Third Front (China)
The Third Front Movement or Third Front Construction was a Chinese government campaign to develop industrial and military facilities in the country's interior. The campaign was motivated by strategic depth concerns that China's existing industrial and military infrastructure would be vulnerable in the event of invasion by the Soviet Union or air raids by the United States. The largest development campaign of Mao-era China, it involved massive investment in national defense, technology, basic industries, transportation and other infrastructure investments and was carried out primarily in secret.
The Third Front is a geo-military strategy, ensuring the country greater defense in depth: it is relative to the "First Front" area that is close to the potential war fronts. The Third Front region covered 13 provinces and autonomous regions with its core area in the Northwest and Southwest. Its development was motivated by national defense considerations following the escalation of the Vietnam War after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, the Sino-Soviet Split and small-scale border skirmishes between China and the Soviet Union.
The Third Front campaign industrialized part of China's rugged interior and agricultural region. Between 1964 and 1980, China invested 205 billion yuan in the Third Front Region, accounting for 39.01% of total national investment in basic industries and infrastructure. Millions of factory workers, cadres, intellectuals, military personnel, and tens of millions of construction workers, flocked to the Third Front region. More than 1,100 large and medium-sized projects were established during the Third Front period. With large projects such as Chengdu-Kunming Railway, Panzhihua Iron and Steel, Second Auto Works, the Third Front Movement stimulated previously poor and agricultural economies in China's southwest and northwest. Dozens of cities, such as Mianyang, Deyang, and Panzhihua in Sichuan, Guiyang in Guizhou, Lanzhou and Tianshui in Gansu, and Shiyan in Hubei, emerged as major industrial cities.
However, the designs of many Third Front projects were uneconomic due to their location or deficient due to their hurried construction. For national defense reasons, location choices for the Third Front projects followed the guiding principle "Close to mountains, dispersed, hidden". Many Third Front projects were located in remote areas that were hard to access and far away from supplies and potential markets. The Third Front Movement was carried out in a hurry. Many Third Front projects were simultaneously being designed, constructed, and put in production.
After rapprochement with the United States reduced the national defense considerations underlying the Third Front, investment in its projects decreased. Since the reform of state-owned enterprises starting in the 1980s, many Third Front plants went bankrupt, though some others reinvented themselves and continued to serve as pillars in their respective local economies or were developed into successful private enterprises.
Definition
Mao created the concept of the Third Front to locate critical infrastructure and national defense facilities away from areas where they would be vulnerable to invasion,. thereby ensuring greater military defense in depth. Describing the geographical foundation of the concept, he stated:The "Big Third Front" included the Northwest and Southwest provinces like Qinghai, Sichuan, Guizhou, and Yunnan. In comparison, the "First Front" was composed of the major cities from Manchuria down to the Pearl River Delta and the "Second Front" referred to the smaller cities located further inland from the First Front.
The "Small Third Front" referred to rugged or remote areas in more major provinces like Shanxi, Anhui, and Hebei. As with the Big Third Front, Chinese policymakers intended Small Third Front to form a part of a network of military and industrial power that could withstand invasion or nuclear attack.
Process
Prior to the Third Front construction, the fourteen largest cities in China's potentially vulnerable regions included approximately 60% of the country's manufacturing, 50% of its chemical industries, and 52% of its national defense industries. In particular, the northeast was China's industrial center. China's population centers were concentrated in eastern coastal areas where they would be vulnerable to attack by air or water. In constructing the Third Front, China built a self-sufficient base industrial base area as a strategic reserve in the event of war with the Soviet Union or the United States. The campaign was centrally planned. It was carried out primarily in secret, and was only mentioned in the People's Daily for the first time in 1978.China built 1,100 Third Front projects between 1965 and 1980. Major universities, including both Tsinghua University and Peking University, opened campuses in Third Front cities. The overall cost of Third Front projects during the 1965 to 1980 period was 20.52 billion RMB.
