Experiencing the Cold War at Shanghai’s secret military industrial complex

ABSTRACT

Studies of Cold War China have mainly concentrated on the affairs of diplomatic elites. This article contributes to the emerging body of scholarship which descends from the realm of high politics and shows how the geopolitical tensions of the Cold War became embedded in frameworks of meaning and practices of everyday life in Mao’s China. Concentrating on the military industrial complex established to safeguard Shanghai, the article elucidates how people who participated in its construction experienced Chinese Communist Party efforts to socially engineer them into a work force that embraced its policy of spartan industrial development for national security’s sake.

KEYWORDS:

• Cold War
• Modern China
• socialism
• social history
• development

Acknowledgment

Covell Meyskens would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and Fabio Lanza for productive comments on this article as well as Xu Youwei for providing his published Small Third Front materials.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Tang Dingfa, “Wo yu xiezuo jixiechang caiwuke,” in Xiao sanxian jianshe yanjiu luntan di san ji (XSJ3), ed. Xu Youwei and Chen Donglin (Shanghai: Shanghai daxue chubanshe, 2018), 108.

² Xu Youwei, ed., Koshu: Xiao sanxian jianshe (Shanghai: Shanghai daxue chubanshe, 2013), 9; Chen Zhiyue, ed., Zhengcheng: qianjin zhong de Jiangxi 9304 chang (Shanghai: Shanghai daxue chubanshe, 2015), 3.

³ Guowuyuan sanxian jianshe tiaozheng gaizao guihua bangong shi Figure 1sanxian jianshe bianxie zu, Sanxian jianshe (Beijing, 1991), 32.

⁴ Barry Naughton, “The Third Front: Defence Industrialization in the Chinese Interior,” China Quarterly 115 (1988): 351–86; Barry Naughton, “Industrial Policy During the Cultural Revolution: Military Preparation, Decentralization, and Leaps Forward,” in New Perspectives on the Cultural Revolution, ed. William Joseph, Christine P.W. Wong, and David Zweig (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 153–82; Lorenz Lüthi, “The Vietnam War and China’s Third-Line Defense Planning before the Cultural Revolution, 1964–1966,” Journal of Cold War Studies 10, (2008): 26–51; Chris Bramall, In Praise of Maoist Economic Planning (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 101–3.

⁵ Some examples are Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Lorenz M. Lüthi, The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Sergey Radchenko, Two Suns in the Heavens: The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962–1967 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009).

⁶ Jeremy Brown, “From Resisting Communists to Resisting America: Civil War and Korean War in Southwest China, 1950–1951,” in Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People’s Republic of China, ed. Jeremy Brown and Paul G. Pickowicz (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 105–29; Austin Jersild, The Sino-Soviet Alliance (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014); Xiaobing Li, The Dragon in the Jungle: The Chinese Army in the Vietnam War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).

⁷ Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War against Nature (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 142–59; Jeremy Brown, City Versus Countryside in Mao’s China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 173–83, 190–9.

⁸ For summaries of this research, Laura McEnaney, “Cold War Mobilization and Domestic Politics: The United States,” in Cambridge History of the Cold War,vol. 1, ed. Melvyn Leffler and O.A. Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 420–41; David Priestland, “Cold War Mobilisation and Domestic Politics: The Soviet Union,” in Cambridge History of the Cold War,vol. 1, 442–63.

⁹ Paul Chamberlin, The Cold War’s Killing Fields: Rethinking the Long Peace (New York: Harper Collins, 2018).

¹⁰ Covell Meyskens, Mao’s Third Front: The Militarization of Cold War China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 20–1, 43–50.

¹¹ Guowuyuan, Sanxian, 228.

¹² On Maoist aestheticism, Maurice Meisner, Marxism, Maoism, and Utopianism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), 118–31.

¹³ McEnaney, “Cold War.”

¹⁴ On state-society cleavages, Neil Diamant, Revolutionizing the Family: Politics, Love, and Divorce in Urban and Rural China, 1949–1968 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 9–11. On commitment to party objectives, David Apter and Tony Saich, Revolutionary Discourse in Mao’s Republic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994); Gail Hershatter, The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China’s Collective Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).

