The third-line construction refers to a large-scale economic construction activity carried out since 1964 under the leadership of the Communist Party of China and with China's southwest and northwest regions as the key regions, with war preparedness as the center and basic industry, national defense science and technology industry, and transportation facilities as the focus. The third-tier areas mainly include Sichuan (including Chongqing), Guizhou, Yunnan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia and Qinghai provinces and regions, as well as Shanxi, Hebei, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Guangxi, Guangdong and other provinces and regions close to the mainland. At the same time, across the country.
In the hinterland of the first- and second-tier areas, economic construction activities that rely on local self-raised funds and are centered on war preparedness and mainly focus on local military and industrial transportation facilities are called "small third-line" construction.
The construction of the third front is a war preparation and industrial relocation movement carried out in the context of the international Cold War, which has had a profound impact on contemporary Chinese history and contemporary Chinese society.
The mountain rain is coming, and the black clouds are crushing the city
After going through the "58" and three years of difficult times, the Ninth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee held from January 14 to 18, 1961 established the eight-character principle of "adjustment, consolidation, enrichment, and improvement."
It was proposed to postpone the implementation of the Third Five-Year Plan for the Development of the National Economy by three years, and that the period from 1963 to 1965 should continue to be regarded as a transitional stage, and that the principle of readjustment should continue to be implemented and the proportional relationship between agriculture, lightness, and heavy should be changed.
However, the relatively peaceful international situation required for the recovery and development of the national economy is really an extravagant hope for China, which insists on "opposing imperialism with one hand and revisionism with the other," and the "great turmoil, great division, and great reorganization" of the world pattern has put China's national defense and security under threat from all sides.
To the east of China, the United States has stepped up military assistance to the Chiang Kai-shek clique, and the Taiwan authorities' clamor for the "** mainland" has become increasingly intense; US U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance planes have repeatedly penetrated deep into the Chinese mainland to collect military intelligence; between 1961 and 1962, they twice formulated and exercised the "High Heel I" and "High Heel II" plans for nuclear attacks on China.
In particular, after the U.S. Intelligence Agency confirmed that China was conducting nuclear tests and nuclear weapons development programs, in April 1963, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff submitted a plan to the Department of Defense to combat China's nuclear program.
In the plan, the United States decided to cooperate with Chiang Kai-shek and South Korea, on the one hand, to exert pressure on China's eastern border and implement a naval blockade;On the other hand, it infiltrates into the hinterland of Chinese mainland and uses tactical nuclear ** to strike China's ground-based nuclear facilities from the air. Although the plan was never implemented, the U.S. military threat and nuclear blackmail against China threatened war on our eastern border.
In the north of China, the Sino-Soviet divide was widening, relations were breaking down, and since 1960, the Soviet side has been stirring up trouble on the Sino-Soviet border.
In 1962, the Soviet Union instigated the flight of tens of thousands of Chinese residents in Yili, Tacheng and other places in Xinjiang, China, the Soviet army entered Mongolia that year, and in 1963 signed with Mongolia the "Defense Agreement on the Soviet Union to Help Mongolia Strengthen the Southern Border" aimed at dealing with China, Chen Chongbing on the Sino-Soviet border, and did not recognize that the border treaty signed between Tsarist Russia and the Qing ** was an unequal treaty, resulting in the failure of diplomatic negotiations on the Sino-Soviet border, and a large area of the border between northern China and the Soviet Union faced severe military pressure.
If China's east and north are only "cold wars", then the west and south are facing "hot wars". India has repeatedly crossed the border and invaded the eastern and western sections of the Sino-Indian border.
On October 20, 1962, the invading Indian army launched a large-scale attack on our border troops, and the squadron was ordered to counterattack in self-defense, repelled the Indian army, killed and captured more than 8,000 Indian troops, and cleared more than 90 strongholds set up by the Indian army in China. Since then, although the Chinese side has taken the initiative to cease fire, withdraw, and return the seized materials, the military confrontation on the Sino-Indian border has not eased.
The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was manifested in Vietnam on the Indochina Peninsula as a real war.
In August 1964, the United States created the "Gulf of Tonkin Incident" and openly dispatched the Seventh Fleet to carry out military strikes against North Vietnam, leading to a full-scale escalation of the Vietnam War and extending the war to southern China, including the Gulf of Tonkin and Hainan Island. China's support for the North Vietnamese regime put China's southern border under threat of war. The tense situation in the surrounding areas has cast a cloud of war over China's recovery and development of the national economy.
The construction of the third line is prepared for a rainy day
In May 1964, in accordance with the instructions of Yang Chengwu, deputy chief of the General Staff, the Operations Department of the General Staff submitted a research report on how to prepare for a sudden attack by the enemy in China's economic construction from the Standing Committee of the Standing Committee. The report pointed out that China's industry is too concentrated, the population of large cities is excessive, railway hubs and other transportation facilities are vulnerable to enemy bombing, and the emergency discharge capacity of reservoirs is very small.
After reading the report, I realized that China's industrial layout at that time was not conducive to preparing for war, so I said to *** and others on May 27, 1964
"In the time of the atomic bomb, it was not possible to do without the rear. The Third Five-Year Plan should consider solving the problem of unbalanced industrial distribution in the country.
