Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-tj2md Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T16:17:05.275Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Soldiers, Weapons and Chinese Development Strategy: The Mao Era Military in China's Economic and Institutional Debate*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Extract

Renewed interest in China's defence modernization has focused new light on the connection between military goals and national high technology strategy. China is in the throes of a major effort to modernize its arsenal. Its technology planners have begun systematically to build a genuinely national high technology infrastructure that may ultimately enable Chinese defence planners to harness the dual use potential of many new technologies. Yet as scholars and policy-makers raise questions about present patterns and anticipate future trends, it seems more important than ever to take a long look backwards into the origins of the relationship between China's military and its economic development strategy.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. On the general tendency to squeeze the countryside to finance industrialization, see Seiden, Mark, The Political Economy of Chinese Development (Armonk, NY: ME. Sharpe, 1993).Google Scholar

2. There is a voluminous literature on this emphasis, but sec especially, Lardy, Nicholas, China's Economic Planning (White Plains: M.E. Sharpe, 1978)Google Scholar, Lardy, Nicholas, Economic Growth and Distribution in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Donnithorne, Audrey, China's Economic System (New York: Praeger, 1967)Google Scholar, and Bachman, David, Bureaucracy, Economy, and Leadership in China: The institutional Origins of the Great Leap Forward (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991 ), pp. 96132CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Interestingly, Chinese planners often gave even greater relative priority to heavy industry than did their Soviet counterparts, particularly during the two countries' respective first and second Five-Year Plan periods. See, for example, Ych, K. C., “Soviet and Chinese industrialization strategies,” in Treadgold, Donald W. (ed.). Soviet and Chinese Communism (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967), pp. 326363.Google Scholar

3. This emphasis focused less attention on the sheer extractive capacity of the state apparatus and utilized various financial mechanisms and price policies to control the economy and thus develop favoured sectors. As with the Soviet emphasis, there is a voluminous literature on this set of ideas. Sec all sources previously cited, as well as Solinger, Dorothy J., Chinese Business Under Socialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984)Google Scholar, Solinger, Dorothy J., “Economic reform via reformulation: where do rightist ideas come from?Asian Survey, Vol. 21, No. 9 (09 1981), pp. 947960CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Yefang, Sun, Shehuizhuyi jingji de ruogan lilun wenti (Certain Theoretical Questions in Socialist Economics) (Beijing: People's Press, 1979)Google Scholar, and Bachman, , Bureaucracy, Economy, and Leadership in China, pp. 5995.Google Scholar

4. Social relations were central to this emphasis because, as Carl Riskin has argued, Maoist economics suggested that “‘socialist transformation’ of the relations of production would stimulate rapid economic development by mobilizing the population and promoting what Western economic theory calls ‘x-efftciency’ … The conditions arousing greatest initiative were those that promised greatest success.” Riskin, Carl, “Neither plan nor market: Mao's political economy,” in Joseph, William A., Wong, Christine P. W. and Zweig, David (eds.), New Perspectives on the Cultural Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1991), pp. 133152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. The Chinese Fifth Campaign in Korea was particularly brutal in this regard and forced a major rethinking of Chinese organization in command and logistics. See, for instance, Xuezhi, Hong, Kang Mei yuan Chao zhanzheng huiyilu (Memoir of the War lo Resist America and Aid Korea) (Beijing: Liberation Army Literature and Art Press, 1990)Google Scholar. On the importance of the Korean War legacy more generally, see Lewis, John Wilson and Litai, Xue, China Builds the Bomb (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar, Whitson, William, The Chinese High Command: A History of Communist Military Politics, 1927–71 (New York: Praeger, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Joffe, Ellis, The Chinese Army After Mao (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1987)Google Scholar, and George, Alexander L., The Chinese Communist Army in Action: The Korean War and its Aftermath (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967)Google Scholar. In the 1960s Joffe was particularly perceptive on these points. See his Party and Army: Professionalism and Political Control in the Chinese Officer Corps (Cambridge, MA: Harvard East Asian Research Center, 1965).Google Scholar