¹⁵ On urban welfare benefits, Joel Andreas, Disenfranchised: The Rise and Fall of Industrial Citizenship in China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 53–5.

¹⁶ For similar trends among sent down youth, Emily Honig and Xiaojian Zhao, Across the Great Divide: The Sent-Down Youth Movement in Mao’s China, 1968–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 117–36.

¹⁷ Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi, Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuan bian, vols 16–20 (Beijing: Zhongguo wenxian chubanshe, 1992–1998).

¹⁸ Timothy Cheek, ed., Mao Zedong and China’s Revolutions: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 39. For leaders’ disagreements, Meyskens, Mao’s Third Front, 54–78.

¹⁹ Cheek, Mao, 39.

²⁰ Hershatter, Gender, 5.

²¹ “Zongcan zuozhan bu de baogao,” 25 April 1964, in Zhongguo gongchandang yu sanxian jianshe (ZGYSJ), ed. Chen Donglin (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe, 2015), 55–6.

²² Naughton, “Third Front,” 353.

²³ Mao Zedong, “Mei ge sheng dou yao you yi, er, sanxian,” 8 June 1964, in ZGYSJ, 52.

²⁴ Mao Zedong, “Difang dangwei yao gao junshi, yao zhunbei da dan bu yao huangzhang,” 16 June 1964, in ZGYSJ, 53.

²⁵ Naughton, “Third Front,” 351; Lüthi, “Vietnam War,” 26, 32–3.

²⁶ “Guanyu guofang gongye he sanxian zhanbei gongzuo de qingshi baogao,” 18 October 1964, in ZGYSJ, 93.

²⁷ “Zhonggong Zhongyang pizhuan Zhou Enlai, Luo Ruiqing guanyu yi er liang xian gesheng, shi, qu jianshe ziji houfang he zhanbei gongzuo de baogao,” 3 November 1964, in ZGYSJ, 96.

²⁸ “Luo Ruiqing xiang zhongyang tichu de ‘guanyu anpai yi erxian shengshi houfang jianshe de baogao’ yaodian,” 7 February 1965, in ZGYSJ, 142–3.

²⁹ Zhonggong Anhui shengwei dangshi yanjiushi, ed., Shanghai xiao sanxian jianshe zai Anhui: Koushu shilu (SXS) (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe, 2018), 295.

³⁰ Guowuyuan, Sanxian, 27.

³¹ Xu, “Xiao,” 2.

³² Xu Youwei, ed., Koushu Shanghai: Xiao sanxian jianshe (Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe, 2013), 9–10. On Chinese aid to North Vietnam, Xiaobing Li, Building Ho’s Army: Chinese Military Assistance to North Vietnam (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2019).

³³ Xu Youwei, “Xiao sanxian jianshe yanjiu de zhongyao wenxian,” in Women renmin chang shang: Jiangxi ‘xiao sanxian’ 9333 chang shilu, ed. Mao Xiaobing (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2015), 2–3.

³⁴ ”Jiangxi xiao sanxian,” MilTalk, 26 January 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y9pk7a7z (accessed December 25, 2019).

³⁵ Xu Youwei, author’s interview, June 2019, Shanghai, China.

³⁶ Zhonggong Jiangxi shengwei guofang gongye bangongshi, “Guanyu guanche zhixing ‘kaoshan, fensan, yinbi’ fangzhen de ruogan juti guiding,” 15 June 1966, B76-4-383, 64–6, Shanghai Municipal Archive (SMA).

³⁷ “Shanghai xiao sanxian dangshi (jianshe shi),” in Anhui Chizhou diqu Shanghai xiao sanxian dangan baokan (ACDS), ed. Xu Youwei (Chizhou: Chizhou linzhi caiyin youxian zeren gongsi, 2017), 325. Zheng Jinmao, “Zai wannan jianku chuangye,” SXS, 52.

