Why did Mao Zedong promote rapid collectivization in the 1950s?

Mao Zedong promoted rapid collectivization in the 1950s primarily to accelerate China’s economic development and achieve socialism by mobilizing the rural population. His motivations included:12

• Overcoming Economic Bottlenecks: Mao believed that by reorganizing rural production into large-scale units, China could create an agricultural surplus to fund industrialization and feed the growing urban workforce.13
• Ideological Beliefs: He became convinced that social transformation could precede technical advancement. Inspired by reports of cooperatives improving conditions through sheer effort, he believed in the "limitless capacity" of the rural masses to transform nature and society when mobilized for revolutionary goals.2
• Independence from the Soviet Model: Mao grew uncomfortable with the Soviet model of development, which relied on centralized control and heavy industry. He sought a "Chinese road" that prioritized labor-intensive methods and egalitarianism, drawing on his experiences from the Yan’an era.243
• Political Control: Collectivization allowed the state to implement political controls necessary to extract resources and ensure that agricultural output served national industrial goals.1

By 1955, Mao pushed for this transition against the advice of many colleagues, eventually leading to the formation of people’s communes during the Great Leap Forward.123