In 1958, the People's Republic of China instituted its second five-year plan since the revolution.

Its goal was to rapidly modernize China and boost agricultural and industrial output to levels comparable to the Western world.

China was going to become a modern country, not through the widespread adoption of machinery, but through the mass mobilization of labor.

It didn't work. Not only didn't it work, but it the mass mobilization of labor. It didn't work.

Not only didn't it work, but it was one of the greatest failures in world history.

Learn more about the Great Leap Forward, what it was, and why it failed so spectacularly on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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The Great Leap Forward represents one of the most tragic episodes not just in Chinese history, but in world

history. It was a disaster on a par with the World Wars that were fought in the 20th century.

Despite the massive loss of life that resulted from the Great Leap Forward, it has never

received the same level of attention as World War I or two. To understand why the Great Leap Forward happened, we need to step back to China in the 1950s.

Mao Zedong and the Communist Party had successfully unified China after a lengthy civil war,

and were eager to transform their largely agricultural nation into a modern industrial power.

The Great Leap Forward emerged from several different factors.

First, Mao was deeply influenced by Soviet industrial success, but wanted to surpass it

using distinctly Chinese methods.

He believed that human willpower and revolutionary enthusiasm could overcome any

material constraints, a philosophy that would prove catastrophically wrong.

Second, there was genuine pressure to modernize quickly as China felt vulnerable surrounded by

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