³⁸ Xu Guoguang, “Diqu zuzhi chang yanzhong de Shanghai he Anhui de liang di guanxi,” in Koushu, 92.

³⁹ Gao Qiugen, Qinfen heshan: wushi nian wangshi jishi (Shanghai: Self-published, 2018), 9–13, 93.

⁴⁰ On political loyalty, Susan Shirk, Competitive Comrades: Career Incentives and Student Strategies in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).

⁴¹ On rural-urban migration, Tiejun Cheng and Mark Selden, “The Origins and Social Consequences of China’s Hukou System,” China Quarterly 139 (1994): 644–68.

⁴² Mao’s quotes about the Front in this paragraph were distributed to all projects. “Koushu lishi zuodao le sheme: Qiangjiu xian sanxian jianshe de lishi jiyi,” Zhonggong Shanghai shiwei dangshi yanjiushi, 30 October 2017, http://www.ccphistory.org.cn/node2/shds/n1459/u1ai26731.html.

⁴³ Shanghai shi di er shangye ju geming weiyuanhui, “Guanyu choudiao chuishi yuan, lifa yuan, lengcang jigong zhiyuan Jiangxi xiao sanxian erjibu de qingshi baogao,” B98-2-128, 8, SMA.

⁴⁴ Shanghai, “Guanyu,” 10.

⁴⁵ “Dongyuan zhigong zhiyuan neidi jianshe xuanchuan tigang,” 30 January 1965, A38-1–343, 93–4, SMA.

⁴⁶ Ibid.

⁴⁷ Shanghai, “Guanyu,” 10–11.

⁴⁸ On popular engagement with propaganda, Denise Ho, Curating Revolution: Politics on Display in Mao’s China (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

⁴⁹ Shanghai, “Guanyu,” 10–11.

⁵⁰ “Dongyuan,” 95–6.

⁵¹ Ibid.

⁵² Ibid.

⁵³ On sent down youth, Honig, Across, 18–39.

⁵⁴ Xu Ruisheng, “Shanghai xiao sanxian peijin zhongxue zhuiyi,” in Xiao sanxian jianshe yanjiu luntan di si ji (XSJ4), ed. Xu Youwei and Chen Donglin (Shanghai: Shanghai daxue chubanshe, 2018), 390. Other workers also went to the Front to be with family. Gu Guoxiang, “Yi wei Shanghai Anhui xianchang jingli de Shanghai xiao sanxian jianshe,” in Shanghai xiao sanxian zai Guichi (SXSZG), ed. Fang Li (Beijing: Tuanjie chubashe, 2018), 33.

⁵⁵ Gao, Qinfen, 9–13, 94.

⁵⁶ Zhang Zhangquan, “Wode zuihou yi fen ‘gongzuo banggao,’” in XSJ3, 56.

⁵⁷ Wu Yushan, “Women shi zhiging mofan zhi jia,” in Anhui Chizhou diqu Shanghai xiao san koushu lishi ziliao huibian (ACDSX), ed. Xu Youwei (Shanghai: Shanghai daxue wenxue yuan, 2017), 55.

⁵⁸ Xu Zhaoxuan, “Wo shi gongchang de shenghuo houqin,” in XSJ3, 79.

⁵⁹ Cong yanjiu suo dao xiao sanxian,” in Koushu, 50–1.

⁶⁰ Xu Ruzhong, “Wo suo zhidao de ba wu gangchang,” in SXS, 66–7. Some medical workers wanted to go to the Front for the same reason. Jiang Zheng, “Huiyi wo zai hou wei zu de rizi,” in SXS, 109.

⁶¹ Zhao Zhenjiang, “Jian chang zhong de gongnong guanxi,” in XSJ3, 91. Urban recruits for Tianjin’s Front held similar views, Brown, City, 179.

⁶² Tang, “Wo yu xiezuo,” in XSJ3, 108.

⁶³ Gu, “Yi wei,” in SXSZG, 33.

⁶⁴ “Shanghai shi di si jianzhu gongcheng gongsi 402 gongcheng dui,” undated early 1970s, B119-4-428, 50, SMA.

