Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou talked secretly all night, and a small town disappeared from the map, only to be revealed many years later. In this article, I will tell you about this topic.
Pictured| Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai
In 1966, the relevant departments suddenly "cleared" the residents of Baitao Town in Chongqing's Fuling District, strictly examining the residents of the town, leaving those who passed the customs clearance, and the problematic ones were moved out.
What's more, the town was wiped off the map overnight, and littleone knew about its existence except the locals and nearby residents.
I thought the town would fall lonely, but as groups of soldiers and soldiers moved in, there was life here again.
18 years later, the town of Baitao reappeared on the map. This mysterious and strange change has finally been revealed. At home and abroad, almost at the same time, I was surprised to know one thing - Baitao Town has "the world's first artificial cave".
So far, this artificial cave in Baitao Town has not only been selected into the "China Industrial Heritage Protection List", but also directly made the town a 4A-level scenic spot, and the tourism and other economies have developed rapidly, keeping up with the development express of the times.
What happened to Baitao town in 1967 and after? It all started with a mysterious phone call premier Zhou received.
Late one night in October 1965, Premier Zhou, who was working, suddenly received a mysterious phone call, followed by a simple arrangement of clothes, and then hurriedly left the office.
It turned out that the caller was none other than Chairman Mao! When Premier Zhou saw the chairman, he saw that the chairman had a serious expression and did not say a word. But they exchanged glances and met straight to the point, talking all night about one thing in secret—the secret nuclear project.
The following year, Premier Zhou approved a plan to build China's second nuclear material industrial base in Baitao, one of the important elements of the "third-line construction."
To this end, the Central Military Commission specifically put the three regiments of the 54th Engineer Division (code-named "Unit 8342") responsible for the main construction tasks. The entire project content belongs to the top secret level military secret, code-named 816 Project.
In order to prevent information leakage, it was declared that it was a "state-owned new chemical machinery factory", and a regiment was responsible for the security work of the factory area. The contact address between employees and the outside world is all used in Chongqing 4513 mailbox, and employees are not allowed to go home to visit their relatives and visits, and at the same time, the family members of employees cannot enter the factory.
In addition, everyone in Baitao Town was subject to strict scrutiny, all those with "problems" were moved out, and the town's name, administrative units, and jurisdictions were erased from the map of the People's Republic of China, and have since disappeared from the map.
In October 1964, as a huge mushroom smoke cloud rose over the mainland at 15:00 on the 16th, the first atomic bomb on the mainland exploded successfully, which meant that we had mastered nuclear weapons and no longer feared the nuclear threat of imperialism and the Soviet Union.
If this is the case, why did Chairman Mao and others carry out a secret operation to carry out the 816 project in Baitao Town?
In fact, even earlier, Chairman Mao and others had already made preparations for this matter and played a big game of chess.
In 1958, when sino-Soviet hostilities first appeared, the Soviet Union has since continuously suppressed the mainland internationally, such as providing weapons and financial support to India in the self-defense counterattack war against India, and also taking advantage of the possession of nuclear weapons to constantly carry out nuclear threats against us.
On the US side, since the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, they have always regarded the mainland as a thorn in their side and a thorn in their flesh, such as creating a crisis in the Taiwan Strait, which has brought many unstable factors to regional peace.
Picture | old photo of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea
In addition, in the Gulf of Tonkin Incident that broke out on August 2, 1964, the US destroyer USS Markdos fought with the Vietnamese Navy, spreading the war to the southern part of the mainland and affecting our national security and stability.
Stimulated by this unstable international environmental factor, Chairman Mao made up his mind to readjust the domestic strategic arrangements, and twice pointed out at the meeting of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee that the coastal areas and large cities involve the economic lifeline of the mainland and are not conducive to preparation for war, so the provinces need to establish their own strategic rear areas in order to cope with various accidents.