The strategic layout of the first, second, and third fronts, strengthen the construction of the third line, and guard against the enemy's invasion. ”
On June 6, at the work conference, it was clearly pointed out that as long as imperialism exists, there is a danger of war. We are not the chief of staff of imperialism and do not know when it will go to war. It is proposed to build a third-line industrial base, and the first and second lines should also build some military industries. To carry out the construction of the third line, it is first necessary to build the Panzhihua Iron and Steel Industrial Base and the associated transportation, coal, and electric power. The construction should be fast, but not rough, Panzhihua can't get up, and I can't sleep.
The "Third Five-Year Plan" originally hoped to solve the problem of food, clothing and use, but the attitude of the first line made the first-line leaders gradually change their understanding.
He pointed out: The basic point that the chairman talked about yesterday was that we should make preparations for the third line of Sichuan, and we must now make preparations and proceed. If you don't start now, you will delay the time and will not be good in the future. It is necessary to open up the strategic aspect of the southwest. Therefore, when formulating the Third Five-Year Plan, the State Development Planning Commission regarded the construction of the third line as the top priority.
On the night that the "Gulf of Tonkin incident" in which the US destroyer "Makdos" engaged in a fierce battle with a Vietnamese Navy torpedo boat reached Beijing, he stayed up all night, and he commented on the draft statement of China's US aggression against Vietnam
"There is going to be a war, and our actions have to be reconsidered. ”
Subsequently, a task force headed by the first team was set up to put forward the "Report on How to Prevent Sudden Attacks by the Enemy in National Economic Construction", which proposed: all new construction projects should not be built on the front line; The existing continuation projects on the first line, except for those that can be completed and put into operation next year and the year after next, will be reduced in scale and will not be expanded; The existing old enterprises in the first line should divide the enterprises or workshops that can be moved, especially those related to the military industry and the machinery industry, into two parts, and divide them into the third and second lines; In the first-line national key institutions of higher learning and scientific research and design institutions, those that can be relocated should be relocated to the third and second lines in a planned manner, and those that cannot be relocated should be divided into two; In the future, all new construction projects, no matter which line they are built on, should implement the principle of dispersion, backing, and concealment, and should not be concentrated in a few cities or points. At this point, the strategic decision of the third-line construction was formally formed.
In order to strengthen the leadership of the third-line construction, from 1965 to 1966, the southwest, northwest, and central and southern regions have set up a third-line construction committee headed by the secretary of each ** bureau.
Since then, he has led the relevant ministries and commissions to inspect the deployment of the southwest and northwest lines, and the construction of the three lines has been vigorously carried out on the land of China.
"Good people and good horses" work hard
Mobilized by slogans such as "good people, good people, good horses" and "preparing for war and preparing for famine for the people," a large number of industrial and mining enterprises and scientific research institutes have moved from the first line to the third line, and millions of third-line builders have moved from the remote black soil in the northeast, the southeast coast, and the water towns in the south of the Yangtze River to the remote Qinba Mountains, the Great and Small Liangshan Mountains, and the Hexi Corridor, and are heading for a new battlefield of arduous entrepreneurship.
The third-tier areas are underdeveloped in terms of social economy, and the industrial layout is "backering, scattered, and hidden", and the third-tier builders are faced with the difficult situation of having no housing, no logistics, and no infrastructure. They opened roads in the mountains, built bridges when they encountered water, erected electric poles, built railways and highways, built rows of "dry base" houses, and built enterprises and scientific research institutes one after another on the poor and white land.
The construction period for the development of the Liuzhi Coal Mine was tight, and it was raining continuously. The builders who rushed from all sides of the motherland wrote in the petition for war:
"Fight sunny days, grab cloudy days, be windy and rainy as good days, and speed up the construction of the third line. ”
Liu Fenglin, the commander of the mining area, bought more than 1,000 umbrellas and distributed them to workers without raincoats, racing against time to continue construction to ensure the smooth completion of the special railway line for coal transportation. After working hard during the day, there is no place to camp at night, and it is difficult to sleep well. Instructor Bai Zhanzhong found three deep mountain caves, and the builders fell asleep to the roar of wild beasts.
Suddenly someone shouted:
"There's a snake in the bed. ”
The workers woke up and started a fight with the snake.
Bai Zhanzhong said with a smile after catching the snake:
"Eat snake meat tomorrow to improve your life, and everyone go back to sleep." ”
In a difficult environment, the builders' spirit of optimism runs through the construction of the third line.
At the construction site of the Chengdu-Kunming Railway, the 300,000 road construction army was faced with a "road construction forbidden area" with steep mountains, dense deep streams, vertical and horizontal ravines, and complex geology.
Zhang Zhijing, a 78-year-old railway soldier, recalled the scene of fighting in the Baihushan Tunnel
"When I entered the tunnel, my clothes never dried, my feet were soaked like chicken feet, and I basically came out every day except for my teeth and eyes, and my whole body was covered in mud. ”
Landslides and mudslides are the biggest threat to the lives of soldiers, and the huge mudslide that occurred in the Shamulata Tunnel in August 1968 alone caused the death of 87 soldiers.
