ENRICH THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD


The first part of Wild Swans takes place during one of Mao’s largest campaigns, the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961). This agricultural campaign encouraged the rural communities all over China to produce more food than ever, and give up much of that food to the state granaries and food banks. The pressure to produce massive amounts of food to fulfill government quotas ultimately led to a national famine, which claimed the lives of many Chinese.


To launch the Great Leap Forward, Mao whipped up a fever of expectation all over China that amounted to mass hysteria. Mao the infallible, the ‘great leader,’ the ‘brilliant Marxist,’ the outstanding thinker and genius, promised


that he would create heaven on earth… The nation’s poets, writers, journalists and scientists, and the entire Communist Party, joined him in proclaiming that Utopia is at hand. Out of China, the land of famine, he would make China, the land of abundance. The Chinese would have so much food they would not know what to do with it, and people would live a life of leisure, working only a few hours a day… In fact, [Mao] promised that within a year food production would double or treble.


In the belief that China was awash with food, everyone in the autumn of 1958 was encouraged to eat as much as they wanted, and for free. In Jiangsu province the slogan was “Eat as much as you can and exert your utmost in production.”


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