Mao's Great Famine -

In 1958, Chairman Mao Zedong launched the , an ambitious plan to rapidly transform China from an agrarian economy into a communist industrial superpower. The goal was to surpass the industrial output of Great Britain within 15 years. To achieve this, the state implemented radical changes:

: Peasants were ordered to melt down their cooking pots, tools, and doorknobs in crude furnaces to produce steel. This resulted in useless, low-quality pig iron and left farmers with no tools to till the land. Mao's Great Famine

: Mao ordered the extermination of sparrows, believing they ate grain. Instead, the loss of sparrows led to a locust plague that devastated crops. The Collapse: A Man-Made Disaster In 1958, Chairman Mao Zedong launched the ,