Big Push Case Study

1722 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: effects of the chinese communist revolution

Between 1949 and 1978, the Chinese government started to adopt a new inward-directed development strategy following by the Soviet Union which is called ‘ Leap Forward’ or ‘ Big Push’. This period is known as the socialist era. The aim was to channel the maximum feasible investment into heavy industry and the Chinese government can control the whole domestic economy. In order to be able to implement this strategy, a planned economic system was established between 1949 and 1956. This system enables a huge amount of capital to be invested in the heavy industry (in such economy that is characterized by scarcity of capital) and makes sure these industries would be run beneficially and practicably in the long term, even though it conflicts with the …show more content…

Under the direction of central planning, a production plan was required and needed to be approved by the State Planning Commission, a deputy department that was responsible for economic planning. In a production plan, three key elements should be included. They were labour, materials and output. After reporting the plan, the administrative bureau would issue planning targets to each state-owned industrial enterprise. For the First Lathe Factory, it received planning targets for different aspects annually, apart from the output target, which was quarterly. This central plan is a way to secure which Party and socialist ownership could completely manipulate the management. Therefore, all the decisions were made by political authorities. In the period of the Great Leap Forward was launched, the situation went worse via factories being overoptimistic and exaggeratedly set a unrealistic target for a plan. Instead of farming, farmers were asked to cut downs trees to provide fuels for steel making. Food production dramatically fell down. In the end, the results tuned out that one quarter of the targeted production fell short in a certain period. A wastage occurred. Not only the targeted production failed to reach, the people also suffered from the one of the most serious famines in the Chinese history. According to the statistics, around fifty million people died in this tragedy. Chinese now refer this era as “the three years of natural disaster”. In this case, it embodies how inexperienced and immature the central planning system was. China was aiming to take over England and America and wanting to become the world’s leading country whereas they were being too anxious. There was no realistic basis for the plan. Everyone wanted to compete with others using fake figures and directly lead to that miserable incident. After 1958, in the operation of an industrial

Show More
Related

  • Red China Blues Case Study

    1344 Words  | 3 Pages

    Following the Chinese Revolution of 1949, China’s economy was in ruin. The new leader, Mao Zedong, was responsible for pulling the economy out of the economic depression. The problems he faced included the low gross domestic product, high inflation, high unemployment, and high prices on goods. In order to solve these issues, Mao sought to follow a more Marxist model, similar to that of the Soviet Union. This was to use government intervention to develop industry in China. In Jan Wong’s Red China Blues, discusses Maoism and how Mao’s policies changed China’s economy for the worse. While some of Mao’s early domestic policies had some positive effects on China’s economy, many of his later policies caused China’s economy to regress.

    Read More

  • Max Powers Case Study

    1692 Words  | 4 Pages

    Max Powers trusted people he thought were his “best friends”, but not all friends are best friends, as Max would soon find out. Max was blinded by the fact that he recently received a will of $12.4 million, due to a skydiving accident that resulted in his parent 's death. He didn’t even realize that his previous “best friends” (Dez Tenney,Chloe Goode,Beverly Hills, Ray Leetuff) were plotting to kill him and become millionaires themselves. Max hosted a housewarming party, at his new place in a very expensive neighborhood due to the fact that he recently received $12.4 million. Max invited Dez, Chloe, Beverly, and Ray because he considered these people to be his best friends, but what he didn 't know was his so called ¨best friends¨ only accepted

    Read More

  • Famine And Human Agency Case Study

    1086 Words  | 3 Pages

    Zedong was supported in making the decision of what was known as the “Great Leap Forward”. This wild plan was aimed at making the people of China achieve economic advances in just a few years that would usually take other countries decades to accomplish. Zedong believed that in order to achieve his goals that steel production was necessary in his plans. Instead of working in areas that were not being used such as fields for example, above millions of peasants were forced to work on local deposits of iron ore and limestone, cutting down healthy trees to look for charcoal, and to have metal smelted. The result of this work did not go as planned. Steel was not produced. The only thing that was produced was pieces of brittle. These pieces of brittle were no use for even the simplest of tools. Peasants that were working on these sights were then ordered to abandon all private production in food which resulted in high reductions in