⁶⁵ Chen Zongkang, “Gang jin chang de ji ge di yi yinxiang,” in Women renmin chang xia (WRCX), 569–71.

⁶⁶ Zhang Guantong, “Er san za ji,” in WRCX, 572. On people simulating assent to party propaganda, Perry Link, An Anatomy of Chinese: Rhythm, Metaphor, Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 278–95.

⁶⁷ Fu Rushan, “Wode Jiangxi xiao sanxian huiyi,” in Xiao sanxian jianshe yanjiu luntan di yi ji (XSJ1), ed. Xu Youwei and Chen Donglin (Shanghai: Shanghai daxue chubanshe, 2015), 143. On labour camps, Aminda Smith, Thought Reform and China’s Dangerous Classes: Reeducation, Resistance, and the People (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013).

⁶⁸ Brown, “Resisting,” 105–29.

⁶⁹ Wang Jinzhong, “Wo zai Shanghai xiao sanxian chang de suiyue,” in SXS, 146.

⁷⁰ Ma Xingyu, Wang Hao, Hu Yinyin, and Wang Mengxue, “Anhui shifan daxue xinwen xueyuan wannan Shanghai xiao sanxian koushu shi huibian,” in XSJ4, 380.

⁷¹ Zhongyo shehui kexue yuan nongye jingji yanjiu suo, Nongye jingji ziliao, 1949–1983 (Beijing: Nongye yuye bu shuichan ju, 1983), 516–17; Ma, “Anhui,” 382.

⁷² Ma, “Anhui,” 387. Anhui sheng Chizhou zhuanqu geweihui, “Guanyu jiaqiang guofang gongye lingdao deng wenti de yijian,” 15 February 1970, in ACDS, 19; Brown, City, 181.

⁷³ Ma, “Anhui,” 383. Villages with sent down youth had similar arrangements. Honig, Across, 117–36.

⁷⁴ Gao, Qinfen, 137.

⁷⁵ Pan Xiufan, “Ou yu,” in WRCX, 579.

⁷⁶ Xu Chunhua, “Bo mie de qingchun jiyi,” in SXSZG, 66.

⁷⁷ Qin Lisheng, “Wo zi yong hong jixie chang dang gongren,” in SXSZG, 68–9. On rural clothing, Jeremy Brown, “Spatial Profiling: Seeing Rural and Urban in Mao’s China,” in Visualizing China: Image, History and Memory in China, 1750–Present, ed. James Cook, Joshua Goldstein, Matthew D. Johnson, and Sigrid Schmalzer (Lexington: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014), 207.

⁷⁸ Fu, “Wode,” 139.

⁷⁹ Shi Zhiding, “Dengbao zuo guanggao, wei weihun nan zhigong zhao nü pengyou,” in ACDSX, 69. Gao, Qinfen, 93–8.

⁸⁰ Shanghai xiao sanxian ziqiang huagong gongbu huiyi jilu, “Quan chang zhigong dahui,” 18 November 1974, in ACDS, 523.

⁸¹ “Xin Dianwen caifang lü,” in Women renmin chang shang, 22–3.

⁸² Cao Bowei, “Jianshe chuqi de jianku suiyue,” in Koushu, 88–9.

⁸³ Huang Biao, “Qiaoqiao de qu yuanman de gui,” in Koushu 66.

⁸⁴ Gao, Qinfen, 99–101.

⁸⁵ Cao, “Jianshe,” 89; Yu Shunsheng, “Shanghai xiao sanxian Guichi gaishu,” in SXSZG, 5; “Xin Dianwen,” 24; Xu, “Wo shi,” 81–4. For similar conditions at Tianjin’s Front, Brown, City, 176–9.

⁸⁶ Fei Jinmei, “Wo zai,” in SXSZG, 117.

⁸⁷ “Qingxi xiao sanxian youyou ba qu qing,” in SXSZG, 63; Cheng Longxiang, “Wo zai Changjiang yiyuan gongzuo de rizi,” in SXSZG, 98.

