The Communist dictator, an early master of the soundbite, wanted to get the country “walking on two legs”. The peasants were to be the engine of industrial and agricultural progress. In 1958, work started. Rice fields were dug up, factories built, and family farms replaced by communes run by committee.

Mao declared that China would lead the world in steel production. The peasants built furnaces in their backyards. They turned their pots, pans and farming tools into iron. They did not understand what they were doing and the metal they made was useless. To keep the furnaces going they chopped down the trees. Topsoil from the bare hillsides slipped into the rivers and silted them up.

Mao, the son of a farmer, launched a campaign against pests. Flies, mosquitoes, rats and especially sparrows were to be killed. People collected bags of flies which had to be counted individually. They banged what pots and pans they had left to keep the sparrows awake in the trees until they dropped dead with exhaustion.

The birds no longer ate the crops - but the insects that flourished with their disappearance did. People who should have been planting fields had been busy turning their tools into scrap metal. Crops failed. Party officials were too scared to admit the disaster, so they pretended it was not happening.

Famine came and people tried to eat bark and grass. When they died their families were forbidden to cry. Instead they were ordered to plant crops on their graves.

Mao was forced to step down. However, five years later he was back with the Cultural Revolution.