• The Great Leap Forward was a five-year economic plan implemented by Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party, started in 1958 and canceled in 1961.

  • The goal was to modernize the country’s agricultural sector using communist economic ideologies.
  • Instead of stimulating the country’s economy, the “Great Leap Forward” led to mass starvation and starvation.
  • It is estimated that between 30 and 45 million Chinese citizens died from starvation, executions and forced labor, as well as massive economic and environmental destruction.
  • The Great Leap Forward remains the largest non-war massacre in human history and a prime example of the failure of socialism and economic central planning.