Question

How did the world respond to the Great Leap Forward?

Answer 1

The Western world feared the spread of Communism and was unhappy about China closing it's borders to trade in an effort to become more self-sufficient.

Answer 2

As a whole, there wasn't much of one because China kept a lid on it. China was a closed country in those years, isolated from the rest of the world by its own government.

It was only decades afterwards that more of the truth came out, though even a few of the figures scholars had uncovered are suspected to be on the low side.

The reason is that even today, there are still topics considered taboo in public conversation in China due to political reasons (mostly to protect the legacy of Mao Zedong and the reputation of the CCP), although there is a greater admission on the severity of the famine caused by it. Yet even then, the CCP still calls the shots on what is permissible.

For example, a Chinese scholar had recently put together a multi-volume work talking about the famine caused by the Great Leap Forward which is available in Hong Kong...but you'll never find it for sale in mainland China.

Answer 3

Well, it seemed a little credible. China was pretty mysterious, and it fit in with Western prejudice to imagine Chinese peasants could be reprogammed like billions of robots to serve Mao's sacred vision. We didn't hear about the millions starved and murdered until later. I had a friend who was a kid in China during the Great Leap Forward. If he could resurrect Mao and cut his throat personally, he would.

Answer 4

It's worth noting that relations between the USSR and PRC were severely strained at the time, and the US and USSR were deeply involved in their own danse macabre -- Berlin, Cuba, Francis Gary Powers, the ICBM race -- and inasmuch as the Great Leap Forward involved China turning inward, the other great powers were just as happy to not have to worry about what the Chinese were up to internationally for a while.

Certainly even today there is still more sympathy for and understanding of the victims of Stalin's purges and forced starvation than Mao's. For that matter, that kind of thing still goes on in China, whereas it no longer does in Russia. (If you starve now, it's more the result of incompetence than malevolence on the part of Moscow.)