How did Liu Shaoqi try to revive agriculture after the Great Leap Forward?

Following the economic crisis caused by the Great Leap Forward, Liu Shaoqi—who had succeeded Mao Zedong as chairman of the People’s Republic in 1959—worked alongside Deng Xiaoping and other economic planners to stabilize the country.1

To revive agricultural production and address the widespread famine, Liu Shaoqi implemented pragmatic recovery measures that focused on:

• Material Incentives: Introducing economic rewards to encourage productivity.1
• Individual Households: Strengthening the role of individual households in the agricultural production process.1
• Structural Adjustments: Supporting the restoration of private plots, reducing the size of communes, and granting greater independence to production teams.2
• Resource Reallocation: Slashing industrial investment to redirect resources toward farm production and transferring unemployed industrial workers to the countryside.2

While these policies successfully improved the agricultural situation by 1963, they were eventually perceived by Mao Zedong as a repudiation of the Great Leap Forward strategy, contributing to the political tensions that led to the Cultural Revolution.1