Following a meeting of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee and State Council, Beijing issued a new directive to develop an advanced industrial workforce aimed at driving Chinese-style modernization. The plan calls for organizing workers into groups and strengthening ideological and political guidance. To achieve this, central leadership will increase training and support for industrial workers to improve both the quality and quantity of production. Professional educators will lead these groups, providing both technical training and ideological instruction, while efforts will be made to make manufacturing jobs more attractive, especially for young people and migrant workers, potentially including “reeducation” programs.
For months, the government has emphasized boosting industrial production, especially in high-tech and innovation sectors, essential for economic recovery and modernization. This latest announcement, however, provides the first specific strategies from President Xi Jinping’s administration. Some details resemble aspects of Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward (1958-61), which tried to boost production through organized working groups and intense political education but ended in disastrous failure, famine, and 30 million to 45 million deaths. Despite this tragic legacy, the current leadership not only has adopted elements from that period but is even using similar language – terms like “great leap” and “leap forward” – to describe its plans. Facing Western export controls and diminished foreign investment, the Chinese government appears as committed as ever to self-sufficiency, and it sees the Great Leap Forward as a model of ambition, innovation and self-reliance.
The Great Leap Forward started with the collectivization of agriculture. The CCP haphazardly took charge of resource allocation, production and food distribution. It introduced unproven agricultural techniques countrywide, nearly all of which failed, causing crop yields to plummet. Forced labor, exposure to the elements and famine killed hundreds of thousands of people. The campaign’s ensuing industrialization phase (focused above all on the steel industry) was equally catastrophic due to failures in planning, coordination, and resource and manpower allocation. The state pulled millions of agricultural workers out of rural areas to make steel at industrial hubs, which proved incapable of accommodating all of them, leading to more starvation and overwork.
The current Chinese government draws inspiration from the Great Leap Forward despite its failures because it shares many of the imperatives that drove Mao’s policy of self-reliance. In Mao’s era, self-reliance aimed to safeguard China’s independence from foreign capitalism while still positioning the country to engage eventually with foreign markets from a secure and competitive stance. Mao envisioned an isolated yet resilient China that could later enter the global arena as an industrialized power. Although the Great Leap Forward ended in disaster, China did experience industrial and agricultural growth in its aftermath, laying the groundwork for self-reliance and centralized development.
In today’s China, self-reliance has reemerged as a slogan, tied to the government’s broader goals of economic and industrial security amid what it perceives as a “hostile” global environment. The central government wants to boost internal production and limit vulnerabilities while still engaging in foreign trade – but on terms that reduce its exposure to Western pressures. Facing restrictions to its access to the latest technologies by U.S.-led alliances, Beijing sees self-sufficiency as essential to sustaining and expanding its influence in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. Thus, Xi’s administration views Mao’s emphasis on centralized planning, workforce mobilization and ideological cohesion as a potential roadmap to economic resilience. By tightening control over economic policy, labor organization and political education, the government aims to fortify its domestic economy and unite society in preparation for prolonged geopolitical friction. While China still hopes for improved economic ties with the West, its new guidelines suggest a firm commitment to expanding its internal capacity for innovation and growth through increased central planning, echoing the original aims of the Great Leap Forward.
The Great Leap Forward’s catastrophic results underscore the risks of central planning, but Xi’s new industrial modernization guidelines suggest a more measured approach, despite some similarities. The plan’s focus on organized working groups, rapid implementation and political education resembles Mao’s era. However, Xi’s guidelines also emphasize support systems for career development, labor rights, skill development, innovation and job security – elements that Mao’s approach lacked. Xi, having witnessed the fallout of the Great Leap Forward, appears cautious about repeating past mistakes.
Still, even Mao’s plan initially appeared ambitious yet feasible, and the reliance on self-sufficiency and centralized control highlights the current leadership’s urgency to stimulate economic recovery independently. For Xi’s strategy to avoid past failures, it must accommodate all segments of Chinese society and economy – a balance that eluded previous leaders. The success or failure of this initiative will hinge on Beijing’s ability to maintain this broader focus and could define China’s economic trajectory in the years to come.
The Geopolitics of the American President