6. Mao himself recognized the need for an indigenous deterrent as early as 1954, though the idea probably goes back to 1948–49. Indeed Liu Shaoqi had asked specifically about the nature of Soviet nuclear capability during his secret 1949 visit to the Soviet Union, before the 1 October establishment of the PRC. Just five years later, at an October 1954 meeting with military leaders, Mao recognized explicitly that the advent of the nuclear era had raised the benchmark for Chinese modernization on all fronts, telling colleagues: “Since the appearance of atomic weapons, military strategy, tactics and weaponry have all changed dramatically. In this area, we haven't the faintest understanding.” See Zedong, Mao, “Zai guofang weiyuanhui diyi ci huiyi shang de jianghua” (“Speech at the first meeting of the National Defence Commission”) (18 October 1954), in Mao Zedong junshi wenji (Collected Military Works of Mao Zedong), Vol. 6 (Beijing: Military Sciences Press and Central Documents Press, 1993), p. 358Google Scholar. This document is ostensibly from China's Central Party archive, which remains closed to foreigners. By 23 October, Mao's decision for an indigenous programme was firm. He told the visiting Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru that China required an independent nuclear deterrent. Zedong, Mao, “Women yinggai gongtong nuli lai fangzhi zhanzheng, zhengqu chijiu heping”Google Scholar (“We should work together to end war and fight for an enduring peace”), based on a meeting transcript, in Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Central Documents Research Section of the CCP (eds.), Mao Zedong waijiao wenxuan (Selected Diplomatic Works of Mao Zedong) (Beijing: Central Documents Press and World Knowledge Press, 1994), p. 171Google Scholar. Obviously, this (lew square in the face of Mao's widely-touted statements about nuclear weapons being “paper tigers” and “unable to decide wars.” This theme has received extensive treatment in Lewis, and Xuc, , China Builds the Bomb.Google Scholar On the “paper tiger” theme, see Hsieh, Alice Langley, Communist China's Strategy in the Nuclear Era (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1962), p. 131Google Scholar. Mao's remark about nuclear weapons being “unable to decide wars” comes from a speech delivered just after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Zedong, Mao, “The situation and our policy after the victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan” (13 August 1945), in Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, Vol. 4 (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1961), p. 21.Google Scholar

7. Concern about the raw expense of sophisticated weapons development began to weigh heavily on Chinese politicians and planners almost immediately after the establishment of the Communist state in October 1949. At the core of this debate was the issue of trade-offs: how much would the purely civilian system “lose” if army-building and weapons development were to “win”? Indeed the weapons debate had a broad parallel in a contemporaneous argument about the size of the armed forces which led to a series of demobilization efforts throughout Mao's years in power. See, for example, Lingyao, Ai, “Zhongguo jundui de ba ci jingjian zhengbian” (“The Chinese military's eight demobilization campaigns”), Junshi shijie (Military World), Vol. 3, No. 1 (01/02, 1990), pp. 7478.Google Scholar

8. On the theme of weapons development in the absence of strategy, see Lewis, John Wilson and Litai, Xue, China's Strategic Seapower: The Politics of Force Modernization in the Nuclear Age (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994)Google Scholar and Lewis, John Wilson and Di, Hua, “China's ballistic missile programs: technologies, strategies, goals,” International Security, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Fall 1992), pp. 540.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. On these issues and the dramatic effect of the post-Leap retrenchment on Central government spending, see Lardy, Nicholas, “The Chinese economy under stress, 1958–1965,” in MacFarquhar, Roderick and Fairbank, John K. (eds.), The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 14. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 386–87.Google Scholar

10. John Gittings has itemized these threats, including two that were explicit during the Korean War (the first made in January-February 1953, the second in May 1953), three related to Indo-China (all delivered by John Foster Dulles on 2 September 1953,29 December 1953 and 29 March 1954), and two related to the Offshore islands (8 March (Dulles) and 16 March (Eisenhower) 1955, and September 1958). For details and sources on all seven explicit U.S. nuclear warnings to China, see Gittings, John, The World and China (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 203.Google Scholar

