Review
"In this magisterial work, Covell Meyskens draws on the vast range of material now available in China on the 'Third Front,' enriched with his own interviews, to bring the full scope of this once top-secret program into focus for the first time ever. Meyskens provides an indelible portrait of the Third Front, tying together international tensions, domestic politics, and life at the grass roots. The result is an engaging read that will permanently change how the reader thinks about Mao's China."
- Barry Naughton, author of The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth
"Meyskens challenges the notion that the developmental policies of the Chinese Communist Party were driven by irrationality, revealing instead the strategic and economic logic that guided the Third Front project -- the largest, most expansive, and most expensive industrialization campaign of the Mao era. Deploying an impressive array of sources, both archival documents and oral testimonies, Meyskens provides a model for writing new economic histories of the PRC period."
- Aminda Smith, Michigan State University
"An outstandingly insightful book on what was perhaps the biggest public project in Maoist China: the construction of a gigantic but secret industrial base area in the inland mountains, in preparation for war against the United States and the Soviet Union."
- O.A. Westad, author of The Cold War: A World History
"In the 1960s and 1970s the People's Republic of China had to do the impossible--fend off a succession of foreign threats and do so by industrializing fast. In this first study of the most expensive industrialization effort of the Mao era, Meyskens examines the effects of the Third Front on everyone and everything from the millions of workers relocated to remote factories to the national austerity required to pay for the costly strategy, demonstrating just how profoundly this effort shaped the country and its peoples."
- Karl Gerth, University of California, San Diego
"This book offers a richly informative account of the massive geo-strategic redeployment of China's technological elite from coastal cities to the mountainous interior in the 1960s. It is a ground-breaking research and an inspiring read for anyone interested in the history of war, technology, secretive state, and differentiated mobilization in China's long 20th-century."
- Wen-hsin Yeh, University of California, Berkeley
"Mao's Third Front is a marvelous study of politics, economics, and society during China's Cultural Revolution. Meyskens' keen eye for anecdotes and his willingness to include social history makes this dense and deeply researched study into a fast-paced read. The book adds a very important case study to the literature of state-guided industrialization projects in the communist world during the 20th century."
- Lorenz M. Lüthi, author of Cold Wars: Asia, the Middle East, Europe
"This book is essential reading for scholars of modern China as well as anyone who is concerned with international politics during the Cold War era."
- Brian DeMare, H-Diplo
"In the 1980s and 1990s, social scientists scrutinized the scarce published sources on the Third Front, and thanks to their efforts, we know the skeleton of the story. Thanks to Meyskens, this story now has flesh and blood, and his study is undoubtedly one of the most important books on industrial modernity in Maoist China."
- Koji Hirata, Journal of Asian Studies
Book Description
An examination of how economic development and everyday life intersected with the temperature of Cold War geopolitics in Mao's China.
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From the Back Cover
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About the Author
Covell Meyskens is Associate Professor in the National Security Affairs Department at the Naval Postgraduate School.
