Question

How did China’s Great Leap Forward and the Four Modernizations differ?

Answer 1

Basically, the Great Leap Forward was a disaster for the Chinese economy while the Four Modernizations which occurred later are among the core reasons for their economy doing so well today.

The Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s was intended to throw China's economy into overdrive by Chairman Mao. He said the country should focus on farming and industrial manufacturing, two things be believed would provide the synergy needed for China to become a superpower. The intention was good and the people believed in what he was doing. However, the price for this economic rush job would be extremely high. It's not as simple as flipping a switch in turning a country that had long been behind the rest of the world in terms of infrastructure and economic strength into a superstar overnight.

For farming, it focused on re-organizing communities into communes where farmers and soldiers would work hand-in-hand in the fields. Ideally, these collectives would spread throughout China to feed the workers that would toil away in the factories to build things that the nation needed. Unfortunately, this also meant that a lot of people were forced to give up their farms to whatever 'collective' needed it and if they protested, they were branded as politically unsound. People who weren't farmers, such as those who might have been musicians and artists, were forced to be farmers or face rehabilitation. It didn't matter.

Manufacturing-wise, it was a disaster. Factories couldn't be built fast enough and a number of those that were turned out sub-par equipment. "Backyard" foundries churned out poor metal used in building machinery. Local political leaders rushed to meet the extreme goals of the Great Leap Forward, often to the detriment of the farms by focusing everything on manufacturing which led to other problems.

The weather also conspired against the Great Leap Forward with flooding and droughts causing severe damage to the crops and causing starvation. Famine was a problem as in some areas, so much manpower was dedicated to manufacturing that few were actually left to harvest the fields.

In the end, the Great Leap Forward had been acknowledged as a failure even by Chairman Mao. It led to countless deaths in the starvation, imprisonment of 'undesirables', and the rushed and wasted efforts of trying to shoehorn China into the 21st century by force.

The Four Modernizations, on the other hand, were pushed by Deng Xiaopeng in the 70s, though the ideas were around since the late sixties. After Mao Zedong died and Deng Xiaopeng, more or less, took power without actually being Chairman himself, he pushed his agenda for the Four Modernizations. This effort was named after the four sectors that Xiaopeng focused on - agriculture, the military, science and technology, and industry. Instead of a class struggle as the Great Leap Forward had often used to get its way, it was pushed as a collective "team" effort of having the whole nation contribute to these together. Programs, such as a massive emphasis on education, were launched and expanded to help meet these needs.

Deng Xiaopeng also slowly opened China's economy up to the world inviting foreign investment, allowing for a degree of privatization, and loosening certain restrictions to strengthen the economy. Over many years, China emerged from the relatively backwards state that its infrastructure had languished in as its economic engine accelerated into the 21st century. Instead of making it a confrontational case as it was in the Great Leap, Deng Xiaopeng's approach worked towards cooperative ventures acknowledging the need to join a global community ending China's relative economic isolation.

You can pretty much see the results today in nearly everything you have from the iPhone to the clothes you wear - most of which now come from modern, Chinese plants and shipped over to wherever they are needed in the world. While the Four Modernizations also have their own critics and problems at home, no one can really question the lasting effectiveness of this approach over that of the ill-fated Great Leap Forward.