After that, Chairman Mao put forward a major strategic decision on "three-line construction" and decided to launch a large-scale construction in 13 provinces and autonomous regions in the central and western parts of the mainland with war preparedness as the guiding ideology, the main contents of which were national defense industry and transportation construction.
After the strategic deployment was gradually implemented, the plan to build a nuclear factory in the southwest region, which is the rear area, came into being, and became one of the main contents of China's defense industry construction of "three-line construction".
Yang Fangde was a factory newspaper reporter of the 404 factory, and he witnessed and experienced the entire birth and development process of the "three-line construction" and the 816 factory plan.
The 404 factory mentioned here is a nuclear raw material production and processing base set up by the state in a certain area of Yumen, Gansu Province, in order to develop the cause of national defense and ensure national security.
The success of the atomic bomb blast test in 1964 must be attributed to the contribution of the 404 plant. Since there is already a nuclear material production and processing base, why did Chairman Mao, Premier Zhou, and others propose a plan to build a second base?
Pictured| Mao Zedong
As mentioned earlier, the "three-line construction" was born under the threat of the two superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as other external factors. The production of the 816 factory plan is also related to the United States and the Soviet Union, and the recollections of Yang Fangde and Pan Kaitai and others demonstrate this.
Before leaving for the 816 factory, Yang Fangde was told at an internal meeting that due to the rupture in Sino-Soviet relations, in order to prevent the "Soviet revisionists" from destroying our nuclear base, it was decided to build a new nuclear plant.
Yang Fangde further explained: If the Soviet side sends troops, it will be able to hit the 404 factory in seven minutes, which is a great threat to the mainland. The 404 factory was very nervous at that time, the train and car traveled day and night, did not dare to turn off the fire, and left when they received orders from their superiors.
Pan Kaitai, who graduated from Hunan University and was then the head of the technical group of the 404 third branch plant, said that they would regularly participate in the political situation report meetings of the 404 factory, and although the objects of vigilance included "US imperialism" and "Soviet revisionism", the main thing to guard against was the Soviet Union, and he believed that once the Soviet Union launched a war, it would use nuclear weapons, not conventional wars.
In order to cope with these crises, the information of the 404 plant has been moved out, and several places have been drawn up as sites to achieve the purpose of diversifying risks. Prior to this, the central authorities proposed that a small number of cutting-edge national defense projects should be built in accordance with the principle of "dispersion, patronage, and concealment," and some of them should also go into caves.
Chairman Mao has always liked to keep an extra hand and advocated "not putting eggs in the same basket", because the 404 factory may be the target of the attack, and once it has a problem, it will be a very fatal blow, so he put forward the idea of building a second nuclear material base, that is, the implementation of the 816 nuclear plant plan.
With the plan and vision, where should the factory be located to be safe? According to Chairman Mao's requirements for "three-line construction," Yun, Guizhou, Sichuan (Chongqing still belongs to Sichuan), Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, and Qingdao are within the scope of the "great third line" and are considered to be the "most ideal strategic rear."
Therefore, the main object of the expert group is Yunguichuan and other places. Sifting along the Qilian Mountains, they finally found Baitao Town.
Baitao Town is located in the southeast of Fuling District, Chongqing, where it is a typical valley hilly area, passed by the Wujiang River, which is an important tributary of the Yangtze River, backed by Wuling Mountain, which can not only obtain water nearby, but also achieve the purpose of concealing enemy tracking.
Yang Fangde said that when he and his colleagues came to Baitao Town, the town was still a flooded land, very remote, and the only town was very unusual. Because there was no place to stay, hundreds of people stayed in the homes of ordinary people, and there was really no one to live in, so they vacated the pigsty and squeezed inside...
In December 1966, the 18th meeting of the Central Special Commission agreed to the plan to build the 816 factory in Baitao Town, and decided to use the "state-owned new chemical machinery factory" as a cover for confidentiality and work convenience.
