10. The Great Leap Forward’s DIY Home Steel Furnaces
A hallmark of the Great Leap Forward was Mao’s brainstorming about increasing steel production, a benchmark of industrialization. Mao figured that China did not need to wait for the development of infrastructures such as steel plants, or the training of a skilled workforce.
Instead, the intrepid Chinese could produce steel by using blast furnaces in the back of their communes – literal do-it-yourself backyard furnaces. People used whatever fuel they could get their hands on to power the furnaces, from coal to wooden furniture to the wood of coffins. When they lacked iron ore, they melted whatever steel objects they could find to produce steel girders. The results were less than what Mao had hoped.