What would you propose would be the motivation there? I think there's every indication that the Great Leap Forward was intended to turn China into a socialist

What would you propose would be the motivation there? I think there's every indication that the Great Leap Forward was intended to turn China into a socialist society which would eventually become a communist one (in accordance with Marx with home the Chinese Communist Party were heavily influenced by) where ultimately not only would no man would ever go without again, but also greatly increasing the overall production of China. Mao certainly realized there would be casualties in the process of transformation, but I see no reason to believe those were the goal. There's far easier and less disruptive ways to kill massive numbers of people than to try to transform a nation to socialism. These systems are invariably well intended but fail to appropriately consider how big a factor the destruction of motivation is. 'Produce a bunch and you can get filthy rich.' tends to be a much better motivation than 'Produce a bunch and give it away to the state, or else the state will hurt you.' As an interesting aside the current PM of China, Xi Jinping, has very intimate ties to all of this. His father was a very high ranking party member in Mao's China. But as is also often the case in these systems, favor is rapidly won or lost. His father was disgraced and imprisoned. Xi himself was arrested as a youth for deserting his state-designed job / role in life and sent to dig ditches at a camp where was housed in a cave with a single blanket as his bed -- living that way for some seven years until he was able to join the communist party (after intially being rejected some 8 times) which set him on the path to today.