According to the instructions of Premier Zhou, the 54th Division of the Engineering Corps was mainly responsible for the construction of the 816 cave, and the construction of the 816 factory was slowly launched here.
The construction of the nuclear material base is a top-secret military secret, in order to keep the information from leaking, the residents living in Baitao Town are censored one by one, and all those who cannot pass the customs are relocated, and the town disappears from the map.
Chairman Mao directly instructed that the Xiang-Chongqing Railway should be rerouted here, that it would not take the cave on a flat ground, that the nearby stations would be abolished, and that no stopping stops would be set up.
How rigorous was the audit at the time? Taking Shu Mei, a participant in the construction of the 404 factory and the 816 factory, as an example, even the family was not clear until the secret was revealed.
When She graduated from high school in 1963, Just in time for the 404 factory to build a nuclear reactor, she signed up and participated in the construction. When the 816 factory began construction, she was transferred. According to her recollection, most of the builders participated in the construction of famous universities, and among more than 1,000 people, more than 800 graduated from famous schools.
However, no matter which school you graduate from, or whether you have participated in the construction of the 404 factory, you must first conduct several days of confidential classes.
These are all in the pending stage, and in the screening stage, the review is more stringent. Shu Mei said that the ancestors of the whole family have been checked for three generations, including the grandmother's family.
Pan Kaitai said helplessly that because the time, energy and cost of the review were too high, and even affected the later personnel composition of the 816 factory, nepotism was particularly strong.
Figure | old photo of the 816 factory
Because of this strictness, when the 816 factory was officially revealed, Shumei's family knew about the work she had participated in before.
In fact, if everyone obeys discipline like Shumei, the news will naturally not leak out, but there will always be fish that slip through the net, and cases of leaks will occasionally occur.
For example, an employee of the 404 factory has long deceived his family that he works near Xi'an because of the need for confidentiality, but after being discovered by his old father, he scolded him for "messing around outside". In order to eliminate the contradiction, he wrote to his family to explain that he leaked the news, so he was sentenced by the organization for "leaking secrets".
Shu mei gave the example of a colleague in her archives who had just graduated from college and was arrested for braving with friends about secrets such as data transfer, war readiness, and being sent down to burn boilers.
Yang Fangde also introduced the same example of leaks due to vanity. There was a worker surnamed Huo in the Chongqing office of the 816 factory who inadvertently showed off to his children that "our unit is engaged in atomic bombs", and was later exposed and sentenced to several years of labor reform.
To put an end to contact with family and the outside world, it does not mean that all contact is cut off, the address of the letter is still there, but all employees use the "Chongqing 4513 mailbox" as the sending and receiving address, and cannot fill in other clues.
In fact, the management of employees has long been systematized and institutionalized, but not everyone has the same degree of confidentiality, and the staff of the 816 factory distinguishes between different levels of confidentiality, and different levels cannot be interspersed with each other in different work areas.
Of course, doing a good job of confidentiality work also has the advantage of being able to enjoy a confidentiality fee of 13 yuan per month.
It was precisely because the secrecy work was done very well that the town of Baitao really disappeared from the map. Pan Kaitai said that the staff who came to investigate in order to build the Three Gorges Dam did not know about the existence of Baitao Town.
Pictured| Three Gorges Dam
It is not enough to do a good job of confidentiality from the employee level, and the security work is also quite in place.
At that time, there was a guard regiment responsible for the safety of the 816 factory, there were three anti-lock lines, each workshop had guards, and the vehicles entering and leaving should be correctly passwordd, the password should be changed frequently, and the people who could not be replaced should be prevented from entering and leaving.
All in all, in all aspects, the 816 factory has formed a closed and confidential unit. Pan Kaitai said: "Except for the crematorium, there is everything here." ”
Indeed, the production and trade base of the 816 factory is quite complete, with road fleets, public security bureaus, schools, hospitals, flour mills, soy sauce factories, etc., which can meet all the basic living needs of the employees in the factory.
