Third Front Construction: Secret factories in the mountains
8 October 2020
From the mid-1960s to the 1980s, in the densely forested valleys and deep caves of southwest China, were factories surreptitiously manufacturing equipment and armaments for civilian and military use. Their precise locations were deemed national security secrets. These clusters of secretive and self-contained communities were part of a herculean Chinese government effort to protect the nation’s strategic industrial and military assets.
Located in the southernmost part of Sichuan, Panzhihua as a city only came into existence during the 1960s at the height of the Third Front movement, ostensibly to develop its rich mineral resources. For decades, Panzhihua’s existence was a secret. It is now a city of 1.2 million. Credit: DFAT
This was the Construction of the Third Front, a massive investment in defence, technology, industries (including manufacturing, mining, metal and electricity), transport and other infrastructure projects into China’s hinterland.
At the time, China’s policy makers had determined that the Sino-Soviet Split and the Vietnam War and other regional security concerns meant that the country could be on the brink of war. China’s industries and population had historically been located on the eastern seaboard. As a consequence, there were fears that its industrial base was susceptible to strikes coming from foreign navies.
Based on the principle of “going to the mountains to hide and disperse” (靠山、分散、隐蔽), the Third Front used the rugged terrain of southwest China to manufacture strategically important products as a bulwark against war. Credit: DFAT
Just as the early planners in Australia decided that a site for our national capital needed to be inland to avoid cannon fire from enemy ships, the Chinese government in the 1960s resolved to locate its strategic industries to the interior--the most inaccessible part of China for an invading foreign power. Hence, between 1964 and 1980, China invested nearly 40 per cent of the country’s investment in industries and infrastructure to Third Front Construction.
The Third Front region covered an area that includes southwest China, northwest China and parts of provinces adjacent to the eastern coastal provinces. Within the Third Front region, Sichuan and Guizhou attracted the most industries, research institutes, and people. Millions of factory and construction workers, engineers, cadres, intellectuals, military personnel and their families moved clandestinely to the Third Front from all over the country.
An abandoned apartment block overlooking a swimming pool of an old company town outside Chengdu. At its peak, 5,000 people worked for the now defunct Beijing Broadcasting Equipment Factory to make television antennae. Credit: DFAT
Third Front communities lived and worked in secluded and self-contained communes, much like a company town, with a range of facilities including schools, hospitals, shops, sporting complexes and housing. Some larger ones included a university, hotels and even cable cars for commuting over the very steep terrain.
Third Front company towns often had facilities such as concert halls, hospitals, schools and even universities. Credit: DFAT
Today, over hundreds of the original projects remain, including the Chengdu-Kunming Railway, Chongqing Iron and Steel, Panzhihua Iron and Steel and the Second Auto Works, although many have been closed as well. As a result of the Third Front movement, dozens of cities including Mianyang, Deyang, Panzhihua in Sichuan, and Guiyang in Guizhou, developed key industries and supply chains. While the overall effectiveness of the Third Front strategy is debatable, the relocation of industries to China’s interior brought enormous benefit to many communities by providing the region’s impoverished and agriculture based economies with skilled people and technology.
A Third Front town such as this one did not have an official address, for fear that its location could be revealed and become vulnerable to foreign attack. Deliveries were marked to a post office box in Chengdu. Credit: DFAT
When the Great Western Development (or “Go West”) Strategy was launched in 2001, southwest China, especially Sichuan and Chongqing, already had a firm industrial foundation to work from. The legacy of the Third Front strategy is visible in Chengdu’s current technological output. With the city becoming a centre for innovation, reportedly assembling two thirds of the world’s iPads and half of the world’s Intel chips, as well as manufacturing the Chengdu J-20 fifth generation stealth fighter, Chengdu and its satellite cities will continue to be integral to China’s ongoing quest for technological advancement.
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