Why stop the construction of the third line with an investment of 200 billion yuan and a continuous 15-year period?
In August 1964, the Gulf of Tonkin incident sparked a conflict, and the Vietnam War escalated into a local war. U.S. troops then landed in Da Nang, where two battalions of Marines were deployed, and the Air Force dispatched hundreds of warplanes to bomb North Vietnam, and the fighting even spread to the Sino-Vietnamese border.
In the early 60s of the 20th century, Sino-Soviet relations deteriorated, the border conflicts between the two sides continued, and the Soviet Union even threatened to launch a nuclear attack on China. Faced with the pressure of the Soviet Union to deploy a million-strong army on the Sino-Soviet border, China comprehensively stepped up preparations for war.
In 1962, the Sino-Indian border war broke out, and although China won the victory, India, with the support of the United States and the Soviet Union, did not agree with the outcome, and the tension on the Sino-Indian border was not eased.
At present, China is facing a complex surrounding environment, and there are potential military threats in the southeast, north, and west. In addition, our population and industry are too concentrated on the eastern seaboard, which is vulnerable to air strikes by the superpowers.
The heavy industrial areas in Northeast China are within the strike range of Soviet bombers and missiles, while the industrial areas in East China are exposed to the strike range of US aircraft carriers, and once a war breaks out, the entire national economy will be paralyzed, and the consequences will be unimaginable.
However, the industrial base of inland areas such as the southwest and northwest is weak, the transportation conditions are backward, and the overall industrial layout is obviously "heavy in the east and light in the west". Based on a summary of the lessons of the Great Patriotic War in the USSR, ** argues: "The outbreak of war would be unimaginable without a strong rear industrial base."
Three-line construction"It aims to establish an independent and complete industrial system to cope with possible wars and famines by relocating energy, aviation, and weapons industries from the southeast coast to the southwest and northwest regions.
Under the leadership of ***,"Five-year plan"The focus of work has also shifted from satisfying the people's basic living needs to third-line construction. In 1965,"Southwest Third Line Construction Committee"At the meeting, the importance of the strategic layout of national defense was emphasized, including the use of the country's investment in the construction of third-line armaments and the research of missiles and atomic bombs, as well as the preparation for the use of atomic bombs by the superpowers.
The construction of the third line is an important strategic project of national concern, mainly concentrated in the military and heavy industry fields, and it took a total of three five-year plans to go through the Third Five-Year Plan.
After the start of the third-line construction, ** went to the southwest and northwest regions for many times, including Chongqing, Panzhihua, Kunming and Lanzhou, and deeply participated in the planning of the third-line construction.
The four provinces in the southwest and northwest are the main areas for the construction of the third line, but the main large-scale projects are still concentrated in the south of the Qinling Mountains and the south of Xining in Qinghai. Among them, Panzhihua and Jiuquan are the main bases of the iron and steel industry, and Liupanshui is the base of the coal industryChengdu is the base of light industry, electronics industry and aviation industry, while Mianyang and Guangyuan are bases of nuclear industry and electronics industryChongqing is the base of the weapons industry, of which the 816 nuclear plant in Fuling is an important part of itGuiyang has built an optoelectronic industry and a part of the aircraft industry.
The Chengdu-Kunming Railway is a key area for the construction of the third line, with a wide range of radiation along the line, covering 7 cities and more than 50 counties in Sichuan and Yunnan. The railway branch line and highway network are well developed, and the enterprises are densely distributed, forming an economic layout in the southwest with Panzhihua as the center.
According to statistics, between 1964 and 1980, China invested 200 billion yuan in the central and western regions of the third-tier construction, and built more than 1,000 industrial and mining enterprises, infrastructure and scientific research institutions.
Millions of workers, soldiers, cadres, and intellectuals participated in the construction, and successfully built large-scale projects such as the Chengdu-Kunming Railway, the Panzhihua Iron and Steel Base, and the Liupanshui Coal Base, enabling the industrialization of a number of western cities that originally had no industrial base.
At the critical juncture of preparing for war, the scale of the third-line construction was too large, and it exceeded the limit of the country's bearing. It is difficult to obtain funds, equipment and raw materials for some projects, and they have been forced to stop work many times, resulting in longer and longer construction periods and huge waste.
At the same time, the scattered layout also brings a lot of difficulties to management and efficiency. Some new projects were rushed into operation without full demonstration and survey, which consumed a lot of manpower and material resources.
For example, more than 20 units under the Hanzhong Aircraft Industrial Base in Shaanxi Province are scattered in seven counties, and it is very inconvenient for employees to commute to and from work by car just to transport spare parts.
In addition, the Chuandong Shipyard located in the Fuling Mountains of Chongqing was originally responsible for the manufacture of conventionally powered submarines, but the submarine could not dive in the Yangtze River after launching, and needed to be towed by a tugboat to the mouth of the Yangtze River more than 2,000 kilometers away to dive, which was extremely unfavorable to the verification of the first.
In the 80s, the international situation facing China was significantly better than that of the years. China and the United States formally established diplomatic relations, and the threat of war in the southern and coastal areas decreased.
In 1982, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev delivered the "Tashkent Speech", which was seen as a signal of improving Sino-Soviet relations. After Gorbachev came to power, the Soviet Union implemented strategic contraction on a global scale, and Sino-Soviet relations gradually eased.
As an important decision-maker and planner of the construction of the third line, he began to re-examine the issue of the construction of the third line. "The decision to build a third front was based on the assumption that a world war was inevitable, and now it seems that there is a great possibility that there will be no world war for some time," he said.
In 1984, with the release of the million-dollar disarmament decision, the construction of the third line gradually faded out of the historical stage at the national strategic level. **Stopping the construction of the third line is not a complete denial, but requires the third-line enterprises to obey the overall situation of national economic construction and carry out various adjustments such as shutting down, stopping, merging, transferring, and relocating.
For example, the Chongqing Jialing Machinery Factory transformed from a manufacturer of military vehicles such as tanks to a manufacturer of motorcycles, while a military electronic component factory in Mianyang shifted from military production to television manufacturing, eventually developing into the Changhong Group today.
Although there are many problems, the decisions and achievements of the third-line construction cannot be ignored. From a military point of view, the construction of the third line has achieved the desired results. In the face of the nuclear threat from an external superpower, the dispersal of the military industry into the mountains and forests of the great southwest makes it necessary for any country that attempts nuclear blackmail to think twice about the failure to completely destroy China's military-industrial capabilities in the first wave of nuclear strikes.
At the same time, the construction of the third line is also an important part of the development of the national economy, which has not only changed the backward appearance of the western region, but also effectively narrowed the gap between the east and the west.
The three southwestern provinces, which were previously isolated by mountains and valleys and large rivers, have gradually entered the era of industrialization and undergone earth-shaking changes. The industrial facilities and infrastructure accumulated during the construction of the third line also laid a solid foundation for the subsequent large-scale development of the western region. 100 help plan