of culture and science and thus not overly reliant on a

Last updated: 10/29/2023

of culture and science and thus not overly reliant on a technological lite Several CCP leaders were also aware that the problems of under employment in rural areas which had led to peasants moving into towns and so causing unemployment in the cities had not been fully solved by the First Five Year Plan Mao s aim was to turn China into a modern industrial and fully socialist state in a very short time Although the draft Second Five Year Plan was never formally abandoned this is what in practice happened Instead the Great Leap Forward became the new Second Five Year Plan Yet it soon became clear that this Great Leap Forward had no clearly drawn up blueprints for how this transformation was to be achieved in practice Revolutionary romanticism However in order to achieve this transformation Mao did not think merely in terms of financial investments and raw materials he also saw the right political attitudes and determination as crucial Voluntarism and revolutionary utopianism were strong strands within what became known as Maoism The planners began to speak about General Grain and General Steel these two would bring about the changes Mao and his supporters wanted What counted it was said was not so much skill as enthusiasm and commitment People were to be enthused by slogans such as more faster better and cheaper In fact as early as May 1956 Mao had made a speech On the Ten Great Relationships in which he stated his aim of distancing China from the Soviet Union by abandoning the centralised Soviet development model of concentrating on industry Mao began to argue for rapid industrial and agricultural growth via a mass campaign Instead of basing this on greater levels of capital expenditure Mao believed that China s huge population could be harnessed to achieve the necessary surplus funds required for rapid development necessary for For instance as China lacked sufficient mechanical diggers it would be many construction projects such as dams to be built with simple tools and labour intensive manual labour In many respects Mao argued that China s under development and relative poverty would enable it to make this Great Leap Forward His revolutionary romanticism placed great emphasis on revolutionary enthusiasm and called for a concentration on agriculture light industry and small scale induci ponital investment