Alternatives to Utopia in China, 1960–1965

Abstract

After the disaster of the Great Leap Forward, which led to the death of some thirty million Chinese, Mao’s associates in the leadership were charged with getting the economy back on its feet. They did so employing methods that were similar to what Brezhnev would later employ in the USSR: deference to cadres, rationalization of economic planning, and tolerance of intensified social inequality.