3+4

7.) Source A is a direct Chinese source giving historical insight into the Chinese domestic dealings with the Great Leap Forward. While Source A is a direct source, it comes from a Chinese government site, which has come under fire as being heavily censored and only broadcasting the official viewpoint of the Chinese Communist Party. The source is also 48 years old and does not gain from the added future sight and historical short comings that Source B contains. Source B comes from a British historian written only 7 years ago. This allows for a deeper analysis of the long term effects of the Great Leap Forward. The excerpt comes from a text titled "The Complete History of China". It is quite possible that due to the vast nature of the text, certain details that have either been lost to history or excluded for publication reasons have not made their way forth in the excerpt. Because the author is British, he may fall under an anti-Communist persuasion which would alter his judgement concerning the success of the Chinese Communist Party.

8.) The failure of the Great Leap Forward proved to be an unmitigated disaster for the Chinese economy and people on account of the mass famine, industrialization short-comings, and reorganization of the Chinese Communist Party.

     As Source E explains, the total grain output during the Great Leap Forward was going relatively well until a series of floods and subsequent droughts occurred causing the peasants themselves to have no food. The Party had placed such high expectations on the peasants that grain output was not allowed to be scaled down, leading to massive famine that killed upwards of 19 million people. 

     Further efforts, as described in Sources D and E, to move steel production from large factories and into the backyards of peasant workers proved to be a terrible decision. Peasant workers were untrained as to how to take iron ore ad scrap iron and convert them into steel. Finding enough fuel for the fires required in itself a full days work. Previously industrially made steel was melted down and instead, due to incompetent workers, was converted into lower quality steel. Methods of production also suffered on account of the lack of materials to build basic building equipment. Peasants were forced to rely on methods that had been created centuries earlier and as a result, building quality was much lower.

     Many people grew outraged and the Party's inefficient handling of the famine and low quality of produced goods that Mao was forced to oust members of his own Party and blame them. This caused a "mini-Revolution" and a structural reorganization of the Communist Party. Members who had been with Mao since the initial revolution were now labelled as supporters of capitalism. This reorganization caused much chaos and disorder, along with violent outburst toward local party officials.