Under these relatively complete arrangements, they only have one thing to do, and that is to complete the 816 project and other tasks wholeheartedly.
According to the statistics later declassified, the 816 project has more than 60,000 (including more than 10,000 Fuling District laborers, more than 10,000 national talents and 404 factory top technical personnel) to participate in the construction of the army, 8 years for drilling holes, 9 years for the installation of equipment, a total investment of 746 million yuan, has experienced the project emergency construction, slow construction, suspension and conversion of these four stages of development. By 1984, due to the adjustment of the national strategy, the construction of the project was completely stopped.
With so many people involved, so many investments, and so long a time, the 816 underground nuclear project is still the "world's first artificial cave" to date, even after completing 85% of the construction and 60% of the installation works.
The total area of the project is 104,000 square meters, the total length is more than 20 kilometers of axial superposition, the main cave room with a height of 79.6 meters, the vault with a span of 31.2 meters, 18 large caverns in the cave, as many as 130 guide holes, branch holes, roads, shafts and tunnels, etc., making the whole cave look magnificent and simply miraculous.
In general, the overall layout of the cave is like a labyrinth, with a building in the hole, a hole in the building, and a hole in the hole.
Based on its overall area, some people believe that the stone slag hollowed out of the mountain into a one-meter-high stone wall can be extended from Chongqing to Guangzhou.
Such a large artificial cave, if the project is really completed, what is the use?
Pan Kaitai said without hesitation that the 816 plant has a huge role, in addition to producing nuclear raw materials, it can also resist nuclear attacks from the outside world, and the top cover of the cave is 200 meters thick, which is equivalent to blocking the air blast impact of 1 million tons of hydrogen bombs, and if it is hit directly by a 1,000-pound bomb, it can also be unscathed. In terms of earthquakes, there are mountains that play a supporting role, and caves can also withstand the destructive force of level 8.
Not only is the cave itself strong in defense, the photoelectric control door installed in the cave is calculated according to the shock wave of the atomic bomb, and once the electronic door feels the flash of the atomic bomb, it will automatically close. This means that the creatures outside the door are gone, and the inside of the door is still unscathed.
In order to complete this unprecedented and magnificent project, people rest, equipment does not rest, everyone works day and night, drinks the water that seeps out of the mountain when they are thirsty, sleeps on the rocks when tired, sweats on sunny days, and is drenched in mud on rainy days.
Even if the soldiers are very careful, accidents such as injuries in the line of duty and death in the line of duty occur from time to time, and a total of 71 soldiers of Unit 8342 are buried here, and nearly 100 officers and soldiers have sacrificed their lives for this purpose. In order to commemorate them, the state has set up a martyrs' cemetery 3 kilometers away from the cave to commemorate them.
Although the 816 plant project consumes so much, it can bring many benefits to the country. However, with the change of the situation, it finally ushered in the fate of slowing down construction and stopping work.
Since 1977, Shu Mei, who has been promoted to the head of the labor office of the 816 factory, has vaguely felt that the country's attitude toward the nuclear industry has changed.
Her perspective is from the wage change, sensitive to see that the advantages of this "original number one industry" has gradually changed, in short, "others are rising, we do not move", other institutions such as posts and telecommunications and other departments of the salary, can actually catch up with them.
Some cadres with a keen sense of smell began to make plans for their children, preparing for them to find opportunities to return to local positions.
Pan Kaitai also found a change in national attention. First, Deng Xiaoping believed that "a world war cannot be fought" and that economic construction is the way out for the country; second, the newly appointed minister of nuclear industry does not attach great importance to the 816 factory as the previous ministers.
Sure enough, in June 1982, the central government issued instructions to the 816 factory to postpone the construction of the project. In February 1984, the central government again issued instructions to bring the project to a complete halt.
Since the work had not yet been fully completed, production had not been put into operation until it was completely stopped. Later, a very small part of the cave was used by the Nuclear Industry Jianfeng Chemical General Plant as a warehouse to store materials.
