Mao's Third Front
The Militarization of Cold War China

An examination of how economic development and everyday life intersected with the temperature of Cold War geopolitics in Mao's China.

Covell F. Meyskens (Author)

9781108489553, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 May 2020

292 pages
23.6 x 16 x 1.8 cm, 0.6 kg

'… the Third Front still has potential for further research and this book has laid the groundwork for future efforts.' Youngjune Chung, Pacific Affairs

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.

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

Subject Areas: Military history [HBW], Asian history [HBJF]