I personally wrote these essays in my final NSC History exams and recieved a distinction. The have all been checked, edited, and perfected over the course of my matric year.
This essay answers the question:
“The implementation of Mao Zeodong’s policies like the Great Leap Forward and the Cult...
“The implementation of Moa Zeodong’s policies like the Great Leap Forward
and the Cultural Revolution was a dismal failure.”
Do you agree with this statement? Use relevant evidence from 1958 to 1969 to
support your line of argument.
One would fully agree that Moa Zedong’s policies’ such as the Great Leap Forward
in 1958 and the Cultural Revolution in mid 1966 were both complete failures.
They added nothing to the value of China but rather threw the country into a
state of famine, chaos, and propaganda, and were rather used as a tool for Moa
Zeodong to regain his political control rather than to uplift China.
Moa Zedong first brought about the official start of communism with his 3 Five-
Year Plans starting in 1953. His goal was to turn China into a "strong, modern
industrial communist state.” His second plan however was known as the “Great
Leap Forward” which was enforced in 1958-1962. It is said to be the “Maoist
response to the consequences of early industrialization”. The idea behind this was
that China could achieve a leap forward with technology and production without
having to go through an Industrial Revolution, and rather use individual
manpower instead of capital equipment to increase economic production.
One small-scale industrial development that was used during the Great Leap
forward was the "backyard steel furnaces” that peasants were urged to make to
create a rapid industrialization. Fifty million people were in iron and steel
production in over 600,000 backyard steel furnaces, all of which was a complete
disaster. Huge pressure was put on peasants to meet these steel quotas as
punishments, such as death, were implemented. Thus many peasants melted
down any available scrap metal, including farming equipment. The steel created
was often unusable due to the poor quality of the raw materials used. On top of
this, the destruction of steel every day and farming tools had decreased the
quality of living as well as the degrading the ability to effectively mine and farm.
The peasants had also abandoned their crops in order to focus their attention and
resources on these furnaces, and China’s crops were left to rot. Added to this, the
deforestation of trees for coal for furnaces left the soil more susceptible to
droughts and floods, which also devastated food and income sources. This
brought about food shortages with strict rationing and ultimately brought a
famine where 30 million peasants died of starvation and other related diseases.
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