"If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience." - Mao Zedong |
Five Year Plan of Starvation
During Mao Zedong's reign, the Chinese people hugely respected Chairman Mao for the way that his socialist policies improved the welfare of the Chinese people. By slashing the level of poverty and hunger in China and providing free health care and education. But soon people began to undermine his reputation after Great Leap Forward that began in 1958. Since his reign had been very successful during the years of 1955 and 1956 and the plentiful harvest of 1957, Mao announced a five year plan to the People's Commune in 1958 called The Great Leap Forward was a plan to massively increase both agricultural and industrial production in China. Mao continually increased the agricultural production quotas due to the early bountiful yield of crops. The bountiful crops from years before were produced from pre-Maoist agricultural methods, the farming method imposed by Mao. The five-year program, which only lasted three years ended in utter catastrophe, inducing a famine that produced the deaths of 45 Million.
Propaganda of Production
The man-made famine was a result of Chairman Mao and his commissars implementing policies based on their ignorant idea of farm production. Mao was under the false impression that nature could be run in a independent fashion. As a result, Mao Zedong had implemented a communist style of propaganda similar to the ones during the Holocaust. An example would be a poster stating that: "Mobilize the Whole Party. Creating a big way for the popularization of agriculture. Creating success in Agriculture." These types of propaganda slogans is a way that lead the Chinese people into following the plans of the Great Leap Forward, leading into a man made famine that followed.