Interpreting Charts Which grain industry was most affected during the Great Leap

Forward? What happened to its production during this period?

The Great Leap Forward is the name given to an economic policy launched by Mao Zedong and implemented from 1958 to 1960. Mao wanted to give China a new political orientation. This campaign, which mobilized the entire population through propaganda and coercion, aimed to stimulate production in record time by the collectivization of agriculture (specially of rice and wheat), the expansion of industrial infrastructure and the realization of large-scale public works. This unrealistic program turned out to be a fiasco, with China barely escaping the complete collapse of its economy.

The great famine, which raged between 1958 and 1962 as a result of this policy, had long been hidden, so much so that specialists doubted its very existence, in a context of the Cold War where rumors could have been raised by the opposing bloc. It was confirmed only after demographers were able to access population statistics after China's opening policy in 1979. They concluded that there had been a death surplus of 28 million people for the period between 1958 and 1961. Current estimates vary between 30 and 55 million Chinese dead.