From 1964 to 1974, China invested more than 40% of its industrial capacity in Third Front regions. Ultimately, construction of the Third Front cost accounting for more than a third of China's spending over the 15-year period in which the Third Front construction occurred. The Third Front was the most expensive industrialization campaign of the Mao-era.
Operating on the principle of "choose the best people and best horses for the Third Front," many skilled engineers, scientists, and intellectuals were transferred to Third Front facilities. In this slogan, the "best horses" refers to the best available equipment and resources. Third Front construction methods fused both low-tech and high-tech techniques.
Background
In 1937 the Nationalist government, preparing for the Second Sino-Japanese War, drafted a policy to move industries to Northwest and Southwest of the country, in particular to develop the mining and heavy industry. Although the policy laid the seeds of industrial development in the Northwest, during the Civil War development eventually died down.After the failure of the Great Leap Forward, China's leadership slowed the pace of industrialization. It invested more on in China's coastal regions and focused on the production of consumer goods. Construction of the Third Front reversed these trends, developing industry and using mass mobilization for the construction of such industrial projects, an approached that had been suspended after the failures of the Great Leap Forward.
In February 1962, Chen Yun had proposed that the Third Five-Year Plan should "solve the problems of food, clothes, and other life necessities." Zhou Enlai, in his report of the State Council on March 28, also reported that " should put agriculture in the primary place of the nation's economy. The economic planning should follow the priorities such that agriculture comes first, light industries comes next, heavy industries have the lowest priority". In early 1963, a central planning team put "solving the problems of food, clothes, and other life necessities" as the priority of economic works in their proposal for the Third Five-Year Plan. The preliminary draft for the Third Five Year Plan, of which Deng Xiaoping was a major author, had no provision for largescale industrialization in the country's interior.
Mao objected to the preliminary proposal because "he Third Five-Year Plan need to set basic industries in the Southwest." He said that agricultural and defense industries are like fists, basic industries are like the hip. "The fists cannot be powerful unless the hip is well seated." According to Mao's judgment, there was possibility that China would be involved in a war, while China's population and industries were concentrated on the east coast. As one of his inspirations for the Third Front, Mao cited the negative example of Chiang Kai-Shek's failure to establish sufficient industry away from the coast prior to the Second Sino-Japanese war, resulting in the Nationalist government being forced to retreat to a small inland industrial base in the face of Japanese invasion.
In April 1964, Mao read a General Staff report commissioned by deputy chief Yang Chengwu which evaluated the distribution of Chinese industry, noted that they were primarily concentrated in 14 major coastal cities which were vulnerable to nuclear attack or air raids, and recommended that the General Staff research measures to guard against a sudden attack. Major transportation hubs, bridges, ports and some dams were close to these major cities. Destruction of these infrastructures could lead to disastrous consequences. This evaluation prompted Mao to advocate for the creation of a heavy industrial zone as a safe haven for retreat in the event of foreign invasion during State Planning Meetings in May 1964. Subsequently referred to as the Big Third Front, this inland heavy industrial base was to be built up with the help of enterprises re-located from the coast. At a June 1964 Politburo meeting, Mao also advocated that each province should also establish its own military industrial complex as an additional measure.
Other key leadership, including Deng Xiaoping, Liu Shaoqi, and Li Fuchun, did not fully support the notion of the Third Front. Instead, they continued to emphasize the coastal development and consumer focus pursuant to the Third Five Year Plan. In their view, small-scale commerce should be emphasized to raise the standard of living. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident on August 2, 1964, however, quickly changed the discussion about the Third Five-Year Plan. Mao became concerned that the United States could strike China's nuclear weapons facilities in Lanzhou and Baotou and advocated even more strongly for development of the Third Front. Other key leadership's fear of attack by the United States increased also, and the Third Front received broad support thereafter. In 1965, Yu Qiuli was given the lead role in developing the Third Five Year Plan, consistent with its changing focus to preparations for the possibility that "the imperialists launch an aggressive war against China."