⁸⁸ On militarized language, Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War, 3–6. This paragraph and the next are based on Zhang Haihua, “Shangou shenghuo de diandian didi,” in WRCX, 622–6.

⁸⁹ Shapiro, Mao’s War, 67–94. For an analogous situation in the hydraulic sector, David Pietz, The Yellow River: The Problem of Water in Modern China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 211–29; Chris Courtney, “At War with Water: The Maoist state and the 1954 Yangzi floods,” Modern Asian Studies 52 (2018): 1807–36.

⁹⁰ “Yu Xuya tongzhi zai sanxian jianshe zuotanhui shang de zongjie,” 14 September 1969, 15-12-13-9, 3, Chizhou Municipal Archive.

⁹¹ Ibid.

⁹² Gu, “Yi wei,” in SXSZG, 34–5.

⁹³ Yu, “Shanghai xiao sanxian Guichi,” 5–6; Zhang Weide, “Shanghai xiao sanxian zai Guichi de wangshi huiyi,” in SXSZG, 13–14.

⁹⁴ On accelerating industrialisation for security reasons, Shapiro, Mao’s War, 70–2.

⁹⁵ Zhonggong Jiangxi shengwei guofang gongye bangongshi, “Guanyu Guanche zhixing zhongyang dui xiao sanxian jianshe gongzuo zhishi de baogao,” 7 July 1966, B76-4-383, 61, SMA. For complaints at Tianjin’s Front, Brown, City, 179.

⁹⁶ Ibid.

⁹⁷ Ibid.

⁹⁸ Ibid.

⁹⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰⁰ Shanghai shi houfang jidi guanli ju dangshi bianxie zu, “Shanghai xiao sanxian dangshi,” April 1988, in ACDS, 332; Luo Heming, “Wo zai huoju jixie chang de danshen suiyue,” in SXSZG, 85–7.

¹⁰¹ Xu, “Bo mie,” 66.

¹⁰² Wang Zeng, “Zai wannan dang yisheng de rizi li,” in SXS, 135–6.

¹⁰³ Gao, Qinfen, 110. Xu Xiaoling, “Shangou li de guangbo zhan,” in WRCX, 726–7; Zheng Zhulai, “Jiyi Zhong de wuzhou dianji chang,” in SXSZG, 72–3. On linking local and international struggles, Shapiro, Mao’s War, 127.

¹⁰⁴ Zhang, “Er san za ji,” 574.

¹⁰⁵ Fu, “Wode,” 141.

¹⁰⁶ Zhang Yanhua, “Wo zeng zai huoju chang xiaoxue renjiao,” in SXSZG, 79; Xu, “Wo suo,” 45. Brown, City, 182.

¹⁰⁷ Lin Fengfang, “Wo zai renmin fang dianying,” in WRCX, 720–1. For similar connections between Shanghai and sent down youth, Honig, Across, 117–36.

¹⁰⁸ Anhui sheng chizhou zhuan qu geming weiyuanhui, “Gaoju Mao Zedong sixiang da hongqi, yi linzhan de zitai, jij canjia sanxian jianshe,” 28 May 1970, in ACDS, 32.

¹⁰⁹ Anhui, “Gaoju Mao Zedong,” 35.

¹¹⁰ Zhonggong Chizhou diqu weiyuanhui, “Diwu dangwei changwei, fenqu dangwei changwei guanyu zhanbei gongzuo huiyi jiyao,” 15 October 1971, in ACDS, 71–3.

¹¹¹ Anhui sheng, “Guanyu jiaqiang,” 19.

¹¹² Huang, “Qiaoqiao,” 69. On rural markets at Tianjin’s Front, Brown, City, 182.

¹¹³ Zeng Boqing, “Wo zai xiao sanxian de rizi li,” in XSJ3, 100. On theft at Tianjin’s Front, Brown, City, 181.

¹¹⁴ Zhao, “Jian,” 96.

¹¹⁵ Gao, Qinfen, 194.

