Economic Aftermath of the Great Leap in Communist China

Under the new program, production targets for many commodities were repeatedly adjusted upward, and maximum pressure was applied on production units to achieve assigned output quotas by whatever means necessary. Another salient feature of the Great Leap movement was a greater emphasis on indigenous methods of production and labor-intensive investment projects. This policy, officially called walking with two legs, represented a sharp departure from previous development strategy which had stressed only modern production techniques and large-scale investment projects. The technical dualism introduced in 1958 was based on the assumption that native and small plants require less capital and a shorter construction period and that such plants can make use of local resources and labor that might otherwise be unemployed. These arguments were even more persuasive because of the discontinuation of Soviet loans which led to restraints on the importation of modern equipment for the ambitious economic development plans. Theoretically, the technical dualism envisaged by the Great Leap program is not inherently unreasonable. In a country like Communist China, the rate of economic growth could be maximized, assuming a fixed amount of investment, by developing laborintensive production. Misallocation of resources would occur only if this strategy were carried too far and conducted in a chaotic fashion. The Great Leap movement, lasting about two years, was abandoned in 1960 after the country had been afflicted by a prolonged and serious agrarian crisis. The economic situation made continued industrial expansion impossible. The most obvious consequence of the Great Leap was the enormous waste involved. Indigenous production methods often proved either too costly in comparison with their counterparts in the modern sector or capable of producing only low quality goods. A large number of the backyard furnaces hastily built in 1958 dissolved into piles of mud and brick after a few rains. Others were given up by the local authorities because of prohibitively high operation costs. Only a small portion of the indigenous blast furnaces survived and then only after some renovation. Similar situations prevailed in other industries, such as the small coal pits utilizing primitive methods of production that had been opened in 1958. Another serious form of wastage was created as a result of inter

China · Communism · Development economics · Economic reform · Economic system · Economics · Political science · Politics · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Chinese history and philosophy · Geochemistry and Geochronology of Asian Mineral Deposits · Law · Post-Communist Economic and Political Transition

• The Political Economics of Population Growth

  Open Access•Pi-Chao Chen•World Politics•1971

  Añadir item

• The Statistical System of Communist China

  Choh-Ming Li•Statistical System of Communist…•1962

  Añadir item