Cocoto Sea 3 Pit
At the scene of the 2020 CCTV Spring Festival Gala, singer Wang Qi's "Shepherd of the Cocoto Sea" let countless audiences know the place of cocoto sea for the first time. But most viewers only remember the love in the song, but they don't know that behind this sea also supports the backbone of the republic.
A place code-named 111, a mysterious code, a hidden past, a town that has been sung by songs all over the land of Shenzhou, but once disappeared on the map of China.
It not only undertook to repay the huge foreign debt of the former Soviet Union, but also provided a base for two bombs and one satellite of raw materials, here is the Cocoto Sea, and the story of this issue allows us to walk into the history that was once dusty
72 years ago, when New China was just founded, the first atomic bomb of the Soviet Union exploded successfully. Faced with the nuclear monopoly of the United States and the Soviet Union and the constant international tensions, Mao Zedong realized that if he wanted to oppose nuclear weapons, he would have to possess them first. It is the so-called, we can not use, but can not be without, and finally after the efforts of countless people, in 1964 thousands of kilometers away in China's northwest desert, came a shocking news to the world, China's first atomic bomb exploded successfully, and only two years later a mushroom cloud rose in the air, and the hydrogen bomb exploded successfully. Behind the national jubilation, the Lop Nur test explosion site is also famous throughout the country because of these two loud noises, but few people know where the main raw materials for making atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs come from, far away in the northwest of Xinjiang, the border town of Cocoto Sea, which has been an incomparably mysterious place for 60 years. There is a mysterious mine code-named 111 Mine, which is the unsung hero behind the two bombs, more than 70 years of wind and rain. This first non-ferrous industrial town in New China has participated in the repayment of foreign debts, two bombs and one star in the sky, and witnessed the development and changes of China's industry with its own capabilities. Not only that, but even the Soviet Atomic Bomb was behind it.
Cocoto Sea Kazakh meaning, green jungle, Irtysh River through the town, it is the first oasis encountered by herders after crossing the desert Gobi, the No. 3 mine that made great contributions to the successful explosion of the two bombs is located next to the mountain river, it contains 86 of the 178 useful minerals known in the world, of which beryllium resources rank first in the world, the number of mineral species, the high quality is rare in the world.
Since the 1960s, this mysterious town in the Altai Mountains of Xinjiang has disappeared from the map of China, until it was declassified in recent years, only to return to the public eye, starting in 1930, the local herders in the Cocoto Sea, often able to pick up colored stones here, this discovery caused Soviet scientists at the time to confirm as a rare element, and then the Xinjiang warlord Sheng Shi signed an agreement with the Soviets to allow Soviet geologists to conduct large-scale surveys and mining. It was also at this time that these things continued to flow into the Soviet Union, and as Soviet-American relations deteriorated after World War II, Stalin ordered the study of the atomic bomb, and although the Soviet Union was large, the rare earth was barren, so the Soviets successively set up three mines in the Cocoto Sea and built a fort guard post, at most 3,000 workers guard and managers worked here. It is recorded that each miner here produces an average of two kilograms of mineral product per day, all of which are shipped to the Soviet Union.
In August 1949, on the eve of the founding of New China, the first atomic bomb of the Soviet Union was successfully detonated, and the mineral resources shipped from Cocoto made a great contribution to this.
In September of the same year, General Wang Zhen led an army into Xinjiang, and Xinjiang was peacefully liberated.
However, most of Xinjiang at that time was still an ancient pastoral area, except for the arsenals left by the warlords, other industries were basically zero, and even the craftsmen who played horseshoe were almost monopolized by the people of Kazakhstan.
The economic difficulties made the 300,000 troops in Xinjiang spend a lot of money, and under the circumstances at that time, Wang Zhen arranged for some soldiers to transfer jobs on the spot to dig gold.
At the same time, Wang Zhen also set his sights on the Cocoto Sea.
He had created the miracle of Nanniwan, hoping to use the strength of Soviet experts to develop Xinjiang into a modern industrial zone in New China, and he wrote a report to the Northwest Committee, proposing to use Soviet technology to jointly open mines in Xinjiang in order to strive for greater development.
The details of the report are nothing more than three points, the first point is that the use of our existing resources, in and foreign advanced experience and their daily management, so that this resource into funds, into profits to promote the development of Xinjiang's economy, this is on the one hand.
The second aspect hopes that through this kind of learning and cooperation, The management and technical personnel of the Chinese side will grow as soon as possible.
The last one was to break the blockade and exchange resources for the precious foreign exchange of the time.
The letter was relayed layer by layer and finally submitted to the central government.
On December 16, 1949, Mao Zedong traveled to the Soviet Union for a two-month visit.
During this period, Mao Zedong and Stalin immediately agreed on the issue of jointly developing the Cocoto Sea, and decided to establish three joint venture companies in Xinjiang, namely Metals, Petroleum, and Civil Aviation, which were the first batch of joint venture companies after the founding of New China, of which the Rare Metals Joint Stock Company was the Cocoto Sea. Of course, the original decision was also opposed by many people.
At that time, some people doubted that such an agreement would undermine China's sovereignty, and the central authorities instructed that the use of foreign capital to promote China's industrialization and even the conclusion of joint venture contracts and even concession contracts with certain capitalist countries under appropriate conditions were correct.
A month after Mao Zedong and Stalin reached an agreement, Mao Zedong received representatives of Chinese students in Moscow and wrote down four big characters for the development of mining in the notebook of Ren Xiang, an international student.
Development of mining
At that time, the contract was for a period of 30 years. Each side invested 50% of the shares, we used the land personnel and so on as the stock price, and the Soviets provided funds and technical equipment. The products developed are divided equally.
