8. When Trying to Force Progress Backfires
In the late 1950s, China was in desperate need of rapid and massive industrialization. Other countries had industrialized gradually, by accumulating capital and buying heavy machinery. However, China had neither the time nor the money. Its population was rapidly outstripping the available resources, and it was too poor to accumulate enough capital anytime soon for the massive industrialization necessary.
So Mao Zedong and his communist acolytes hit upon the idea of industrializing China by mobilizing the country’s vast population. They would use labor-intensive means of industrialization that emphasized manpower, of which China had plenty, instead of machinery and industrial plants, of which China had little. Thus was born the Great Leap Forward in 1958, a revolutionary campaign to rapidly transform China from an agrarian economy into an industrial giant. Unfortunately for the Chinese, Mao’s understanding of economics turned out to be faulty, and his expectations turned out to be wildly unrealistic.