A participant at this week’s meeting of the Group of 20 in Seoul demonstrated extraordinary ignorance of 20th Century history when he referred to an international economic growth plan as a “great leap forward,” the same name given to Mao Zedong’s plan for industrialization that resulted in the deaths of an estimated 45 million Chinese civilians in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s.
Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, on Nov. 11 explained the Seoul Development Consensus for Shared Growth, “which includes an emphasis on infrastructure investment as a means to attain sustainable growth in poorer countries,” reported Reuters.
“The great leap forward here is that this is no longer a question of aid. It’s a question of development,” Gurria said.
According to the Reuters report, this new Great Leap Forward “identifies nine areas where action is needed to ease development bottlenecks, including skills training, increased access to finance, expanded investment and improvements to the physical fabric of developing countries.”
Any student of recent international history could be forgiven for cringing at Gurria’s use of the phrase “great leap forward.”
Under Mao’s Great Leap Forward, China was rapidly collectivized and industrialized, with industrialization given priority over agriculture. Private farming was outlawed and food was rationed. Religious ceremonies were replaced with political rallies and travel was strictly regulated. Those who resisted were violently purged. Many—especially in China’s rural areas—starved to death, and many resorted to cannibalism.
The human toll of China’s Great Leap Forward is nearly incomprehensible. Frank Dikötter, a Hong Kong-based historian who has delved deeply into this dark chapter of China’s recent past, estimates that “at least 45 million people were worked, starved, or beaten to death in China over these four years,” according to a September article in The Independent.
So a bureaucrat today coming out and promoting an international economic plan as a “great leap forward” is not at all unlike a bureaucrat talking with enthusiasm about a “final solution.”
The chilling question is this: Was Angel Gurria’s reference to a new “great leap forward” a careless mistake, or was it a hint, delivered with a wink and a nod, at a dark agenda?