11. In fact, the attempt to integrate the two spheres had some history, though it was Marshal Nic's need to face down opposition that led to the most sophisticated effort in this direction. As early as 1950, Mao began to urge colleagues to think more comprehensively about the relationship between defence and civilian industrial construction, recommending an unwavering emphasis upon the latter. Two years later, the government's Central Ordnance Commission urged military enterprises to begin producing civilian output even as they strove to meet their targets in weapons production. But the real break-point was unquestionably the decision to pursue nuclear weapons delivery systems indigenously. Stated simply, this manifoldly increased the pressure on Central government budgeters to respond to the demands of competing constituencies whose needs would be slighted by the sheer expense of the programmes. Mao made his 1950 remarks at the Third Plenum of the Seventh Central Committee, 6–9 June 1950. The 1952 report is discussed in Guang, Xic (ed.), Dangdai Zhongguo de guofang keji shiye (Contemporary China's National Defence Science and Technology Cause) (Beijing: Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Press, Contemporary China Series, 1992, Vol. 1), p. 174Google Scholar. On military-civilian integration efforts during the 1950s, see Guoliang, Liao (ed.), Mao Zedong junshi sixiang fazhan shi (A History of the Development of Mao Zedong's Military Thought) (Beijing: Liberation Army Press, 1991), pp. 507511Google Scholar, Li, Wang (ed.), Dangdai Zhongguo de bingqi gongye (Contemporary China's Ordnance industry) (Beijing: Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Press, 1993), pp. 5455Google Scholar, and Zhenhuan, Sun (ed.), Zhongguo guofang jingji jianshe (China's National Defence Economic Construction) (Beijing: Academy of Military Sciences Press, 1991), pp. 175–76.Google Scholar

12. As John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai have noted with respect to the nuclear submarine and its missile (SLBM), “building an [SSBN] and an SLBM demands far greater technological-industrial knowledge and capacity than building nuclear weapons. From metallurgy to reactors, from solid rocket propellants to advanced guidance technology” the R&D dilemmas for taking designs from drawing board to deployment are enormous, and this is also the case with land-based strategic missile systems, which similarly depend on complex inertial guidance technologies, including gyroscopes and accelcrometers. For the quote, see Lewis, and Xue, , China's Strategic Seapower, p. xviii.Google Scholar

13. Yibo, Bo, Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu (Recollections of Certain Important Decisions and Events) (Beijing: Central Party School Press, 1991, Vol. 1), pp. 477–78.Google Scholar

14. Yan, Wang (ed.), Peng Dehuai zhuan (A Biography of Peng Dehuai) (Beijing: Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Press, Contemporary China Series, 1993), pp. 492570Google Scholar. See especially pp. 540–44 on the debate about how – and how much – to learn from the Soviet experience. See also Joffe, , Party and Army.Google Scholar

15. Wenhan, Zheng, “Peng zong zai 50 niandai dui wo jun jianshe de zhongda gongxian” (“Chief Peng's important contributions to our army's construction during the Fifties”), Junshi lishi (Military History), No. 6 (1988), p. 4.Google Scholar

16. As John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai have noted, “Beijing's foreign policy specialists and military planners understood that technological attainments – for example, the making of high-yield warheads or the mastery of missile engineering – could send important political messages to worst-case planners in Washington and Moscow. In the aggregate, such messages might serve in the place of declared new strategic doctrines; they could supersede people's war and paper tigers.” Lewis, and Xue, , China Builds the Bomb, p. 197.Google Scholar

17. For more on this point, see Lewis, and Xue, , China's Strategic Seapower.Google Scholar

18. Rongzhen, Nie, Nie Rongzhen huiyilu (Memoirs of Nie Rongzhen), Vol. 3 (Beijing: Liberation Army Press, 1986), pp. 818–19Google Scholar. A contemporary version of this argument, not one made retrospectively in a memoir account, may be found in a speech Nie made to colleagues in April 1963. Rongzhen, Nie, “Zai jungong lingdao ganbu huiy i shang de jianghua” (“Speech at a meeting of leading cadres from military industry”), in Nie Rongzhen junshi wenxuan (Selected Military Works of Nie Rongzhen) (Beijing: Liberation Army Press, 1992), pp. 496518.Google Scholar

19. This quotation from a 1955 speech by Marshal Liu Bocheng was a plea for greater attention to defence expenditure. Cited in MacFarquhar, Roderick, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, Vol. 1: Contradictions Among the People, 1956–1957 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), p. 71.Google Scholar

