The Great Leap Forward was a campaign of economic, social and political measures implemented in the People's Republic of China between 1958 and 1961, during the presidency of Mao Zedong, with the aim of transforming the traditional Chinese agrarian economy through rapid industrialization and collectivization .
The main changes of the rural regime included the creation of the popular communes, the prohibition of private agriculture, the promotion of labor-intensive projects and the policy called "walking with two legs", which combined small and medium-sized industrial initiatives , with the great undertakings, thus moving away from the Soviet model.