¹¹⁶ Wang, “Wo zai,” 150.

¹¹⁷ Xu, “Diqu zuzhi,” 97; Zhao, “Jian,” 97. On urban-rural conflicts at Tianjin’s Front, Brown, City, 176.

¹¹⁸ “Guanyu houfang xiao sanxian jianshe zhong jixu jiejue de ji ge wenti de qingshi baogao,” 27 June 1978, B246-3-712, 155, SMA.

¹¹⁹ Huadong, “Wei jiasu Shanghai baojian,” 47.

¹²⁰ Xu, “Shanghai xiao sanxian,” 392. Shanghai parents similarly helped their rusticated children, Honig, Across, 80–1.

¹²¹ Fei, “Wo zai,” 119.

¹²² Wang Meiyu, “Yiqie weile women zhigong de qieshen liyi,” in Koushu, 118; Xu, “Wo suo,” 70–1.

¹²³ Honig, Across, 117–36.

¹²⁴ Cheng Yulong, “Jiangxi xiao sanxian guangming jixie chang,” in XSJ1, 158.

¹²⁵ Fu, “Wode,” 141.

¹²⁶ Wang, “Yiqie,” 119–20; “Qingxi,” 62; Fei, “Wo zai,” 119.

¹²⁷ Wang, “Yiqie,” 120.

¹²⁸ Fei, “Wo zai,” 117, 119. Sent down youth shopping in Shanghai led to similar results; Honig, Across, 67–70.

¹²⁹ Shi geweihui gongjiao zu, “Guanyu anpai houfang xiao sanxian qi ge jijian xiangmu de qingshi baogao,” 21 July 1975, B154-6-336, 175, SMA.

¹³⁰ Shanghai shi geming weiyuanhui gongjiao zu, “Guanyu Shanghai xiao sanxian jianshe qingkuang de huibao,” 18 November 1977, B246-1-936, 33, SMA.

¹³¹ Zhang, “Shangou,” 629–30; Zheng, “Zi wannan,” 55. For marriage problems at Tianjin’s Front, Brown, City, 193–5.

¹³² Interview with Chinese scholar by the author, July 2018, Shanghai, China. “1975 nian 7 yue 9 ri shangwu 6:30 hexin xiaozu kuoda huiyi,” in ACDS, 546.

¹³³ Wang, “Yiqie,” 120.

¹³⁴ Zheng, “Zai wannan,” 77–8. Villages with sent down youth similarly used Shanghai ties to improve local education, Honig, Across, 127–31.

¹³⁵ Zhonggong Shanghai shi di er jidian gongye ju zhengzhi bu ganbu chu, “Shusong Jiangxi di er zhihui bu ganbu de qingkuang huibao,” 14 February 1966, B173-1-1176, 10–4 SMA.

¹³⁶ “Shanghai shi,” 52.

¹³⁷ Sent down youth made similar demands, Honig, Across, 143–4.

¹³⁸ “Shanghai shi,” 53–5.

¹³⁹ Wang Zhihong, “Shengchan, banjia, anzhi san bu wu de xiao sanxian jainshe tiaozheng,” in Koushu, 59.

¹⁴⁰ Matthew Connelly, “Taking Off the Cold War Lens: Visions of North-South Conflict during the Algerian War for Independence,” American Historical Review 105, no. 3 (2000): 739–69.

¹⁴¹ Deng Xiaoping, “Heping yuzhan shi dangdai shijie de liang da wenti,” March 4, 1985. Ai Sixiang, http://www.aisixiang.com/data/3403.html (accessed September 9, 2020).

¹⁴² On this foreign policy shift, Chen, Mao’s China, 275–7; Xu, Koushu, 5–9. Google Ngrams, “Lengzhan,” https://tinyurl.com/yb5m4zoc (accessed October 31, 2020).

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Covell Meyskens

Covell Meyskens researches capitalist and anti-capitalist development in modern China, especially as they relate to big infrastructure projects. His first book was on the Third Front, and his second book project is about the Three Gorges Dam.