Unlike the first five year plan the great leap forward was going to deal with the agriculture problem as well as the industry. The answer to achieving this was the reformation of the Chinese people into communes. Mao set up communes across the country, several co-operative farms and villages were joined together to form one commune. On average 30,000 people belonged to each commune. It looked after the needs of all its members from the crib to the grave: health clinic, schools, open-air cinemas and ‘happiness homes’ for the elderly were all on hand. Each commune had its factories and workshops, where farm tools were made and crops from the land were developed. With so many people under their control, the commune leaders were able to organise the peasants to build roads and construct dams and reservoirs. The co-operative farms peasants had kept their own small plot of land on which they grew vegetables and reared pigs. Now they handed these small plots of land over to the communes. In some communes peasants also gave over all they owned like beds, furniture, pots and pans. They left there houses to live in ‘communal habitation centres’ where slept in dormitories and ate all their meals in nearby canteens. To Mao and his supporters the communes were a short-cut to true communist society. When people no longer owned and fought over belongings and property, they would work for the good of all and not just for themselves. The speed of which the communes were created amazed not only the Chinese but the rest of the world too. By the end of 1958 about 700 million people had been placed into 26,578 communes in all parts of the country.
Communes were expected to give to the great leap forward in small as well as the big projects. Small commune factories were set up to make all kinds of industrial products such as cement, ball bearings and chemical fertiliser. Particular significance was placed on the making of steel, so 600,000 backyard steel furnaces were built in towns and villages all over China. Shortly after, these little furnaces, each one capable making only a few tonnes of steel, had turned out 11 million tonnes of steel. As 1958 carried on, the figures for the manufacture of steel, coal, timber, cement, fertiliser, and a hundred other industrial merchandise showed a stunning rise.
The key element in the great leap forward was party propaganda. The government made every effort to build the public up into a frenzy of enthusiasm for their work. Posters, Slogans and Newspaper articles recommend the Chinese to work long hours, whatever the weather and no matter how unpleasant the conditions. Wherever people worked, loudspeakers played revolutionary music and stirring speeches, encouraging workers not only to reach but to exceed the plans targets. As a result of this new way of working, many remarkable construction projects were complete in record time.
The Chinese nation began to believe that Mao Zelong was right, that it really was possible to accomplish any task whatsoever.
