Final answer:
The Great Leap Forward aimed to develop the steel industry in China, encouraging peasants to produce steel in backyard furnaces. The misguided focus on steel production led to the neglect of agriculture, ultimately causing a severe famine.
Step-by-step explanation:
The industry in China that Mao's "Great Leap Forward" aimed to develop was b. Steel. During the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s, Chinese peasants were encouraged to build small furnaces in their backyards to produce steel. The idea was to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy to a socialist society through rapid industrialization and collectivization. However, the homemade steel often proved worthless, and the excessive focus on steel production led to a neglect of agriculture, contributing to a massive famine.
One of the causes of famine during China's Great Leap Forward was the use of farm labor to produce steel and work on construction projects. Other causes included the requisitioning of grain to feed industrial workers and city dwellers and natural disasters like floods. However, the destruction of crops during war was not a cause of famine in this context since the Great Leap Forward was a time of internal policy-induced crisis rather than external conflict.