This was drafted under the direction of the Central Committee of
the Communist Party of China (CPC) presided over by late Premier
Zhou Enlai and Chen Yun.
The key tasks highlighted in the Plan were: to concentrate
efforts on the construction of 694 large and medium-sized
industrial projects, including 156 with the aid of the Soviet
Union, so as to lay that the primary foundations for China’s
socialist industrialization; to develop agricultural producers’
cooperatives to help in the socialist transformation of the
agriculture and handicraft industries; to put capitalist industry
and commerce on the track of state capitalism so as to facilitate
the socialist transformation of private industry and commerce.
These tasks were successfully carried out during this time.
The combined output of the state-run, cooperative and joint
state-private ownership economies boosted national income from 21.3
percent in 1952 to 92.9 percent in 1957.
Accumulated investment in capital construction was 55 billion
yuan and fixed asset increments reached 46.05 billion yuan, 1.9
times higher than at the end of 1952. About 595 large and
medium-sized projects were completed and put into production,
laying the framework of China’s industrialization. The gross value
of industrial products in 1957 increased 128.6 percent from
1952.
The overall steel production during the period reached 16.56
million tons, 2.18 times the combined production from 1900 to 1948,
which was 7.6 million tones. Coal production in 1957 reached 131
million tons, increasing 98 percent from 1952.
Gross output value from industry and
agriculture rose from 30 percent in 1949 to 56.5 percent in 1957,
while that of heavy industry increased from 26.4 percent to 48.4
percent. In 1957, grain production reached?195 billion
kilograms and cotton output 32.8 million dan (1 dan = 50
kilograms), both surpassing the targets set in the Plan.
The major problems that arose during this period were:
agricultural production couldn’t keep pace with industrial
production. The Plan regarded gross
industrial output value accounting for 70 percent of the
gross output value of industry and agriculture and means of
production accounting for 60 percent of the gross industrial output
value as indicators of industrial modernization, which ignored the
development of agricultures in some sense.
Investments in capital construction in 1956 totaled 14.735
billion yuan, increasing 70 percent over the previous year. Fiscal
expenditure in the form of infrastructure loans rose to 48 percent
from 30.2 percent from 1955, putting a strain on the national
budget.
Socialist transformation was pushed forward too quickly, which
left long-lasting after-effects.