WI: Mao's Great Leap Forward | No Pig Iron

During the Great Leap Forward, Mao believed through sheer human capital power he could multiple China's light and heavy production capacity to the nth degree. The goal was to outpace developed western countries in their production of steel, iron, etc.

One of the ways he thought he could achieve was by having the Chinese masses build mini-furnaces in their backyard plots and make high quality iron on a massive yet decentralized scale. All the iron made this way eventually became worthless pig iron

What if the iron wasn't and was usable on the world market? Would this revolutionize the global production economy circa 1950s? Would Chinese production rule the world?
 
Where/how is he going to acquire the means to make high-quality steel?

Certainly not the Americans or Europeans.

Not the Soviets, since the Chinese already have to pay off large debts to them.

China can't produce their own steel without steel factories, which require time and money.

That rules out everyone.
 
Currently mainland China is #1 in steel production, which more or less brought Mao's dream to reality.
But it also proves that with 60's tech, or even with contemporary tech, it is impossible to see quality production in a decentralised system.
 
The iron was useless because it of the process used to make it. You can't take pots and pans, smelt them in backyard furnace with whatever fuel you can find, have a labor force with little knowledge of steelmaking, and expect high quality steel. To get good steel Mao has to build factories, but as Kodak said there is no one to give them the technology or teach them the skills to make high-quality steel.
 
Currently mainland China is #1 in steel production, which more or less brought Mao's dream to reality.
But it also proves that with 60's tech, or even with contemporary tech, it is impossible to see quality production in a decentralised system.

So even with a much more concentrated effort by Mao's regime to teach people basic blacksmith-esque metallurgy, the masses still wouldn't be able to make usable steel in this set up? Again, it doesn't have to be German or soviet level quality, but cheap enough to serve as a competitive advantage in the global market.
 
So even with a much more concentrated effort by Mao's regime to teach people basic blacksmith-esque metallurgy, the masses still wouldn't be able to make usable steel in this set up? Again, it doesn't have to be German or soviet level quality, but cheap enough to serve as a competitive advantage in the global market.

There's a reason why blacksmiths and forge have mostly disappeared save for very niche applications such as minor repairs of metal tools etc.
It is because producing pig iron or steel of a consistent quality on a large scale is very difficult using forge or blacksmith's furnaces. The production capacity of the forges itself is small for a start. But qualified labour is the main bottleneck.

For a very long time steel and iron-making required very specific skills and was more akin to craftsmanship than industry. The necessary skills and knowledge required were acquired through years of experience on the shop floor. This was even the case as late as the 1950s in the West when open hearth furnaces were still in use. Making a batch of steel using these took eight hours and the process was very labour intensive. Do it wrong and you end up with high carbon steel that is so brittle that it's useless.

From a metallurgical and industrial point of view. Using finished steel articles as scrap to produce pig iron also makes no sense whatsoever. Its like unthreading a shirt to make a new one with its thread.

Using scrap as raw material is feasible for your information and done on a very large scale nowadays. But electric arc furnaces are used for this, producing steel directly from scrap. Bypassing the melting and smelting phases altogether.
 
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