Failed industrialization campaign undertaken by the Chinese Communists between 1958 and early 1960.
Mao Zedong hoped to develop labor-intensive methods of industrialization that would emphasize manpower rather than the gradual purchase of heavy machinery, thereby putting to use China's dense population and obviating the need to accumulate capital. Rather than large new factories, he proposed developing backyard steel furnaces in every village. Rural people were organized into communes where agricultural and political decisions emphasized ideological purity rather than expertise. The program was implemented so hastily and zealously that many errors occurred; these were exacerbated by a series of natural disasters and the withdrawal of Soviet technical personnel. China's agriculture was so disrupted that about 20 million people died of starvation from 1958 to 1962. By early 1960 the government began to repeal the Great Leap Forward; private plots were returned to peasants and expertise began to be emphasized again.