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[erichsieh14-blog]

[erichsieh14-blog]

The reason why the Great Leap Forward failed was primarily due to Mao's weakness as an economic planner to the extent that according to Michael Lynch  as "Mao would not accept that his polices were at fault." When the famine struck he did however use it to his advantage by directing a "man made" famine in Tibet such that he caused a "famine that ravaged Tibet between 1959 and 1962". Michael Lynch further supports this by claiming there was "no reason in nature for the famine...Chinese made it happen." Thus it is clear that although he could not accept his faults he could still maintain a composed outlook to utilize them to his advantage through a variety of means to eliminate those against him.

[erichsieh14-blog]

The Hundred Flowers campaign was a trick designed by Mao to trap his opponents to the extent of intellectuals as stated by Jung Chang and John Halliday in The Untold Story in which he claims that "Mao was setting a trap ...targets were intellectuals". This delayed purge of socialist enemies was very effective to the intellectual class due to the false peace installed by the delayed aggression  This can be related to a slow poison to "smarter" pest in which an unfamiliar abundant food source is trusted due to its lack of short term derogatory effects on the population leading to mass genocide of the said species once the effects take place. Additionally an anonymous student leader claims that Mao's form of socialism is false in the way that his type of socialism is "sprung form a basis of feudalism". Therefore from the evidence stated above I believe that Mao's intent of the Hundred Flowers campaign trap was to install fear and essentially suppress the remaining intellectual individuals/groups in China. -Eric Hsieh