World History: Reading Excerpt: The Unknown Story: Mao
The Great Leap: “Half of China May Well Have To Die” 1958 * Age 64-67
1. What did Mao conceal about his Superpower Program?
2. When was the Great Leap Forward launched?
3. Lin Biao wanted to build big ships and land in Japan, the Philippines and what American city?
4. Mao got the provincial chiefs to proclaim that their area would produce what type of harvest?
5. What Russian satellite was Mao obsessed with?
6. According to Mao what was “Oriental style” and “good for health”?
7. How many tons of rice did “the biggest rice sputnik” claim to produce on 1/5 of an acre?
8. What big problem did Mao note on a batch of reports in April, 1959?
9. What did Mao want from Khrushchev in the summer of 1958?
10. Between 1958 and 1962 peasants moved earth and used concrete equivalent to the construction of ?
11. Were the dams built by peasants during the Great Leap Forward valuable to China? Defend your answer.
12. Because fertilizer was in short supply, peasants fought over access to what supply?
13. What “Four Pests” did Mao want to get rid of besides flies and rats?
14. In 1958 Mao decided that China should produce 10.7 million tons of steel. Where did this number come from?
15. How many Chinese were forced to build “backyard furnaces”?
16. To hand in one pickaxes is to wipe out one ?
17. How many tons of the 10.7 million was judged “completely worthless” ?
18. By the end of 1958 China had 1,639 large arms plants under construction. How many were completed?
19. The authors state that the “four year Leap was a monumental waste of” what two things?
20. What did Mao call the practice of forcing peasants to run with heavy loads and stay up all night feeding backyard furnaces?
21. What were “Peoples’ Communes”?
22. What idea did Mao “toy” with in order to “dehumanize” the peasants?
23. What became a commonplace form of “light” punishment in the Peoples’ Communes?
24. Why did many commune cadres adopt the attitude that people were slaves to be beaten, abused or have their food suspended to get them to work.”?
25. How were starving people dissuaded from stealing food?
26. What was Mao’s guideline for the cities of China?
27. Of the 8,000 historic monuments in Peking/Beijing – how many did Mao choose to spare from destruction?
28. Mao ordered that Tiananmen Square be made into what?
29. Camp inmates at Auschwitz received between 1,300 and 1,700 calories a day. What was the average Chinese person’s daily caloric intake in 1960?
30. How many people died of starvation and overwork in the Great Leap Forward?
31. At the May, 1958 congress where Mao announced the Leap he told communist party officials that they should “actively welcome” what?
32. What did Mao order peasants to do over burial plots that caused “intense anguish?”
33. How many people did Mao tell the Russians he was prepared to sacrifice for a victorious world revolution?