Political Movement
The Great Leap Forward was initiated in 1958, after the First Five Year Plan had been declared successfully completed. One point of the Great Leap was starting to set up People's Communes in the countryside. However, the Party had optimistically over-estimated the country's productivity during the First Five Year Plan. In reality, farming activity had gone down due to the All-Canteen.
Some activists went against the Great Leap Forward movement, but they were seen as the opponents of Mao and were silenced in the purges of the following "Anti-Rightist Movement".
After the Famine, then-Chairman of the People's Republic of China Liu Shaoqi concluded that the reason for the calamity was "30% natural disaster, 70% policy". In the later Cultural Revolution, Liu was denounced as a traitor and an enemy agent going against the Three Red Banners.
Read more about this topic: Great Chinese Famine
Famous quotes containing the words political movement, political and/or movement:
“My business is stanching blood and feeding fainting men; my post the open field between the bullet and the hospital. I sometimes discuss the application of a compress or a wisp of hay under a broken limb, but not the bearing and merits of a political movement. I make gruel—not speeches; I write letters home for wounded soldiers, not political addresses.”
—Clara Barton (1821–1912)
“Circumstances ... give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
“The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)