for example, by reining in the development of the backyard furnaces - but afterwards, China embarked on what is called 'the second leap' and the agricultural policies, in particular, pushed on at full speed.

The Lushan Conference, July 1959: Mao’s wife

he was clearly expecting trouble, and had brought along his wife, Jiang Qing, whose influence over the Shanghai wing of the Party might prove useful.

In the event, her support was not needed, because only Peng Dehuai stood up to Mao, and he became isolated as a troublemaker when other leaders failed to endorse his revelations of the famine.

The Lushan Conference, July 1959: economic consequences

it meant the Great Leap Forward would continue apace. Before Lushan, there had been signs that Mao was considering moderating aspects of the Second Five-Year Plan

- for example, by reining in the development of the backyard furnaces - but afterwards, China embarked on what is called 'the second leap' and the agricultural policies, in particular, pushed on at full speed.

The Lushan Conference, July 1959: political consequences

Whereas beforehand it was assumed that any leading Party comrade could express their views freely at a Party conference, it had now become clear that the only person who could criticise Mao was Mao himself. Party leaders were much more guarded about their views in future, and Mao was able to become even more dictatorial in his approach.