The Party adopts “adjustment, consolidation, filling gaps and raising standards”

A resolution promoted large communes combining administration, production and social services. Communes could coordinate irrigation, infrastructure and rural industry, but they also enabled the...

A follow-up resolution addressed problems emerging from the rapid formation of communes and clarified their economic organization. The need for correction reflected the gap between the Great Leap’s...

Senior leaders met to discuss economic conditions and the Great Leap. Peng Dehuai’s criticism of exaggerated claims and rural hardship was treated as a political challenge, and he was purged. The...

The Great Leap famine began amid collapsing harvests, labor dislocation, exaggerated reports and state procurement that left many rural communities without adequate food. Estimates of excess deaths...

Moscow notified Beijing that Soviet specialists would be recalled, disrupting projects, industrial schedules and technical cooperation. The split compounded an already severe economic crisis after the...

From 15 to 23 March, a central work conference discussed and adopted draft commune regulations, later known as the “Sixty Articles for Agriculture.” The revisions strengthened the production team as...

A set of nine measures sought to reduce the urban population and cut grain sales in cities. Millions of people were transferred or returned to rural areas as the state struggled to match food supply...

The large national conference assessed the economic catastrophe and called for practical correction. Liu Shaoqi’s frank acknowledgment of the crisis represented a rare moment of high-level openness....

Zhou presented modernization goals in agriculture, industry, national defense, and science and technology to the National People’s Congress. The program aimed to make China a technologically capable...

Li Fuchun, Bo Yibo and Luo Ruiqing submitted proposals for strategic industrial construction in China’s interior, following Mao’s August 12 instruction to study how economic infrastructure could...