20. Historical records make clear that Mao was a reflexive nationalist on issues that touched China's destiny as a great power. Secondary case studies that elaborate on this point include important works by John Lewis and Xue Litai, Michael Hunt, Chen Jian, David Shambaugh, Thomas Christensen, Iain Johnston, and Robert Ross. In the area of high tech weaponry, for example, Mao had justified a thoroughgoing programme of modernization for the armed forces in 1954 on grounds of China's status as a “great power” in the world. “Our industry, agriculture, culture, and military [strength] are insufficient,” Mao had remarked. “Imperialists assess you in terms of these things and therefore bully us. They say, ‘do you have the atomic bomb?’ But they miscalculate in their assessment. China's latent capacity to develop its strength will astonish [them].” Zedong, Mao, “Zai guofang weiyuanhui diyi ci huiyi shang de jianghua,” p. 359Google Scholar. Lewis and Xue have vividly described the Chairman's viscerally nationalistic reaction to perceived Soviet slights, a picture reinforced by meeting transcripts kept by Mao's secretaries during talks with Soviet representatives. See China's Strategic Seapower, pp. 1018Google Scholar. See also Mao's nationalistic tongue-lashing of the Soviet ambassador in 1958 over Soviet proposals for a long-wave radio transmission station on Chinese territory to enable communication with the Soviet Pacific Fleet. “Tong Sulian zhu Hua dashi Long Jin de tanhua” (“A discussion with the Soviet ambassador to China, Yudin”) (22 July 1958), based on a meeting transcript, in Selected Diplomatic Works of Mao Zedong, pp. 322333.Google Scholar

21. For background on this report, see Rongzhen, Nie, Memoirs, Vol. 3, pp. 814–15Google Scholar, and the editor's footnote 2 in Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao (Selected Manuscripts of Mao Zedong Since the Founding of the Republic), restricted circulation edition, Vol. 9 (Beijing: Central Documents Press 1996), pp. 530–31Google Scholar. It is not entirely clear whether Mao saw a copy of the actual Japanese report or whether it was summarized for him by Marshal Nie and his staff. The source of the report was a Japanese financial affairs research conference held in February 1960. The wording of the editor's comments on the Chinese source strongly suggests that this conference was sponsored by a defence office of the Japanese government. Apparently, the conference produced a report with a title along the lines of “Analysing military production from the standpoint of economic policy.” This Japanese report was then provided to Mao by Nie's staff either in full or via a summary report that provided important highlights.

22. Zedong, Mao, “Zai guanyu Riben jingji zhengce he guofang gongye fazhan wenti de yifeng cailiao shang de piyu” (“Written comments on materials concerning Japan's economic policies and military industrial development”) (16 July 1961 ), in Selected Manuscripts of Mao Zedong, Vol. 9, pp. 530–31.Google Scholar

23. Rongzhen, Nie, Memoirs, Vol. 3, pp. 814–15.Google Scholar

24. On this U-2 shootdown, see Zhenguo, Fu, “Zhongguo 543 budui miwen” (“The secret story of China's Unit 543”), Junshi shijie, 02 1990, pp. 2532Google Scholar, and Shaoqiu, Liu, “U-2 gaokong zhenchaji fumie ji” (“A record of the downing of the U-2 high-altitude reconaissance aircraft”), Junshi shijie. Part I, 08 1988, pp. 4344, Part II, September/October 1989, pp. 5658Google Scholar. The change in air defence policy is covered in Rongzhen, Nie, Memoirs, Vol. 3, p. 817Google Scholar. It is worth noting that all newly produced J-6 fighter planes (China's first supersonic fighter aircraft, a copy of the Soviet MiG-19) were grounded between 1959 and 1964 on account of technical bottlenecks. See Guang, Xie, National Defence Science and Technology, Vol. 2, pp. 181–82Google Scholar. As David Bachman has noted (in personal communication) this may well have made strategic weapons more compelling in light of the threats of 1962.

25. McDougall, Walter A., The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (New York: Basic Books, 1985), p. 5.Google Scholar

26. Samuels, Richard J., Rich Nation, Strong Army: National Security and the Technological Transformation of Japan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 33Google Scholar. See also Ostry, Sylvia and Nelson, Richard R., Techno-nationalism and Techno-globalism: Conflict and Cooperation (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1995)Google Scholar, and McDougall, , The Heavens and the Earth.Google Scholar

27. On this point, see chs. 6–9 of Feigenbaum, Evan A., “The military transforms China: the politics of strategic technology from the nuclear to the information age” (Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, Department of Political Science, 1997).Google Scholar

