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Incredibly, among Red China's teeming millions-a manpower shortage developed. Stevedores were shifted from the ports to the paddies, and unloaded ships piled up in the harbors. Railroad workers were rushed to the docks, and train schedules became chaotic. Office workers went to the farms, and commerce staggered. Instead of performing military duties, soldiers were put to work digging ditches and raising pigs. Even the wives and children of army officers and enlisted men hoed cabbages and spread fertilizer.
But fervor was not enough. Wheat had been so closely planted that it toppled over or died of contagious rust. Newly dug potatoes rotted in the fields while peasants were rushed off to erect dams. Jerry-built mines collapsed, and backyard iron proved worthless for industrial use. In the cities there was noisy talk of a bumper harvest, but long queues of housewives found the stores empty.
Clearest symptom of the chaos was the sudden and steep decline in China's exports. In 1958 Peking had begun to invade the markets of Southeast Asia with a flood of inexpensive bicycles, textiles, rice. By underselling Japan, Red China increased its exports to Singapore and Malaya by 23%, nearly doubled its trade with Thailand and Ceylon. But by this spring Red China was unable to fill even longstanding orders. At the annual trade fair in Canton last May, export sales were down 56% from the previous year.
Tidying Up. For months after it was apparent that the great leap was turning into a frightful fumble, the propagandists in Peking continued to shout: "There is no low-yield land—only low-yield thinking." Trembling at these injunctions, local party bosses tore up honest production figures and conjured up new ones likely to please Peking. But by last October the Red leadership was beginning to realize that the only alternative to total collapse was relaxation. Meeting in the industrial center of Wuhan, Mao and his satraps decided on their line of retreat. The communes would remain, but they would be "tidied up." Peasants would be "entitled" to money wages and eight hours' sleep a night, were even told that "individual trees around their houses, small farm tools, small instruments and small domestic animals and poultry" would no longer be taken from them. Red cadres were scolded for having been "overeager," and grimly warned to stop exaggerating production totals.
Nor did Peking's retreat end there. By August of this year, there was no avoiding the most humiliating and face-losing necessity of all: public revision of the inflated 1958 production claims. With only five weeks to go until the tenth anniversary of Communist power in China, Peking was obliged to admit to the world that the big leap had fallen painfully short, and that production goals for 1959 had been sharply reduced (see chart).
The Old Gambit. The men responsible for the big stumble did not suffer. Mao Tse-tung retained the all-powerful chairmanship of the Communist Party, and, though he did step down as chief of state, he was replaced by Organization Man Liu. But there were scapegoats. Three weeks ago, 200 middle-echelon planners and administrators, who were guilty of accurately predicting the failure of the big leap, were dismissed from their posts.