Great Leap Forward

Calque of Chinese 大躍進／大跃进 (Dàyuèjìn). Coined by a People's Daily commentator in 1957.

the Great Leap Forward

1. (historical) A vast economic and social plan lasting from 1958 to 1961 which aimed to use the Chinese population to rapidly transform the Communist China from a primarily agrarian economy by peasant farmers into a modern communist society through agriculturalization and industrialization, but failed disastrously (resulting in massive famine and the deaths of many millions of people).
   • [1960, Survey of China Mainland Press‎, numbers 2308-2328, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 30:

     Louti, in Hunan Province, Central China, is one of the numerous small industrial cities that have grown up since liberation, particularly since the big leap forward.]

   • 1971, Thomas Jay Matthews, “The Cultural Revolution in Szechwan”, in The Cultural Revolution in the Provinces‎, Harvard University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 96:

     In the early 1960s, following the collapse of Mao's Great Leap Forward, Liu and Chang, as party officials in the city of I-pin (120 miles south of Szechwan's capital, Chengtu), vigorously prosecuted those cadres under their jurisdiction who had shown less than wholehearted devotion to that campaign.

2. A theoretical point in human evolution at which point complex tools, weapons, sculptures, etc. began to appear, supplanting previous primitive behaviour.