Third Front (China)

The Third Front Movement (Chinese: 三线建设; pinyin: Sānxiàn jiànshè) or Third Front Construction was a Chinese government campaign to develop industrial and military facilities in the country's interior.^[1]: 44 The campaign was motivated by concerns that China's industrial and military infrastructure would be vulnerable in the event of invasion by the Soviet Union or air raids by the United States.^[1]: 49 The largest development campaign of Mao-era China, it involved massive investment in national defense, technology, basic industries (including manufacturing, mining, metal, and electricity), transportation and other infrastructure investments and was carried out primarily in secret.

"Third Front" is a geo-military concept: it is relative to the "First Front" area that is close to the potential war fronts. The Third Front region covered 13 provinces and autonomous regions with its core area in the Northwest (including Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, and Qinghai) and Southwest (including today's Sichuan, Chongqing, Yunnan, and Guizhou). Its development was motivated by national defense considerations following the escalation of the Vietnam War after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, the Sino-Soviet Split and small-scale border skirmishes between China and the Soviet Union.

The Third Front campaign industrialized part of China's rugged interior and agricultural region. Between 1964 and 1980, China invested 205 billion yuan in the Third Front Region, accounting for 39.01% of total national investment in basic industries and infrastructure. Millions of factory workers, cadres, intellectuals, military personnel, and tens of millions of construction workers, flocked to the Third Front region. More than 1,100 large and medium-sized projects were established during the Third Front period. With large projects such as Chengdu-Kunming Railway, Panzhihua Iron and Steel, Second Auto Works, the Third Front Movement stimulated previously poor and agricultural economies in China's southwest and northwest. Dozens of cities, such as Mianyang, Deyang, Panzhihua in Sichuan, Guiyang in Guizhou, Shiyan in Hubei, emerged as major industrial cities.

However, the designs of many Third Front projects were uneconomic due to their location or deficient due to their hurried construction. For national defense reasons, location choices for the Third Front projects followed the guiding principle “Close to mountains, dispersed, hidden” (kaoshan, fensan, yinbi). Many Third Front projects were located in remote areas that were hard to access and far away from supplies and potential markets. The Third Front Movement was carried out in a hurry. Many Third Front projects were simultaneously being designed, constructed, and put in production, (biansheji, bianshigong, bianshengchan).

After rapprochement with the United States reduced the national defense considerations underlying the Third Front, investment in its projects decreased. Since the reform of state-owned enterprises starting in the 1980s, many Third Front plants went bankrupt, though some others reinvented themselves and continued to serve as pillars in their respective local economies or were developed into successful private enterprises.