d a production team, and about ten teams created a production brigade. Each brigade had certain jobs to do such as tree planting, operation of storage facilities, or transportation. Each commune was planned as a self-supporting community for agriculture, small-scale industry, schooling, marketing, administration, and local security, which was maintained by militia. Organized along paramilitary and laborsaving lines, the commune had communal kitchens, mess halls, and nurseries. By 1959, five hundred million people were working on twenty-six thousand communes. By 1959, Mao announced that the Great Leap Forward was a failure. Rather than the economy leaping forward, it weakened. Among the Great Leap Forward’s economic consequences were food shortages, overproduction of poor-quality goods, deterioration of industrial plants, depletion and deterioration of peasants, intellectuals, party and government officials. Mao took responsibility for the failure, and in April 1959, stepped down from his position as chairman of the republic; Liu Shaoqi became China’s new leader. Liu set more emphasis on realistic goals and efficient planning. He put technicians in authority, not Party members. The number of communes decreased and production authority was restored to factory managers. By 1965, China was on its way readjustment and recovery from the failure of Great Leap Forward....