28. Samuels, , Rich Nation, Strong Army, p. 34.Google Scholar

29. This is obviously quite different from classic “market failure” arguments for public technology investment; China, after all, did not have a true market in place during the Mao years. But this formulation resembles the terms of market failure arguments and will no doubt raise the suspicions of some readers that I am attempting to impose market-type arguments on non-market contexts. What is important, I believe, is the common recognition in both formulations of long lead-times and the incentive problems that can ensue. But – significantly – this derives from a completely different problem in each version. In market settings it can be traced to firms' need to earn money on investments, thus introducing market pressure to cam a quick return on R&D disbursements. In the socialist setting, I am suggesting here, it reflects a different set of problems: namely, agents' tendency to maximize gross output above all alternative behavioural motives. In this formulation, only the Centre (and technology programmers at the very apex of the planning system) are comparatively unburdened by the output problem – they seek output, of course, but many other things as well. This comprehensive approach is much more difficult for economic agents down the ladder, since they must maximize behaviours that can be easily observed (and hence rewarded by superiors). This makes short-term output, not long-range R&D, the most likely focus of resource allocation at the firm level. For a good description of the kinds of market failures associated with technology sectors even in highly developed capitalist economies, see Stoneman, Paul, The Economic Analysis of Technology Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987)Google Scholar. Also, Ostry, and Nelson, , Techno-nationalism and Techno-globalism, pp. 2833Google Scholar, and Levin, Richard et al. , “Appropriating the returns from industrial R&D,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Vol. 3 (1987), pp. 783831.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30. Indeed, China worked to acquire advanced technologies and manufacturing techniques from overseas, particularly under the umbrella of the Soviet alliance, and then moved to build local industrial sectors via licence, loans, or out-and-out purchase and reverse-engineering.

31. Even when these contradicted the anti-clitist strains of Maoist ideology, strategic weapons leaders allowed scientists and technicians considerable free rein to pursue innovative techniques and ideas.

32. It is worth noting, in this vein, that small-scale, private and mixed-ownership R&D, particularly in the consumer electronics industry, has grown up during the past decade as an alternative source of innovation to state technology programming. Like the strategic weapons model that I describe here, this, too, offers a flexible and open-ended model to manage innovation. But unlike the strategic weapons-style system, it discards the “command R&D” component in favour of a bottom-up approach to innovation that is much more resonant of the recent history of technology, including the start-up experience typical of the U.S. software industry.

33. Frieman, Wendy, “China's military R&D system: reform and reorientation,” in Simon, Denis Fred and Goldman, Merle (eds), Science and Technology in Post-Mao China (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1989), p. 267.Google Scholar

34. Guangya, Zhu, “Wo guo baozha diyi ke yuanzidan qianhou” (“Around the time of our country's first detonation of an atomic bomb”), in Bujin de sinian (Boundless Memories) (Beijing: Central Documents Press, 1987), pp. 305313Google Scholar, Shuqing, Liu and Jifu, Zhang, “Jinglei: wo guo diyi ke yuanzidan baozha ji” (“A clap of thunder: recalling our country's first detonation of an atomic bomb”), in Division, Magic Sword (Shenjian ju) (ed.), Mimilicheng (A Secret Course) (Beijing: Atomic Energy Press, 1985), pp. 157Google Scholar, and Lewis, and Xue, , China Builds the Bomb, p. 145.Google Scholar

35. On management features of large projects, see the fascinating comparative history of four important U.S. projects (SAGE, Atlas, ARPANET and Boston's Central Artery Tunnel) by Hughes, Thomas P., Rescuing Prometheus (New York: Pantheon, 1998).Google Scholar

36. A good discussion in English can be found in the survey of jurisdictional changes for the submarine programme covered in Lewis, and Xue, , China's Strategic Seapower.Google Scholar

37. A prototypical example was a submarine reactor seminar convened on 25 June 1971 by Premier Zhou Enlai with the reactor's chief designers Peng Shilu and Zhao Renkai. The seminar covered a comprehensive range of technical issues. Shilu, Peng, “Yanjin er cixiang de weiren: huiyi Zhou zongli dui yanzhi he qianting de guanhuai” (“A rigorous but kindly great man: recollections of Premier Zhou's concern for research and development on the nuclear submarine”), Shenjian (Magic Sword), No. 1 (01 1988), pp. 1213Google Scholar. See also Shilu, Peng and Rcnkai, Zhao, “Canjia wo guo he qianting yanzhi gongzuo de tihui” (“A few words about our participation in research and development work for our country's nuclear submarine”), in Li, Nie and Cuomo, Huai (eds.), Huigu yu zhanwang: xin Zhongguo de guofang keji gongye (Retrospect and Prospect: New China's Defence Science, Technology and Industry) (Beijing: Defence Industry Press, 1989), p. 207.Google Scholar