In December 1950, the Associated Press broadcast an important news item in which President Truman said that he would use atomic bombs against Chinese soldiers who resisted the United States and aided Korea, and Mao Zedong immediately said that China would build nuclear weapons.
But during this period, a small incident occurred that was considered at the time, and it was the beginning of the deterioration of Sino-Soviet relations. That is, in the first two years of the Cocoto Sea, more than 100,000 tons of minerals were mined, and the Soviets, despite our opposition, all of them were pulled back to the Soviet Union, and even caused a small-scale armed struggle. But in the end, for the sake of the big picture, the matter was put to rest.
The reason for the subsidence is that 156 large-scale projects of the Soviet Union to aid China are in full swing.
When Khrushchev visited China in September 1954, Mao Zedong asked in person whether he could give China assistance in nuclear weapons, and Khrushchev was shocked, believing that China did not have the power needed to develop nuclear weapons alone. However, in order to further strengthen relations with China, he decided to return Cocoto Sea and Sino-Soviet Nonferrous metals co., LTD. to China.
Mao Zedong and Khrushchev
On January 1, 1955, all enterprises in the Cocoto Sea Mining Area were transferred to China for independent operation and converted to open-pit mining.
Half a month later, Mao Zedong presided over an enlarged meeting of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and decided to create China's atomic energy industry, which completely disappeared from the map of China for the needs of national defense secrecy. The Cocoto Sea has since had a special code name, 111 Mine. Graduates from more than 500 different specialties from all over the country were assigned to the Cocoto Sea and began China's nuclear career.
Just when China's atomic bomb manufacturing was on the right track, Sino-Soviet relations began to deteriorate, and from 1960 onwards, the assistance from the Soviet Union for the development of the atomic bomb was completely stopped, and the Soviets demanded that China repay its debts, and in the same year Zhou Enlai proposed that it would take 10 years to pay off the Soviet Union's foreign debt at the earliest.
Mao Zedong said: It is not good to owe people money after making a mistake, and strive to pay off the debt within 5 years. At that time, it coincided with a difficult period of 3 years, and China could only repay it with agricultural products such as apples and eggs. After research, the central government finally decided to pay off the debt with rare mineral products that the Soviet Union urgently needed, and Cocoto Hai also had an extremely difficult time. Cocoto Sea bore more than 2-thirds of the debt to the Soviet Union. Using the current value to estimate, the rare earths of that year were almost given to the Soviet Union for free. But there was no way to do all that at the time.
Workers worked more than 8 hours a day in the Cocoto Sea, where temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees Celsius, and to complete the 400-kilogram mining task, they were manually carried from the pit to the ground and eventually transported to the Soviet Union.
In 1959-1961, when the situation was most severe, the workers ate steamed buns and pastes were rationed, and in order to solve the manpower problem, in May 1958, the army entered to accelerate the progress, and at night the entire mining area was brightly lit, and the peak labor force reached more than 2200 people.
Miner No. 3 Memorial Sculpture
From 1959 to 1964, grain production was reduced year by year, and China's average annual debt repayment amount was 1 billion yuan, of which Cocoto Hai almost bore more than half. At the same stage, China's atomic bomb development also entered the stage of attacking tough problems, and Khrushchev decided that without the help of the Soviet Union, China would not be able to build an atomic bomb in 20 years.
Under the nuclear monopoly of the United States and the Soviet Union, Chen Yi said at a Politburo meeting that Chinese is to take the pants as a pawn, but also to get the atomic bomb out, and the beryllium ore produced by the Cocoto Sea is one of the key raw materials for making atomic bombs.
The miners of that year recalled that at that time, God pinched our necks, foreigners pinched our necks, that is, only one meal a day, but also a day earlier to pay off the debt.
The acceleration of the progress inevitably caused more casualties, and the miners said that what they feared most was the ringing of the telephone in the middle of the night, which meant that there was an accident, and someone left them, and the incomplete statistics of hundreds of people died in the Cocoto Sea at that time.
Cocoto Sea Martyrs Monument
In 1964, only 4 years after Mao Zedong proposed to pay off the foreign debt, Zhou Enlai proposed at the first session of the Third National People's Congress that the task of readjusting China's national economy had been basically completed, during which time we not only did not borrow a single yuan of foreign debt, but also paid off almost all the foreign debts in the past. And between 1964 and 1970, two bombs and one satellite were successfully launched, of which the alloy material of the atomic bomb, the material necessary for the explosion of the hydrogen bomb, and the rare raw material used by dongfanghong I were all from the Cocoto Sea.
From debt repayment to science and technology, from aerospace to the research of new materials, the mineral products produced by Cocoto Sea are widely used in various fields of national defense and civil industry, and Cocoto Sea's contribution to China's development in that period can be said to be the greatest contribution.
But like people, the Cocoto Sea, with its long-term exploitation over the years, has also caused environmental problems and slowly reduced its resources.
Especially after entering the 1980s, due to the transformation of China's defense industry and the decline in international non-ferrous metal prices, the rare metals produced by Cocoto Sea once faced slow sales, excessive mineral production, environmental pollution and other issues, and enterprises in mining areas with high energy consumption and high displacement were also facing shutdown under the new policy. The main thing is that the country's economy is strong, and there is no need to support the Cocoto Sea.
In 2012, Cocoto Sea implemented the relocation of enterprises in independent industrial and mining areas of the country, and shifted from industrial and mining enterprises to ecological development. Slowly it turned into a green jungle again.
Today's Cocoto Sea
Nowadays, the name 111 Mine has rarely been mentioned, and the footprints of the Cocoto Sea can be found on the map, as if it has never disappeared from the map, and a period of history has gradually faded away, looking back at the difficult but brilliant years under the tide of the times, perhaps this sea is also watching the future.