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  1. Home
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  3. Mao's Third Front
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
April 2020
Print publication year:
2020
Online ISBN:
9781108784788
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108784788
Subjects:
East Asian History, Area Studies, Asian Studies, Military History, History
Information

Book description

In 1964, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) made a momentous policy decision. In response to rising tensions with the United States and Soviet Union, a top-secret massive military industrial complex in the mountains of inland China was built, which the CCP hoped to keep hidden from enemy bombers. Mao named this the Third Front. The Third Front received more government investment than any other developmental initiative of the Mao era, and yet this huge industrial war machine, which saw the mobilization of fifteen million people, was not officially acknowledged for over a decade and a half. Drawing on a rich collection of archival documents, memoirs, and oral interviews, Covell Meyskens provides the first history of the Third Front campaign. He shows how the militarization of Chinese industrialization linked millions of everyday lives to the global Cold War, merging global geopolitics with local change.

Reviews

‘… the Third Front still has potential for further research and this book has laid the groundwork for future efforts.’

Youngjune Chung Source: Pacific Affairs

‘… [offers] both new theoretical insights and methodological innovations to the study of the role of technology in modern Chinese warfare. … [the book] will be inspiration for future studies in the history of warfare and science and technology in modern China.’

Zhongtian Han Source: China International Strategy Review

‘[A] tour de force, agenda-setting monograph that successfully draws out its documentary and oral sources in ways that prompt us to rethink Mao-era regional and industrial history in a wider context of Cold War history. One can only hope that in the future, scholars will be permitted access to sources that can build on this fine piece of scholarship.’

Julia C. Strauss Source: The China Quarterly

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