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Photograph of children in China, 1959.

China's Great Leap Forward, 1958-1961

In an effort to transform China's agrarian economy into an industrialized communist society, the Chinese Communist Party passed the "General Line of the Great Leap Forward" on May 1958 and began the people’s commune movement and the drive to increase steel production. Ultimately a failed political campaign, the Great Leap Forward led to the deaths of millions of people across China.For other collections on China’s modern political history, see: Chinese Civil War, 1945-1950; Purges in 1950s China; China’s Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976; Reform and Opening in China, 1978-; and China, 1989.

 

Photograph of children in China, 1959.

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Excerpt from the Unedited Translation of Mao Zedong’s Speech at the Moscow Conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties

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Third Conversation of N.S. Khrushchev with Mao Zedong, August 2, 1958, in Fengziyuan

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