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?