Stephen King: “The Chinese Great Leap Forward ultimately was not successful. An increase in inputs – trees being chopped down to fuel the blast furnaces – certainly resulted in an increase in output. But, in the absence of proper incentives and adequate measures of consumer and producer preferences, the ultimate result was a chronic waste of national resources, the destruction of trees in exchange for steel that no one really wanted or knew what to do with.”

That's an understatement! If you don't believe me, look at a quote from The Search for Modern China by Jonathan Spence, p. 553: “The average amount of grain available to each person in China's countryside, which had been 205 kilos in 1957 and 201 kilos in 1958, dropped to a disastrous 183 kilos in 1959, and a catastrophic 156 kilos in 1960. In 1961 it fell again– to 154 kilos. The result was famine on a gigantic scale, a famine that claimed 20 milliions lives or more between 1959 and 1962. Many others died shortly thereafter from the effects of the Great Leap– especially children, weakened by years of progressive malnutrition. [...] The Great Leap Forward, launched in the name of strengthening the nation by summoning all of the people's energies, had turned back on itself and ended by devouring its young.”