People working amid newly built small blast furnaces in Chungwei county, China, during the Great Leap Forward.
Photo courtesy of Sovfoto—Universal Images Group/Shutterstock.com
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Mao Zedong’s second Five Year Plan (FYP) to move China into a Communist country while becoming a world leading agricultural and industrial production nation was the Great Leap Forward. However, this program led to widespread starvation and failure. While the numbers vary by country and historian, it is estimated that between 15 million and 55 million people died between 1958 and 1961. This marks the Great Leap Forward as the most deadly famine in history. Nature did play a role in this famine, however, the majority of deaths occurred due to Mao’s Great Leap Forward policies and government officials grossly exaggerated production reports.
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