"Btw, most of the steel will be useless and the effort will be wasted"

Explanation: During Mao’s Great Leap Forward, a large number of… very poorly thought out initiatives were adopted. Amongst them was the bizarre idea that every peasant community could just make modern-grade steel on their own, with primitive tools and minimal training. The bizarre demands and distribution system of the PRC resulted, in part, in the steel initiative being prioritized over agriculture in many places, and contributing to a massive famine that killed tens of millions of Chinese people.

… most of the steel so produced was worthless for the purposes Mao had in mind, to top it off.

Later Chinese initiatives to create an actually sensible steel industry would be much more successful.