Second five-year plan (China)

A Chinese poster during the second five-year plan saying, "Celebrate the victorious completion of the Second Five-Year Plan three years ahead of time".

The Second five-year plan (Chinese: 第二个五年计划; 1958-1960) in China was the second five-year plan initiated by the Communist Party of China. The most well-known campaign during the second five-year plan was the Great Leap Forward, an initiative to transform the country from an agrarian society into an industrialized society.

Background

5 main tasks of the second five-year plan

In the Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the following tasks were presented:

(1) to continue industrial construction centred on heavy industry, promote the technical reconstruction of our national economy and lay a firm foundation for the socialist industrialization of our country;
(2) to continue our efforts in socialist transformation and to consolidate and extend the system of collective ownership and ownership by the whole people;
(3) to develop the production of our industry, agriculture and handicrafts, and correspondingly develop our transport and commerce, on the basis of developing capital construction and completing socialist transformation;
(4) to make energetic efforts to train personnel for construction and strengthen scientific research so as to meet the needs of socialist economic and cultural development;
(5) to strengthen the national defences and raise the level of material and cultural well-being of the people on the basis of the growth of industrial and agricultural production.
Several other goals were also mentioned, such as by 1962, they expected to be able to produce approximately 70 percent of the machinery and equipment needed for their economic construction, including some heavy and precision machinery. And by 1962, production of steel was expected to be raised from the 4.12 million tons planned for 1957 to 10.5-12 million tons; coal, from 113 million tons to 190-210 million tons; and electricity, from 15,900 million KWH to 40,000-43,000 million KWH. And by 1962, the output of cotton yarn was expected to be increased from the 5 million bales planned for 1957 to 8-9 million bales; edible vegetable oils, from 1.79 million tons to 3.1-3.2 million tons; sugar, from 1.1 million tons to 2.4-2.5 million tons; and machine-made paper, from 650,000 tons to 1.5-1.6 million tons, etc.

Great Leap Forward

Main article: Great Leap Forward

Although the Great Leap Forward was initially a campaign part of the second five-year plan, it soon took the spotlight in the Chinese masses as the second five-year plan was completed in 1960, three years earlier than the expected date. During the Great Leap Forward, communes would be established, 600,000 “backyard,” small-scale steel furnaces were built to educate the peasants on how to make steel and massive irrigation projects were completed that yielded impressive results.

Nevertheless, mistakes were made and some goals fell behind; the myths of "mass starvation" and "mass famine" have largely been debunked by now. Even in a CIA document they admitted that there was no mass famine reported in China. The myth that Mao lost popularity due to the Great Leap Forward has also been debunked.

Results

By 1959, 99% of 120,000,000 peasant households were communized, and by September 1959 there were about 24,000 people’s communes, averaging 5,000 households each. And by 1961, the national bourgeoisie had been completely eliminated, though class struggle continued to persist. By 1960 surplus value was reduced by 95% (relative to 1952); by 1958 private ownership had been liquidated and in 1958 so were private enterprises.