In May of 1958, the Second Session of the Eighth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) formulated the General Line to "go all out, aim high, and build socialism with greater, faster, better results, while using less land." With this, the Great Leap Forward movement was launched, and people's communes were set up in rural areas. These three things — the General Line for socialist construction, the Great Leap Forward, and the people's communes — were collectively referred to as the Three Red Banners. They formed the guiding ideology of the CCP, leading the Chinese people in socialist construction at that time. However, this ideology would later on cause extremely severe famine, with deaths as high as tens of millions of people.

The development of the Great Leap Forward was affected by the situation at home and abroad at that time. Domestically, the CCP had basically completed the First Five-Year Plan (including public ownership of the means of production and the development of the national economy); successive political campaigns had also suppressed intellectuals and opposition forces. Internationally, after First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev took office in 1953, he had begun to draw a demarcation with the Stalin era, and Sino-Soviet relations became increasingly tense. With the Soviet Union proclaiming that it would exceed the industrial output of the United States within 15 years, the CCP promoted the slogan "Surpass the British and Catch Up to the United States" in an effort to compete with the Soviet Union. With provocation from both home and abroad, the CCP wanted to seek a shortcut in order to realize great industrial and agricultural development, and to prove the accuracy of its own policies.

The goal of the Three Red Banners was devolved to the grassroots level; farmers were mobilized to smelt iron and steel, resulting in deserted farmland and a decline in food production. In addition, all grains and crops were purchased by the state, and people had to eat in public canteens in the people's communes. Those who failed to obey would have their meals withheld; many cases of death due to starvation resulted. As scholar Yang Jisheng describes it, "Public canteens pushed the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' into everyone's stomachs." Not only was the Great Leap Forward ineffective and resulted in heavy casualties, but in order to ensure the completion of assigned tasks on time, exaggeration prevailed. Rural areas began to falsely expand their reported food production. In the end, the food supply was seriously insufficient; starvation and death stalked the land. As Yang Jisheng wrote:

"In many cases, entire families died. Some villages disappeared without a trace. The starvation before death was more terrifying than the death itself. All the wild vegetables were eaten; bark, bird droppings, mice, and cotton wool were all used to fill empty stomachs. In places where kaolinite [a kind of clay] was dug, hungry people stuffed kaolinite into their mouths as they dug. The corpses of the dead, hungry outsiders, even their own relatives — all became things with which the starving people sought to satisfy their hunger. According to analyses based on reliable information, there were thousands of incidents of cannibalism across the country."

At first, Liu Shaoqi and Mao Zedong had no differences on the issue of the Three Red Banners. However, as the situation deteriorated, Liu Shaoqi began to waver; Mao Zedong also came under pressure from within the party; and cracks within the CCP's top levels gradually formed.

References: "The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution"; "History of the People's Republic of China (Volume 4): The Utopian Movement - From the Great Leap Forward to the Great Famine (1958-1961)"