ABSTRACT
After the New China had made great strides in industrial development during the period of the First Five-Year Plan (1952-56),1 the Chinese people were inspired to speed up their socialist reconstruction to catch up with the West. Influenced by Chairman Mao’s ambition early in 19562 and stimulated by the ‘anti-right’ campaign in 1957,3 the Great Leap Forward (GLF)—a massive nationwide political and economic campaign-was launched throughout China between 1958 and 1960. New and strange phenomena arose-the people’s commune,4 the campaign of smelting iron and steel,5 and the ‘communist wind’.6 They brought about profound changes in society with unanticipated and often haphazard consequences, and greatly affected the lives of both men and women in China.
