Western Historiography
The Great Leap Forward
Jonathan Mirsky (The China We Don't Know)
Mao's policy of using a state monopoly on agriculture to finance industrialization would be unpopular with the peasants. Therefore, it was proposed that the peasants should be brought under Party control by the establishment of agricultural collectives which would also facilitate the sharing of tools and draft animals.
By 1958 private ownership was entirely abolished and households all over China were forced into state-operated communes. Mao insisted that the communes must produce more grain for the cities and earn foreign exchange from exports.
Alfred L. Chan (Mao's Crusade: Politics and Policy Implementation in China's Great Leap Forward)
The Leap was Mao's crusade; he had every incentive to see it succeed.
Lardy, R. Nicholas (The Chinese economy under stress, 1958–1965)
Although he had suffered a seeming setback when his mobilization strategy was curtailed by mid-1956, his fundamental outlook was unchanged. He still was predisposed to the belief that organizational changes, particularly when combined with resource mobilization campaigns, could provide a dramatic breakthrough to a path of more rapid development.
Ralph A. Thaxton Jr ( Catastrophe and Contention in Rural China: Mao's Great Leap Forward Famine and the Origins of Righteous Resistance in Da Fo Village)
Citizens in rural areas who criticized the system were labeled "dangerous". Escape was also difficult or impossible, and those who attempted were subjected to "party-orchestrated public struggle", which further jeopardized their survival.
Jasper Becker (Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine)
Under the guidance of the radical Maoism ideology, mainland Chinese started the movement of people's commune, which is a "Bridge" towards their ideal communist world.