7 - The Great Leap Forward and the split in the Yenan leadership

Summary

AN OVERVIEW

The year 1958 began with the Chinese Communist leaders optimistic about their ability to lead the country up the path of rapid economic development and social progress. To be sure, not all Politburo members agreed on the best methods to use to accomplish these great tasks, but overall confidence was high and the degree of underlying unity clearly sufficient to enable the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to act in a consistent and decisive manner. Seven years later, deep fissures had rent this leadership to the point where Mao Tsetung himself stood on the verge of launching a devastating attack against many of the colleagues with whom he had worked for more than three decades. That attack would, in turn, launch China into a decade so tumultuous that even in the early 1980s leaders in Peking would look back to the eve of the 1958–65 era wistfully, as the time when the Party's power, prestige, and unity had reached pinnacles. The eight years between 1958 and 1965 were a period of major transition in the Chinese revolution.

To be sure, not all had gone smoothly for the Chinese Communists after 1949. There had been significant disagreement among the leaders over the pace and contours of the development effort. During 1953, for example, Finance Minister Po I-po had come under sharp criticism for advocating tax policies that would, Mao felt, slow down the development of the public sector of the economy. In 1955, Mao openly disagreed with his colleagues over the pace of the proposed collectivization of agriculture and effectively overturned the program they had adopted.