The ‘Third Front’: China resurrects Mao’s military capabilities
Dotted across the mountainous roads of Sichuan and just a few hours’ drive from some of China’s most bustling cities, the crumbling ruins of an abandoned military experiment are eerily quiet. Top secret factories that once housed thousands of workers are now overgrown with vegetation; nearby villages, empty of young people who were once shipped in from across the country to build China’s future, are plastered with advertisements for hearing aids and, in once case, a bundle deal on coffins.
Millions of workers were deployed to these remote mountain locations as part of a huge defence program that stayed secret for over a decade. The factories in south-west China were once part of its grandest industrial strategy project to date. Launched by Mao Zedong in 1964, the ambitious national defence program mobilised 15 million people to fortify China’s defences against the possibility of an attack from its cold war enemy, the United States, or from the Soviet Union, whose relationship with China was becoming increasingly strained. It attracted more than 200bn yuan of government investment, and took place nearly entirely in secret for around 15 years. The project was called the Third Front. Mao’s idea was to create a third line of national defence facilities that were less exposed than the “first front” of factories on China’s east coast and the “second front”, which referred to smaller inland cities behind the first front. The Third Front project placed factories in remote, mountainous regions of Sichuan province, as well as in other inland provinces such as Gansu and Ningxia, far from the reach of any potential invading forces. In Sichuan, many of the factories are shielded by the natural fortress of the Huaying mountain range, whose peaks crest in the distance. After Mao’s death in 1976, and as relations with the US warmed, the factories were gradually abandoned. In 1985, China’s leader Deng Xiaoping declared: “There will be no large-scale war for a fairly long time … after analysing the general trends in the world and the environment around us, we have changed our view that the danger of war is imminent.”
Fearing a war with either the Soviet Union or the US, Mao’s program mobilised 15 million people to fortify China’s defences.
Now, as relations between Beijing and Washington sour, Deng’s words seem quaint. China is once again turning to its Third Front heartlands to build a national defence program capable of foiling any US attack. In some areas of military strength, China may already be ahead. Recent reports based on satellite imagery show that China appears to be building up its nuclear arsenal near the old factories. In July 2024, the Communist party leadership passed a resolution to “develop China’s strategic hinterland and ensure backup plans for key industries,” a reference to using China’s remote inland provinces to boost the country’s resilience against the threat of invasion or isolation from international markets. Xi Jinping, China’s most powerful leader since Mao, has put national self-resilience at the core of his ideology. In 1964, the year that Mao launched the Third Front, China conducted its first nuclear weapons test. Now it is estimated to have 600 warheads, with the US government expecting that number to more than double in the next decade. Much of that nuclear build-up is taking place in the remote regions that once hosted the Third Front. Although China still spends significantly less on its military than the US does, the gap is shrinking. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in 2012, the year that Xi took power, China’s defence spending was one-sixth that of the US’s. By 2024, that figure had risen to a third, at $317.6bn.
“The thing that’s different than before is that China is in such a stronger position than it was before,” says Covell Meyskens, a China historian at Naval Postgraduate School, a US Navy funded university, who has written a book about the Third Front. “They’re trying to build up their ability to make sure they have a second strike capability against the United States. Before, they had no strike capability”. Second strike capability refers to the ability of a nuclear-armed state to respond to a nuclear attack with a counterstrike. In the 1960s, China was “a very poor third world country”. Now, at least in the western Pacific, “China is a peer. They could fight us either to win or stand still,” Meyskens says (his comments do not represent the view of the US Navy). A key difference between 2026 and 1964 is how intertwined the US and Chinese economies are, something that should in theory reduce the risk of a conflict erupting. But as a trade war has seen both sides, especially Beijing, leverage the export of vital commodities such as rare earths, policymakers in Beijing and Washington have been working on disentangling their supply chains, reducing the mutual dependence.
In Sichuan, many of the factories are shielded by the natural fortress of the Huaying mountain range, whose peaks crest in the distance. Millions of workers were deployed to these remote mountain locations to help fortify China’s defences. One man who still lives near the empty ruins of Huaguang instrument factory, which made military lasers, says that “very few” people are left in his neighbourhood; most of the apartments in the dilapidated buildings are empty. “Back in 1990s, it was prosperous, a lot of people were here,” he says. “People have more money now, so they’re all heading to the cities.”
Hongguang instrument factory is now carpeted in rows of cabbages and canola. Nearby, Hongguang instrument factory, which opened in 1966, was built to manufacture fighter jets and housed nearly 2,000 workers. Now it is carpeted in rows of cabbages and canola, harvested by an elderly farmer who carries his crop in a traditional woven basket. It is as if the slingshot of China’s industrial ambition briefly flew the locals into the future, before they ricocheted back to a slower, pastoral, existence.
An elderly farmer carries his crop in a traditional woven basket.
Despite the huge levels of investment, the factories were largely abandoned or transformed into civilian operations in the 1970s, as relations with the west warmed. China no longer feared being attacked, and started focusing on economic development. “Why would you have a car factory in a cave 300 miles away from any sort of major city? It [didn’t] make any sense economically,” says Meyskens. Xi has prioritised self-sufficiency and greatness on the world stage. His rhetoric echoes Mao’s dreams of making China a global superpower, but at a time when that dream can become a reality. China’s arms imports fell by more than 70% between 2021–2025 compared to the previous five years, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, thanks to increased domestic capacity. Six decades on, the ideas behind the Third Front are being revived, along with, some fear, the geopolitical environment. “It’s definitely going back to the hostile,” says Meyskens. “We’re in some sort of cold war”. The goal, he says, is to keep the war cold. Better to have munitions factories that are crumbling than cranking out new supplies. Additional research by Lillian Yang
