Mao's Third Front

The Militarization of Cold War China

Covell F. Meyskens

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781108489553
• eBook ISBN:
  9781108804684
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• List of Maps
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The Coming of the Third Front Campaign
• 2 Good People and Good Horses Go to the Third Front
• 3 Concentrating Forces to Wage Wars of Annihilation
• 4 Produce First and Consume Later
• 5 Industrial Development amid Cold War Insecurity
• Epilogue: The Demilitarization of Chinese Socialism
• Appendix: Third Front Demographics
• Bibliography
• Index