38. Rongzhen, Nie, Memoirs, Vol. 3, pp. 767–68.Google Scholar

39. Holloway, David, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994, ch. 1).Google Scholar

40. Bethe, Hans, “The Happy Thirties,” in Steuwer, Roger H. (ed.), Nuclear Physics in Retrospect: Proceedings of a Symposium on the 1930s (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979), pp. 1131.Google Scholar

41. Chinese physics has been a male-dominated field. The two most prominent women during the period of the PRC are He Zehui and Xie Xide. He Zehui is the wife of China's most famous nuclear physicist, Qian Sanqiang. She worked in Paris on the tripartite fission of uranium before returning to China with Qian; Xie Xide is a surface physicist (biaomian wuli) who, together with her husband, played a major role in building physics at Shanghai's Fudan University.

42. The 1995 figure of 214 total CAS Academicians is from “CAS launches ‘321’ program to foster 21st century S&T leaders,” translation of an article from Guizhou ribao (Guizhou Daily), 25 05 1995, p. 3Google Scholar, reprinted in Foreign Broadcast Information Service Report, China, Science and Technology Series, 18 08 1995, p. 13.Google Scholar

43. Yu, Gu, “‘Sanjia’ ningcheng yigu sheng xietong gongguan: yi wo guo guofang keyan de chuqi fazhan”Google Scholar (“‘Three families’ pulling together the strands of a rope in a co-operative attack: recalling the early years of our country's military research and development”) in Li, Nie and Guomo, Huai, Retrospect and Prospect, p. 469Google Scholar. Gu Yu is highly placed in the Chinese political leadership as the wife of the late Hu Qiaomu, formerly a leading ideologue, secretary to Mao Zedong, and, during the Deng era, one of China's 10–15 top CCP elders.

44. Rongzhen, Nie, Memoirs, Vol. 3, p. 823.Google Scholar

45. Jingfu, Zhang, “Zhongguo kexueyuan yu guofang kexuc jishu”Google Scholar (“The Chinese Academy of Sciences and defence science and technology”), in Li, Nie and Guomo, Huai, Retrospect and Prospect, p. 79.Google Scholar

46. Cheng, Jing, “Shou'ao cangqiong: wo guo diyi ke renzao weixing ‘dongfanghong-1 hao’ shang tian ji” (“A first trip to the sky: the story of the ascent to the heavens of our country's first man-made satellite, the ‘East is Red-1’”), in Political Department of the Ministry of the Space Industry and Space Section of the Magic Sword Literature and Art Society (eds.), Hangtian shiye sanshi nian (Thirty Years of the Space Cause) (Beijing: Space Navigation Press, 1986), pp. 2260.Google Scholar

47. On this seminar, see Lewis, and Xue, , China Builds the Bomb, pp. 3739.Google Scholar

48. On these personnel issues in the CAST, see Shuntong, Wang (ed.), Zhongguo kexue jishu xiehui (The China Association/or Science and Technology) (Beijing: Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Press, 1994).Google Scholar

49. On the August 1955 transfers, see Guang, Xie, National Defence Science and Technology, Vol. 1, p. 14Google Scholar. On the June 1956 transfers, see Rongzhen, Nie, Memoirs, Vol. 3, p. 796.Google Scholar

50. Lewis, and Xue, , China Builds the Bomb, p. 42Google Scholar; Lindbeck, John M. H., “Organization and development of science,” in Gould, Sidney H. (ed.), Sciences in Communist China (Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1961), pp. 358.Google Scholar

51. On testing pools, see Xuhua, Huang, “Shuixia jujing: he qianting zongti yanjiu sheji”Google Scholar (“The great underwater whale: the comprehensive design plan for the nuclear submarine”) and Shitang, Dong, “Taihu zhi yan de yixiang mingzhu”Google Scholar (“A jewel on the bank of Lake Tai”), both in Li, Nie and Cuomo, Huai, Retrospect and Prospect (pp. 396–98 and 407409 respectively)Google Scholar. On shock wave tubes, see Keming, Tan and Zi'an, Zhang, “Longmenshan xia you yitiao ‘long’: huo guojia keji jinbu yi deng Jiang dc ‘1485’ kangbao jibo guan ciji” (“A ‘dragon’ at the foot of Longmen Mountain: the story of the ‘1485’ anti-detonation shock-wave tube”), Junshi shijie, Vol. 2, No. 3 (05 1989), pp. 7375.Google Scholar

