A Review Of Western Academics' Studies On The Great Leap Forward Movement

The Great Leap Forward movement has always been the focuses in the research of the history of Chinese Communist Party and the history of contemporary China. The domestic research in this area has already made great progress. The research of the Great Leap Forward, of course, is not just the patent of domestic scholars. Actually, in terms of the study of the Great Leap Forward, western scholars have accumulated the same wealth of experience.results after several years of development. Both from an academic point of view, functional point of view, or from a political perspective, we are unable to turn a blind eye the western scholars'research results in the area of the Great Leap Forward. On the contrary, we have only had an open mind to understand the process of Western counterparts, take the essence and discard the dregs in the ways of comprehensive and systematic study. We can promote mutual understanding and further research by academic exchanges and equal dialogue. This paper describes the western academic profile of the Great Leap Forward in decades. As the "Westerners focus more on the research paradigm. Without the research paradigm, it is also difficult to enter the academic trend for them. " "If they can not enter the academic trend, their academic results have the danger of'anomie'." Therefore, this article uses the the evolution of the research paradigm and research model as the main criteria in the division of the West scholars' study in the event of the Great Leap Forward movement. Under the influences of available sources of information are, political events, the development of Western social sciences and other factors, the main research "model" of western scholars'research of the Great Leap Forward movement has gone through four stages in the evolution. The first stage, emphasizing elite "cooperation", is dominated by "Mao-in-command" model, The second phase is dominated by the following three models:"two-line struggle" model, "factions" model and "cycle" model. They all stress the elite "conflict. " Among them, the "two-line struggle" model emphasizes the ideological conflict between the elite. The "factions" model emphasizes the power struggle between the elites. The"cycle" model stresses the specific policy differences between the elites. The third phase, emphasizing bureaucratic interests, is dominated by the "bureaucratic" model. The fourth stage, emphasizing the absolute dominance of personal authority of Mao Zedong, is dominated by "a court politics" model. In terms of the main content of the Great Leap Forward movement, Western scholars have focused on the origins of the Great Leap Forward campaign, reasons for failure, impacts, evaluation and related research topics. In the origins of the Great Leap Forward, the western scholars suggest more than ten kind of perspectives:Mao-in-command", "two-line struggle", "factions" struggle,"cycle", "bureaucratic politics", "a court politics", the reasults of the First Five Year Plan, the consequences of breaking the bottleneck of agriculture, an independent development way, solving the problems of employment, responses to the crisis, the third way, the revolutionary legacy, "continuous revolution", the integratation of two development strategy, multiple factors and so on. In terms of the failure of the Great Leap Forward, the western scholars suggest a series of subjective and objective factors. In terms of the impact of the Great Leap Forward, the western scholars discuss the impact of the Great Leap Forward campaign on the Great Famine, the Cultural Revolution, Sino-Soviet relations, rural reform, environment, the developments of the Chinese Communist Party and other aspects. In terms of the evaluation of the Great Leap Forward, the Western scholars debate intensely regarding the following themes:whether the Great Leap Forward movement is "rational" or "irrational", whether the economic development strategy of Great Leap Forward is reasonable or not, whether the Great Leap Forward movement has positive meanings or not. In the study of the Great Leap Forward movement, western scholars use a variety of research methods, including Kremlinology, new institutionalism, model study, quantitative research methods and social history and so on. In terms of the assessment of Western scholars'main views regarding the Great Leap Forward movement, this article, based on the domestic research results of the history of the Chinese Communist Party and the basic point of view of historical materialism, briefly assesses the "Mao-in-command", "two-line struggle," "faction", "cycle","bureaucratic" and "a court politics "and other viewpoints.