Zhou Enlai
The Great Leap Forward

In 1958, Mao Zedong began the Great Leap Forward, aimed at increasing China's production levels in industry and agriculture with unrealistic targets. As a popular and practical administrator, Zhou maintained his position through the Leap. Zhou has been described by Frank Dikötter as the "midwife" of the Great Leap Forward, who "transformed nightmares into reality".

By the early 1960s, Mao's prestige was not as high as it had once been. Mao's economic policies in the 1950s had failed, and he had developed a lifestyle that was increasingly out of touch with many of his oldest colleagues. Among the activities that seemed contrary to his popular image were the swims in his private pool in Zhongnanhai, his many villas around China that he would travel to on a private train, his private, book-lined study, and the companionship of an ever-changing succession of enthusiastic young women whom he met either on weekly dances in Zhongnanhai or on his journeys by train. The combination of his personal eccentricities and industrialization policy failures produced criticism from such veteran revolutionaries as Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun, and Zhou Enlai, who seemed less and less to share an enthusiasm for his vision of continuous revolutionary struggle.
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