52. See, for instance, Heng, Wu and Jun, Yang (eds.), Dangdai Zhongguo de kexue jishu shiye (Contemporary China's Science and Technology Cause) (Beijing: Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Press, Contemporary China Series, 1991), p. 254.Google Scholar

53. On this design competition, see Lewis, and Xue, , China's Strategic Seapower, pp. 3032.Google Scholar

54. Rongzhen, Nie, Memoirs, Vol. 3, p. 823Google Scholar. The institution of competition was a staple feature of Chinese strategic weapons development. In some sense, this came from the Soviet experience. See, for example, Holloway, David, “Innovation in the defence sector,” in Amman, Ronald and Cooper, Julian (eds.), Industrial innovation in the Soviet Union (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), p. 317Google Scholar. For another example of very explicit competition in Chinese strategic weapons development, see the discussion of competing plutonium concepts in Churning, Zhang, “Zhongguo heneng zhuanjia Jiang Shengjie” (“The Chinese nuclear expert, Jiang Shengjie”), Liaowang (Outlook), overseas ed., 20 07 1987, pp. 56.Google Scholar

55. On the impact of strategic weapons on metallurgy, see Jun, Lian, “There is a secret arsenal beneath Helan Shan,” Ningxia ribao (Ningxia Daily), 12 09 1992, p. 3Google Scholar, translated and reprinted in Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Report, China, 8 12 1992, p. 12Google Scholar. For the chemical industry, sec Youdi, Zhu, “Guofang huaxue gongye xingcheng xin tixi” (“The formation of a new national defence chemical industrial system”) Jiefangjun bao (Liberation Army Daily), 7 12 1990Google Scholar, and Tao, Tao, “Huagong xin cailiao zai wei guofang keji gongzuo fuwu zhong chcng chang”Google Scholar (“New chemical materials will grow to maturity through service to national defence, science, technology and industry”), in Li, Nie and Guomo, Huai, Retrospect and Prospect, pp. 478–80Google Scholar. Nie's role in establishing the metals and chemical industry bureaucracies is detailed in Memoirs, Vol. 3, p. 820Google Scholar. On the role of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications in joint work with the PLA on satellite telemetry, tracking and control, see Guang, Xic, National Defence Science and Technology, Vol. 1, pp. 468471.Google Scholar

56. On the Harbin college, see Laiyong, Luo, Ha-jun-gong hum Zhongguo guofang keji rencai peiyang jishi (The Soul of the Harbin College of Military Engineering: A True Record of Personnel Training for China's Military Science and Technology) (Beijing: Central Party School Press, 1995)Google Scholar, Rongzhen, Nie, Memoirs, Vol. 3, p. 800Google Scholar, and Jiamin, Yin, “Chen Geng dajiang chuangjian Ha-jun-gong” (“General Chen Gcng created the Harbin College of Military Engineering”), Yanhuang zisun (The Chinese), No. 4 (1988), pp. 2831Google Scholar. On naval technical schools, see Lewis, John Wilson and Litai, Xue, Military Readiness and the Training of China's Sailors (Stanford: Center for International Security and Arms Control, 1989).Google Scholar

57. On the Moscow Aviation Institute agreement, see Nic's report to Premier Zhou Enlai: Rongzhen, Nie, “Jiaqiang wo guo yanzhi daodan wenti dc baogao” (“Report on how to strengthen our country's missile research and development”), 25 10 1956, especially p. 396Google Scholar, reprinted in Nie Rongzhen junshi wenxuan (Selected Military Works of Nie Rongzhen) (Beijing: Liberation Army Press, 1992), pp. 395–97Google Scholar. On Nie's push in electrical engineering, see Rongzhen, Nie, Memoirs, Vol. 3, pp. 805806.Google Scholar

58. These themes are covered in Feigenbaum, Evan A., “Who's behind China's high technology ‘revolution’? How bomb makers remade Beijing's priorities, policies, and institutions,” International Security, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Summer 1999, forthcoming).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59. See, for instance, Mu, Shang, “Progress in China's high technology research and development plan,” Keji ribao (Science Daily), 17 11 1989, p. 4Google Scholar, translated and reprinted in Joint Publications Research Service, China Science and Technology Series, 8 02 1990, pp. 24.Google Scholar