The cautious views of Zhou Enlai and Chen Yun on the economy were pushed aside. Mao was ebullient. Less than a decade after liberation, he was ready to push for a new, bold experiment that would propel China to the forefront of the socialist camp. Mao called it the Great Leap Forward, as the country would accelerate the pace of collectivisation and soar into a communist utopia of plenty for all. Over the next four years, tens of millions of people would be worked, starved or beaten to death in the greatest man-made catastrophe the country had ever seen.
