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Exceeding the UK, catching the USA

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Exceeding the UK, catching the USA
Chinese超英赶美
Coined in1950s[1]

Exceeding the UK, catching the USA[2] (simplified Chinese: 超英赶美; traditional Chinese: 超英趕美; pinyin: chāoyīng gǎnměi[3]) alternatively translated as surpassing Great Britain and catching up with the United States,[4] was a slogan put forward by Mao Zedong during the Great Leap Forward.[5][6] The slogan was representative of the two goals of surpassing Great Britain in steel production in 15 years and catching up with the United States in 50 years.[7]

The slogan was mainly addressed to the secondary sector of the economy,[8] of which steel and grain were top priority.[9] At the end of China's first Five-Year Plan, steel output was still less than a quarter of the amount produced by Britain.[10] Mao found overtaking Britain's steel to be of utmost importance to the "socialist transformation" of agriculture, as he found the two to be "inseparable" and unable to be dealt with "in isolation from each other". This was due to the increased need for agricultural machinery to be developed, as well as the agriculture tax that would fund the production of heavy industry.[10] The justification for the selection of Great Britain and the United States as the focuses of the slogan was likely developed from the desire to prove socialist countries as more prosperous and fruitful than their imperialist counterparts, a sentiment that is likewise encapsulated in related Maoist slogan "The East wind prevails over the West wind".[10]

In 1958, steel production rates had skyrocketed, as Soviet-aided steel plants went into widespread use after being constructed in the mid-1950s.[11] The politburo meetings of August 1958 declared that production of steel would be set to double within the year.[12] As a result of the newly set goal and strong ideological push for progress, people's communes began to dedicate most of their labour toward manufacturing efforts of the material. "Backyard steel furnaces" were created, where peasant workers would smelt household metal objects such as chairs and cooking utensils in fervent efforts to meet the high levels of demand. This led to significant impacts on peasant life within the communes, as reallocation of production priorities lead to a shortage of agricultural labour in the autumn of 1958.[11]

After the Great Chinese Famine, Mao Zedong relaxed the time scale of "exceeding the UK, catching the USA" to more than 100 years in his speech at the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference.[13]

In the end the goal was met on the original time frame. Chinese steel production exceeded that of the UK in the 1970s and that of the US in 1993, becoming the largest steel producing nation worldwide in 1996.[14]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "From "Exceeding the UK, catching the USA" to "Industrial Upgrading"". BBC News. 2019-05-27.
  2. ^ Rui Huaichuan (2 June 2004). Globalisation, Transition and Development in China: The Case of the Coal Industry. Routledge. pp. 104–. ISBN 978-1-134-31804-9.
  3. ^ Huang Shu-min; Shu-Min Huang (10 September 2019). The Spiral Road: Change In A Chinese Village Through The Eyes Of A Communist Party Leader. Taylor & Francis. pp. 58–. ISBN 978-1-00-023411-4.
  4. ^ Maris Boyd Gillette (2000). Between Mecca and Beijing: Modernization and Consumption Among Urban Chinese Muslims. Stanford University Press. pp. 14–. ISBN 978-0-8047-6434-6.
  5. ^ Book Digest. Jiangsu People's Publishing House. 2007.
  6. ^ "Brazil overtakes Britain, China catches up with the US and how to see China's development". BBC News. April 2, 2012.
  7. ^ "Exceeding the UK, catching the USA". The News Lens. Retrieved 2021-06-14.
  8. ^ Kuang Chen; Pan Liang (2006). Our Fifties. China Friendship Publishing Company. ISBN 978-7-5057-2113-5.
  9. ^ "1958, An impressive year". VOA. 2008-03-28.
  10. ^ a b c Niu, Chung-Huang (1958). China Will Overtake Britain. Foreign Languages Press.
  11. ^ a b Lieberthal, Kenneth (2004). Governing China: from revolution through reform (2nd ed.). New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-92492-3.
  12. ^ Chan, Alfred L. (2001). Mao's crusade: politics and policy implementation in China's great leap forward. Studies on contemporary China (1. publ ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-924406-5.
  13. ^ "A historical examination of the evolutionary stage of Mao Zedong's thought of "Exceeding the UK, catching the USA". The Universities Service Centre for China Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. 2002-02-08.
  14. ^ Conte, Niccolo (2021-06-02). "Visualizing 50 years of global steel production". visualcapitalist.com. Retrieved 2024-11-01. SOURCE World Steel Association
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