Mao's Third Front

Abstract

, an article appeared on page four of the People's Daily that at first glance was of no particular significance. It was about a man named Zhang Xianzhong who worked at a rural cotton-processing factory in Hubei province. A fire had recently broken out at his workplace, and he had run around with an extinguisher to protect machinery and cotton. Zhang's determination to safeguard China's collective property was impressive, and his "revolutionary heroic spirit of putting his life on the line" was worthy of praise. 1 In the 1970s the Chinese press was awash with similar stories, but buried near this article's end was a detail that was not at all run-of-the-mill. Zhang had "participated in Third Front construction." The phrase "Third Front construction" had never before appeared in the People's Daily. If someone had wondered what the Third Front was, the article offered no hints. It merely stated that Zhang had "participated in Third Front construction" and left it at that. If someone had asked around about the Third Front, most people would have been able to provide no information. Even if someone knew about it, they would have probably feigned ignorance since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had told them that the Third Front had to be hidden from China's Cold War enemiesthe United States and the Soviet Union. The concealment of the Third Front from public view might be unremarkable if it were small. Yet the Third Front was anything but tiny. The Third Front was, in the words of Barry Naughton, "a purposive, large-scale, centrally directed program" to construct "a huge selfsufficient industrial base area" in the mountains of inland China "to serve as a strategic reserve in the event of China being drawn into war" with the United States or the Soviet Union. 2 To build the Third Front, the Party mobilized roughly 15 million workers and one million family