Successes & Failures of the Second Five-Year Plan

Question 1

Successes of the Second Five-Year Plan:

Was the Great Leap Forward successful?

Answer 1

Very few successes

Question 2

Successes of the Second Five-Year Plan:

Where was there some success?

Answer 2

Some small-scale irrigation projects were of value

Increase in the production of some raw materials: steel, oil

Question 3

Successes of the Second Five-Year Plan:

Tiananmen Square, Beijing

Answer 3

Remodelled: ancient buildings levelled, modern new buildings erected

Propaganda success: Mao demanded it be bigger than Red Square

Question 4

Successes of the Second Five-Year Plan:

Ideologically

Answer 4

Private property banned
Peasants lived communally (sharing food halls, parenting responsibilities)
Couldn’t own private property

Chinese Society did resemble Communism more closely than before

Question 5

Failures of the Second Five-Year Plan:

Was it a failure?

Answer 5

S
P
E
C
T
A
C
U
L
A
R
L
Y

Question 6

Failures of the Second Five-Year Plan:

Targets

Answer 6

Mao set targets that were COMPLETELY UNREALISTIC— millions:

a) worked to death
b) died of starvation

Question 7

Failures of the Second Five-Year Plan:

Mass mobilisation

Answer 7

His belief that it could overcome any economic reality: hopelessly optimistic
BUT
He purged his enemies: no one left who would dare challenge him openly.

Question 8

Failures of the Second Five-Year Plan:

Huge projects

Answer 8

(ie. Three-Gate Gorge dam over the Yellow River)

So BADLY PLANNED:
- caused environmental damage that made farming more difficult

Foreign visitors banned from seeing it (spread unfavourable rumours at home)

Question 9

Failures of the Second Five-Year Plan:

Backyard furnaces/ raw materials

Answer 9

Desperate to increase steel production
Demanded people build home-made “backyard furnaces”

Factories had to close for lack of raw materials

By 1962, industrial production had declined by 40% from 1958-59 level

Question 10

Backyard furnaces?

Answer 10

Making home-made furnaces was one way, Mao believed, to increase steel production.

Party cadres (desperate to meet targets) demanded peasants work around the clock to keep the furnaces working.

Normal fuel used up? Compelled to put cooking implements: woks, chairs, tables, doors, roofs into furnaces

Steel produced was of such poor quality that it was useless; crops rigged in the fields whilst peasants tended the furnaces

Many died of malnutrition/exhaustion