This book is about the way institutions affect policy making in China. In particular it looks at the role of coalitions of economic bureaucracies in shaping Chinese macroeconomic policy in 1956–1957, and at how these institutions contributed to the Great Leap Forward. In contrast to most accounts of the origins and development of the Great Leap, this work finds that many of the economic policies associated with the Leap were in fact first advocated by a coalition of planning and heavy industrial interests. Instead of Mao's formulating ideas on self-reliance, industry's aiding of agriculture, emphasis on medium- and small-scale industry, and decentralization, the two top planners of the People's Republic of China, Li Fuchun and Bo Yibo, were the first to suggest and champion these policies in the spring and summer of 1957. To be sure, Mao bears ultimate responsibility for the catastrophe caused by the Great Leap and its millions of deaths due to starvation and malnutrition, but he did not formulate some of the most salient actions of this frenetic period of Chinese history.

This finding, that the planners advocated what later were called Maoist economic policies, raises fundamental questions. First, why would the planners advocate a platform of economic measures that seem to undermine their own role in the political and economic system? Second, why would Mao and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) adopt such a package?