Factory 816 has completed 85% of the construction works and 60% of the installation works, so the interruption, is the previous investment of manpower, material and financial resources wasted?
There are two main answers to this question. From a small point of view, it is indeed more than worth the loss, after all, a lot of resources, time and manpower have been invested, so it is a pity to stop.
However, from a larger perspective, stopping in time is inevitable and the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.
From the 1970s onwards, with the decline of the Soviet Union and the rapprochement of Sino-US relations, it was indeed as Deng Xiaoping predicted: "A world war cannot be fought!" ”
In 1979, after years of negotiations and run-ins, China and the United States finally achieved the establishment of diplomatic relations. In the years before that, Sino-US relations were not bad, and countries such as Japan were even more moved by the wind, and diplomatic relations were established with us before the United States.
The picture | old photo of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States
Therefore, it is difficult to fight a world war, and the factors that threaten China have also changed from the two superpowers of "US imperialism" and "Soviet revisionism" to a single "Soviet revision" and a superpower.
In 1982, Brezhnev's tone toward China began to become friendly and relaxed, and shortly before his death, he delivered a "Tashkent Speech" in Tashkent, where he was no longer as fiercely confronted with the mainland as before, which was considered "an early signal of the Sino-Soviet thaw".
In 1985, when Deng Xiaoping met with Romanian leader Ceausescu on October 9, he asked him to send a message to Gorbachev, who had just ascended to the throne, conveying the mainland's concern about the easing of Sino-Soviet relations.
In 1989, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited China, Sino-Soviet relations eased, and just two years later, in 1991, the Soviet Union moved toward disintegration, the era of hegemony between the United States and the Soviet Union ended, and the possibility of a world war was even lower.
Seizing these opportunities, the far-sighted 2nd generation of China's leadership collectives made a decision to vigorously develop productive forces with economic construction as the center, seize the opportunities of the times, and continuously improve the people's living standards.
Before the 1980s, the mainland's key development project was national defense construction; but after that, for the sake of economic construction, it had to temporarily rank the national defense cause behind.
Therefore, the 816 project was stopped, not because the country did not pay attention, but because the times have changed. When the project was first launched, it was mainly based on the international situation and for national defense and security considerations.
After entering the 80s, everything has changed, and if we do not seize the opportunity of the development of the times, the consequences will be unimaginable.
Combining these, stopping the 816 project will bring short-term pain, but it is good for long-term development.
So, was project 816 directly shelved? No, the state has been paying attention to it.
In 2002, on April 8, the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense officially agreed to the declassification of the 816 Project, peeling off this rather mysterious historical veil and letting people see how the Chinese people at that time created miracles.
At the same time, the town of Baitao, which had disappeared for decades, appeared on the map again and could be found by people.
Since the date of declassification, the idea of developing project 816 into a tourist attraction has been proposed. Li Tingyong, director of the Fuling District Tourism Bureau, argued that there was a high degree of feasibility, but it was forced to be stranded because it needed to invest about 200 million yuan.
After continuous efforts by relevant departments, in April 2010, the artificial cave of the 816 nuclear project was finally developed and became a partially open 4A-level attraction only for domestic tourists.
epilogue:
Many people are talking about the construction of the 816 nuclear project, and those who do not support it believe that it is wasteful and regrettable that it is time-consuming and labor-intensive, and finally it is not put into production; but proponents believe that in the context of a specific era, this is the product of the times, and it is a good method that the 1st generation leaders have come up with, and if the project is really completed, it will bring great benefits to the country. Neutrally speaking, everything has advantages and disadvantages, although the project was not completed in the end, but it also left the miracle of "the world's first artificial cave" for posterity, which is the result of the diligence and wisdom of the Chinese people, and is worthy of admiration and cherishing by future generations. Through engineering, we can also see such a spirit: people's hearts are united, Taishan moves! There is no problem in the world that Chinese cannot overcome!