The Great Leap Forward was a program instituted by Chinese dictator Mao Zedong from 1958 to 1961 to nationalize industry and agriculture. This included collectivizing farmland and peasants being forced to produce steel in backyard furnaces to raise China's steel output, as well as an absurd campaign to exterminate pests, which unbalanced the ecosystem. The whole ill-conceived venture resulted in widespread famine, economic disaster and what modern Chinese history refers to as Three Years of Disasters. The Communist inspired democide resulted in the deaths of approximately 30 million people.
See also
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- Rectification in Yan’an—Creating the Most Fearsome Methods in Persecution, "The rectification movement in Yan’an was the largest, darkest and most ferocious power game ever played out in the human world"