Study On Mao Zedong And The New China’s Iron And Steel Industry

Before the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong had already exerted positive impact on China’s steel industry, which laid the foundation for restora-tion and reconstruction for New China.During the recovering period of national economy, Mao Zedong made astrategic de-cision and instructed the recovery as well as rebuilding and extension of the Steel Works of Anshan Iron and Steel Group Corporation. At the same time, Mao decided to rebuild Wuhan Iron and Steel Company and Baotou Iron and Steel Company. Under the guid-ance of Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, steel industry in New Chi-na recovered and developed rapidly, which provided a firm basis for the first Golden Age of development in steel industry. During the period of the first five-year plan, Mao Zedong put the development of the steel industry on the priority list for national construction. The strategic thinking presented by Mao Zedong further promoted the ad-vancement of the steel industry. What is more, directly inspired and educated by On Ten Relationships authored by Mao Zedong, Chinese steel industry formed its strategic layout nationwide.During the period ofThe Great Leap, "Steel-centered Development Plan" was put forward by Mao Zedong, which attached importance to the high speed steel production, set up unrealistic production goals and unpractical target on steel output. As a result, the steel industry embraced its "three-year booming" period, causing a great waste of human, material and financial resources, devastating agriculture and light industry, which led to the extremely unbalanced develop of national economy. Excessive develop-ment of the iron and steel industry was the most essential reason for serious difficulties encountered by China in 1960. However, it should be noted that the " three-year booming" in iron and steel industry accumulated experience for the future development of the iron and steel industry and laid the foundation.During the adjustment period of the national economy, Mao Zedong summarized the lessons of The Great Leap period, supporting the reorientation, reorganization of i- ron and steel industry, initially launching a third-line construction of the iron and steel industry. During this period, Mao Zedong made significant devotion to the devel-opment of New China’s steel industry, due to which, iron and steel production and construction obtained a recovery and further development. After that the second " golden age" came up.Although Mao during the Culture Revolution period, Zedong was still very con-cerned about the development of the iron and steel industry, and made an important contribution to the development of the steel industry. The ten years saw the wandering of its development plan and resulted in serious losses. Nevertheless, because of vast in-vestment in the iron and steel industry during this period, the development of the iron and steel industry was still outstanding, laying a solid base for the ability of production to strengthen rapidly in the future iron and steel industry.Mao Zedong not only attached great importanceto the new development of China’s steel industry with active and firm leadership, but unwaveringly explored Chinas own way to develop its steel industry, which made him founder and pioneer for New China’ s steel industry construction. Despite some mistakes made by him during the process, Mao Zedong’s merits and achievements were main points while his mistakes were the minor. After all, he made a great contribution for the development of the steel industry. Under Mao’s leadership, in 27 years, New China’s steel industry made brilliant a-chievements and made important contributions to national defense, economic develop-ment. Besides, these achievements also laid a solid foundation for a sustained, stable and rapid development of China’s steel industry. Furthermore, those large and medium sized steel enterprises built in these 27 years are still and will continue to play an im-portant role in Chinas national defense construction and economic construction.The experience and enlightenmentby Mao’s leadership in the development of New China’s steel industry are below; First, we should attach great importance to develop steel industry with utter devotion. Secondly, we should draft strategy for China’s steel industry on the basis of reality. Thirdly, we should insist on the way of taking self-re-liance as major, and foreign aid as a supplement for the China iron and steel industry development. Fourthly, developing science and technology, strongly converging tech-nology of iron and steel industry and making great efforts to promote the technical pro-gress of iron and steel industry is absolutely essential. Fifthly, we must take economic construction as the center and strongly develop the productivity. Also, we must focus on overall balance and avoid impatience. Last but not least, we must reform and improve the leadership system of the party and the nation, amplify democratic centralism and the principles of collective leadership.