Final answer:
Both Joseph Stalin's five-year plans and Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward were centralized economic plans focused on transforming their countries into industrial powers, both leading to significant human suffering.
Step-by-step explanation:
One similarity between Joseph Stalin's five-year plans and Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward was that both plans were centralized. These economic programs aimed at rapidly transforming their respective countries—the Soviet Union under Stalin and China under Mao—into industrial superpowers through state-led initiatives. However, while both leaders had high ambitions for developing their nations' industrial capacities, their methods resulted in significant human suffering, including widespread famine and death due to the disruptions and inefficiencies caused by these aggressive policies of central planning.