In response to the tepid growth in the agricultural sector, in 1957 the Chinese government largely shifted authority for economic decision making to the provincial, county, and local level. During this time, the Chinese leadership abandoned the Soviet model and instead adopted an approach that relied on spontaneous efforts by the entire population to induce a “great leap” within all economic sectors at once, which helped to stimulate agricultural growth. The initial problem with this approach was the lack of sufficient capital to invest in both industrial development and agriculture simultaneously. To overcome this problem, the leadership attempted to create capital within the agricultural sector by building vast irrigation systems, employing huge teams of underemployed farmers.[6] Despite these advances, the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s under Mao Zedong severely stifled technological innovation within China.[7] This was largely a political phenomenon, where the Communist Party attempted to consolidate power by expelling any hint of budding capitalist ideas, Chinese traditionalists, and intellectuals. However, it had a pronounced effect on the growing Chinese economy. Factory managers were largely replaced with Communist Party operatives who had very little knowledge of management or of the enterprise they were supposed to run. Engineers, scientists, and other professional personnel were sent to the countryside as laborers, or were jailed as dissidents. Additionally, the Cultural Revolution forced the closing of Universities, which severely hindered China’s ability to develop new technology. This loss of key knowledge resulted in a 14% decline in industrial production by 1967.[8] In the late 1970’s, after the death of Mao, the Chinese government reaffirmed the modernization program espoused prior to the Cultural Revolution.[9] The Chinese leaders determined that the centrally planned economy had failed to produce sufficient economic growth, and had caused China to fall behind the industrialized powers of the West and the newly industrialized Asian nations. While the Communist leadership did not want to completely abandon the centrally planned economy idea, it strived to make it work better by increasing the role of market mechanisms and by reducing the level of centralized government control. For industry, this included increased autonomy and the ability of managers to keep profits instead of remitting everything earned to the state. While some key industries were still centrally controlled, individual enterprise was allowed (to an extent) as a means to incentivize economic growth and to reduce unemployme>