It is precisely on the basis of this poverty and whiteness that the third-line builders have created many large and medium-sized projects in the mountains of the southwest and northwest with their own hands, and have formed a series of basic industries and national defense industrial centers, such as the Panzhihua Iron and Steel Industrial Base, the Chongqing Conventional Ordnance Industrial Base, the Liupanshui Coal Industrial Base, and the Xichang Satellite Launch Base, which have initially changed the unbalanced economic development in China's eastern and western regions, promoted the flow of personnel and ethnic integration, and strengthened national defense security and in-depth defense of the homeland.
Adjust and transform the integration of military and civilian
On November 20, 1983, a relevant meeting was convened and proposed:
"There should be a guideline and a plan for the construction of the third line, and generally speaking, there are three sentences: adjustment, transformation, and playing a role. At present, there are two tendencies to be prevented: one is to completely affirm that it is necessary to engage in large-scale supporting facilities and large-scale investment; The second is to negate the third line, to leave the third line, drop the tail and return to the coast. More than 200 billion yuan has been spent on the construction of the third line, and now it is necessary to carry out work in a down-to-earth manner through investigation and planning, so that its role can be brought into full play. ”
The third-line construction adjustment and transformation planning office was established, with Lu Dadong, the former governor of Sichuan Province, as the director, Qian Min and Zheng Hantao as the deputy directors, and the major provinces in the third-tier region have also set up their own third-line adjustment offices.
After nearly half a year of investigation and research, the third-tier enterprises are divided into three categories: the first category is that the layout meets the strategic requirements, the product direction is correct, there is a future for development, the economic benefits are good, the contribution to the country is great, and the construction is successful, accounting for 48%; The second category, that is, the construction is basically successful, but due to the constraints of transportation, energy, equipment, management level and other conditions, the production capacity is not fully utilized, and the economic benefits are not good enough, accounting for 45%; The third category is those with serious problems in site selection, production and scientific research that cannot be continued, unclear product direction, and no development prospects, accounting for 7%.
The relocation of third-tier enterprises is mainly aimed at the third type of enterprises, and the method of shutting down, stopping, merging, transferring, and relocating is adopted, that is, "those that should be shut down should not be relocated, those that can be relocated should not be relocated, those that can be relocated should not be relocated from a distance, and those that can be relocated to small and medium-sized cities should not be concentrated in large cities". The third-tier enterprises have adjusted and transformed 121 units, of which 9 have been shut down, 49 have been relocated and partially relocated, 48 have been relocated and merged, and 15 have all been converted to production, changing the layout of third-tier enterprises, making enterprises transfer to market, technology, and resource concentration, and promoting the transformation and upgrading of enterprises.
In addition to the relocation, the three-line adjustment and transformation is also aimed at the product direction and industrial structure of the enterprise. With the transition from a planned economy to a market economy, the 16-character guiding principle of "combining military and civilian use, combining peacetime and wartime, giving priority to military products, and raising the army by the people" has gradually been formed. Because most of the third-tier enterprises have a military background, the technical equipment is at the advanced level in China at the beginning of the reform and opening up, and the civilian products produced by them also have strong competitiveness, and a number of well-known domestic enterprises such as Changhong Electric, Zhenhua Electronics, and Dongfang Automobile have emerged.
The adjustment and transformation of the third-line construction is the second entrepreneurship of the third-line enterprises, and it is an effective practice of adhering to the military-civilian integration development strategy of enriching the country and strengthening the army. In January 2006, at the National Conference on Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, Zhang Yunchuan, director of the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, announced that the three-line transfer work had been fully completed. In the 21 st century, third-tier enterprises have also become a solid foundation for the smooth implementation of the strategy of large-scale development of the western region.
The spirit of the three lines is timeless
Fifty-five years ago, countless third-line builders rushed to the third-line from all over the motherland, with the will to fight "one is not afraid of hardship, the other is not afraid of death", selflessly dedicated their youth and talents, and with the determination of "dedicating their youth to their lives, and dedicating their lives to their children and grandchildren", they built thousands of enterprises and institutions in the ravines one after another, creating many great powers.
Nowadays, in the places where the third-line builders have struggled, the original sites of many enterprises have been included in the industrial heritage, and the third-line construction museums have been built in Panzhihua, Liupanshui and other places to show the world the suffering and glory of half a century ago.
On June 29, 2018, the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee and the Propaganda Department of the CPC Central Committee jointly issued the "Notice on Carrying Out the Activities of "Promoting the Spirit of Patriotic Struggle and Making Contributions to the New Era" among the Majority of Intellectuals", requiring "the protection and utilization of the relics of major engineering projects such as 'three-line construction' and 'two bombs and one satellite', and the excavation of educational resources related to history, culture and revolutionary traditions, as an important carrier for on-site teaching and experiential teaching for research and training".
Although the three-line spirit of "hard work, selfless dedication, unity and cooperation, and courage to innovate" has gone through the passage of time and vicissitudes, it is still timeless, and will surely inspire generations of Chinese sons and daughters to move forward bravely for the realization of the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation.