Social

• 30% of land redistributed more fairly

• Primary school and university attendance grew by 100% and 200% respectively

• Mao introduces reforms against buying wives and betrothal

• Strict agricultural conditions met with bad weather resulted in Famine of 1958

Political

• 2-3% of the population made members of the party

• Hundred Flowers Campaign encouraged public opinion on the party and allowed Mao to coax out enemies whom he then repressed and following the policy public opinion was heavily repressed

• 500-800k of the former ruling party, Kuomintang nationalists, killed

• Workers given power to challenge their bosses

• Finance and economics sectors purged on suspicion of corruption

Great Leap Forward

• Mao aimed to become a major industrial power and so peasants were pushed into agricultural communes and workers pushed into factories to up the production

• Poor weather led to bad harvests which brought a famine that killed around 20 million people

• Black market and theft was commonplace