    Read More

  • Chinas soft power undermining America

    687 Words  | 2 Pages

    China has already begun strategizing for the future of its country, and there by the longevity of the Communist Party of China. The four pillar axioms outlined by the CPC: “avoid conflict, primarily with the United States; build a comprehensive national power; advance incrementally in order to consolidate a position of strength; and maintain stability, defend sovereignty, achieve pre-eminence, and pursue parity,”22 are designed to ensure a steady flow of raw goods into the country, and will assist China in the deterrence of other states and maintain regional stability.

    Read More

  • Cultural Impact Of The May Fourth Movement

    1258 Words  | 3 Pages

    The technological modernization for China occurred on May 4th, 1919 known as the May Fourth Movement. During this uprising, a group of Chinese students protested the Chinese government for their weak response to the Treaty of Versailles. At the same time the citizens were arguing to the government on how the Japanese are annexing parts of northern China. According to the Asian Literature Article, “China had a weak and unstable government, torn by internal dissent. There was much chaos and uncertainty about the country’s future. Chinas reputation was declining on the international scene.” (The Cultural Impact of the May Fourth Movement 2014) What the article is trying to say is that throughout the years after the movement the government was

    Read More

  • The Effects Of Western Imperialism In China

    912 Words  | 2 Pages

    ... production numbers by twenty-five percent (Dietrich, 85) Mao's did gain state control of grain but the production did not rise to his expectations. In other words the state procured about eighty percent of the produced grain while actual production only rose between 1-2 percent. This fault correlates to the mutual aid teams which were played a key role during the Five Year Plan. In order to collectivize, and lean more towards socialist and Marxist ideologies, mutual aid teams put together small farming villages that were supposed to develop into one hundred to three hundred households. In this case, peasants would share tools, land, and work collectively and more efficiently. The collectivization during the Five Year Plan had the adverse effect. There was peasant resistance and poor harvest while the expectation was to raise agricultural production by a fourth.

    Read More

  • Chinese Economic Reform: The Late 1970's to Present

    3283 Words  | 7 Pages

    In States vs. Markets, Herman Schwartz presents two economic development strategies that have been employed by late industrial developers in order to either take advantage of existing comparative advantages or facilitate rapid industrial growth through state intervention and provision in order to gain a competitive foothold in world markets. Schwartz demonstrates how China was able to employ elements of these development strategies to generate capital from an abundant rural labour supply in order to pursue industrial development and attract foreign investment through economic reform starting in the late 1970's.

    Read More

  • The Future Of Currency

    3255 Words  | 7 Pages

    China's capitalism and boom was born when their president, Deng Xiaoping permitted the provinces to dismantle their communes and collective farms. This led China to venture into free-market economics, although they were still under the communist political system. When President Deng announced that they needed Western money and expertise, China flung their trade doors wide open and China went on a capitalist drive without ever looking back. By mid 1960's, the Chinese Revolution settled down to the job of ruling China. Its main goal was essentially nationalist: a prosperous modern economy. While there continued to exist substantially economic inequalities, distribution of wealth was probably a bit more equal than in most Western countries.

    Read More

  • Challenges and Development of Nspresso in China

    1937 Words  | 4 Pages

    With the development of China, the economy of China has become the World’s second largest after the US. On the other hand, the ...

    Read More

  • The Impact of the Industrial Revolution on Warfare

    1359 Words  | 3 Pages

    Industrial Revolution, which took place over much of the nineteenth century, had many advantages. It provided people with tools for a better life; people were no longer dependent on the land for all of their goods. The Industrial Revolution made it possible for people to control nature more than they ever had before. However, now people were dependent on the new machines of the Industrial Age (1). The Revolution brought with it radical changes in the textile and engine worlds; it was a time of reason and innovations. Although it was a time of progress, there were drawbacks to the headway made in the Industrial Revolution. Granted, it provided solutions to the problems of a world without industry. However, it also created problems with its mechanized inventions that provided new ways of killing. Ironically, there was much public faith in these innovations; however, these were the same inventions that killed so many and contributed to a massive loss of faith. These new inventions made their debut in the first world war (2) ).

