Bear in mind that once upon a time, the communist leadership in China believed that they could teach rice farmers to refine iron and make alloy steel in grass fired clay kilns across the countryside; and that was how they were going to be able to keep those evil capitalist American navies out of their business.
Really?
I mean, I know bureaucrats are out of touch with reality, but this strains credulity.
It's not the bureaucrats' feat, but that of the revolutionaries. Bureaucrats wanted to maintain the status quo, revolutionaries wanted to change(read: impose their ideals of Utopia upon common folks) something, thus the tragedy.