When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death.

It is better to let half the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.

Mao Zedung.

In 1958, Chairman Mao Zedung had grandiose plans to bring China out of its rudimentary economy

and form her into an industrialized paradise. The West was far ahead of China economically and no cost

was too high to catch up with the Western world. His plans were to be accomplished in a mere

15 years.

This plan was known as the Great Leap Forward.

The Chinese propaganda machine began its work

to bring about its desired revolution.

They began with farming.

It started with the confiscation of farmland

from landowners.

The peasant classes were unleashed

with absolute confidence in their historically self-perceived

victimhood from wealthy landowners. There was a peasant revolution of sorts that

aided the government's work of confiscation so it could be redistributed to its

peasants. The methods of the government-backed peasants were brutal and led to the

execution of one million landowners.

Things started off well enough for the peasants after receiving farm land and the redistribution

from the government. In the first two years they had enough to eat and the state took only a reasonable amount of grain and taxes for use of the land.

During these first few years the peasants were doing so well that they offered tithes and offerings to Chairman Mao.

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