    Read More

  • The Great Leap Forward was a Setback for China

    1209 Words  | 3 Pages

    Today’s China is perceived as an economic powerhouse and a seriousl player in Asia and more broadly in the international arena. However, China’s path to both economic and political prominence has been long and tortuous.The Great Leap Forward was an attempt to modernize China economy so that by 1988, China would have an economy that rivaled America. The “Great Leap Forward” was a setback to China instead of an economy booster. The main reason this atrocity occurred was the advancement of China economy. The ‘‘Civil War’’ generated economic devastation. It also displaced the majority of Chinese people from their residency into a series of communes. Political decisions/beliefs took precedence over common sense and communes faced the task of doing things which they were incapable of achieving. Party officials would order the impossible and commune leaders, who knew what their commune was capable of doing or not, could be charged with being a "bourgeois reactionary" if he complained. Such a charge would lead to prison. Peasants were a huge part of this major atrocity and they were treated poorly. Food was scarce and declined rapidly during the “Great Leap Forward”." The Great Leap Forward was aimed at accomplishing the economic and technical development of the country at a vastly faster pace and with greater results. People did anything and everything to survive. The Great Leap Forward is one of the biggest genocides to date 20 to 30 million people died. My project is on my opinion of how I feel about the great leap forward in my own words.

    Read More

  • Foreign Trade with China

    2820 Words  | 6 Pages

    From the 1970s, there has been a wave of liberalization in China, which was introduced by Deng Xiaoping. This is one of the key reasons to the rise of China to be one of the economic giants in the world. In the last 25 years of the century, the Chinese economy has had massive economic growth, which has been 9.5 percent on a yearly basis. This has been of great significance of the country since it quadrupled the gross domestic product (GDP) of the country thus leading to saving of 400 million of their citizens from the threats of poverty. In the late 1970s, China was ranked twentieth in terms of trade volumes in the whole world as well as being predicted to be the world’s top nation concerning trading activities (Kaplan, 53). This further predicted the country to record the highest GDP growth in the whole world.

    Read More

  • China's Development

    1177 Words  | 3 Pages

    When the new Chinese Government was set up in 1949, the new government faced a lot of problems. First on their agenda was how to re-build the country. As Communist Party of China (CPC) is a socialist party, their policies at the time were similar to that of the Soviet Union’s. Consequently, the CPC used a centrally planned strategy as its economic strategy when it first began. For a long time, the Chinese economy was a centrally planned economy in which none other than the state owned all companies. In fact, there were absolutely no entrepreneurs. As time went on, the problems of a centrally planned economy started to appear, such as low productivity, which was the key reason for restricting the development of China. With the population growing, the limitations of the centrally planned economy were clear. In 1978 China started its economic reform whose goal was to generate sufficient surplus value to finance the modernization of the Chinese economy. In the beginning, in the late 1970s and early 19...

    Read More

  • Comparing China and Russia's Approach to Change

    897 Words  | 2 Pages

    China and Russia's approach to change are vastly different, almost like night and day. China's political and economic policy has always been to do things gradually. Whereas Russia believed in going through the necessary changes quickly, so that the hardship would in turn pass just as quickly. In the implementation of their policies, we have seen that China's approach has led to a 29% of growth in their industrial field. But in comparison, Russia only yielded 15% with their approach. But one must keep in mind that China has more industrial sectors than does Russia, so their job in improving industry is notably easier than Russia's feat in developing an industry.

    Read More

  • Modernization Theory by Seymour Lipset

    2277 Words  | 5 Pages

    Having thrown open its doors to capitalist investment and expanded at a miraculous rate over the past three decades, China has now surpassed Japan to become the second biggest economy in the world. Since the early 1980s, China's economy has metamorphosed from a centrally planned syst...

    Read More

More about Big Push Case Study

Open Document