In early March 1953, in Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union, although winter had passed, people could still feel the chill.
Luo Shunchu, then deputy commander of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy, stepped out of the gate after finishing negotiations with Soviet personnel, looked up at the Sky in Moscow, and then sighed very quietly.
That evening, Luo Shunchu sent a telegram to China: The Soviet Union had difficulties in ordering the order demands of our navy. Not long after, he received a call back from Xiao Jinguang, the commander of the Navy: There is better than nothing! As long as it can be used, do everything possible to fight!
It was this callback that gave Luo Shunchu the confidence to continue negotiations, and also facilitated the purchase of four old Soviet warships that had been launched for more than a decade with "68 tons of gold".
Why does our country spend so much money on this business? Did the business make or lose?
Xiao Jinguang
In early 1953, the situation on the Korean battlefield changed, and the newly elected US President Eisenhower was eager to plan a new landing operation on the west coast of the Korean Peninsula in order to break the deadlock on the front line.
In order to strengthen the defense, Chairman Mao Zedong sent a telegram to Stalin, saying that China intended to send naval volunteers to fight in Korea, hoping that the Soviet Union would assist a batch of naval equipment.
Stalin, taking into account the role of the navy, quickly acceded to China's demands this time. The Chinese, on the other hand, also earmarked funds from a fairly limited defense budget to buy 4 large destroyers from the Soviet Union.
However, on March 5, Stalin died of an illness, which disrupted the naval assistance plan that had been agreed between China and the Soviet Union.
Luo Shunchu
On March 7, Deputy Commander of the Navy, Luo Shunchu, followed a condolence group led by Premier Zhou Enlai to Moscow, and after Stalin's funeral, Luo Shunchu then negotiated with Soviet personnel on the issue of assistance.
But Malenkov, the new Soviet leader, said he did not know that Stalin had promised to aid the Chinese navy.
After the efforts of Luo Shunchu and others, the Soviet side finally agreed to continue to implement the aid plan, but in terms of the type of equipment, quantity and supply time, the Soviet Union still said that it did have difficulties.
Luo Shunchu had to call The Country to report on the negotiations with the Soviet Union and ask for instructions on how to deal with it. Xiao Jinguang, commander of the Navy, stated his opinion to Luo Shunchu in a callback: Everything is better than trying to win ready-made and semi-finished products, even if they have used them, as long as they still have combat capabilities and educational effects, it is better than nothing at all!
In fact, the implication of Xiao Jinguang's remarks is that even if the Soviet Union is now in a state of disrepair, as long as it can still be used, it is what we in China need.
Xiao Jinguang also used the example of Japan, he told Luo Shunchu: The latest and most secret things in the Soviet Union will never give us, but their old equipment is still very useful to us, and Japan is now taking things that the Americans can't see to strengthen its armed forces.
With Xiao Jinguang's words, Luo Shunchu's confidence increased a lot, and later he returned to China to report to Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai, and also got a similar answer: Although Soviet ships are old goods, they are still weapons with combat capabilities for the Chinese Navy, and the number can be reduced by half.
Soon Luo Shunchu returned to the Soviet Union and continued negotiations. Finally, in June 1953, the Sino-Soviet agreement on naval assistance was successfully reached.
According to the agreement, the Soviet Union will provide China with 32 finished ships of various types and 49 semi-finished ships in the form of loans, as well as mines, artillery technical charts, etc. within 3 years; China will pay off the loan with a total amount of 610 million rubles and an annual interest rate of 2%.
It also became the largest deal for China to import naval equipment and transfer technology from the Soviet Union.
Four warships joining the Chinese Navy
The price of 4 finished destroyers was quite expensive, each priced at 60 million rubles, which was about 17 tons of gold at that time!
That is to say, for these 4 destroyers, China has taken out the equivalent of 68 tons of gold!
Although this huge amount was repaid with agricultural and mineral products, the value was a solid 68 tons of gold. If it is converted according to the current gold price, its price will at least exceed 20 billion yuan!
Such a huge amount of money to build several advanced destroyers of our army in active service is not a problem! So were these 4 destroyers that were bought back considered advanced at that time?
Unfortunately, as Xiao Jinguang said to Luo Shunchu earlier, they are not the latest things in the Soviet Union. All four destroyers were completed in the early 1940s, and the design ideas are a decade further.
Due to the immature welding technology at the time of construction, their hulls are relatively backward riveting technology, coupled with the Soviet Union's original positioning of its own navy, so that the internal space of the warship is small, the ventilation is poor, and the habitability is very poor. With the updating and iteration of equipment, these warships were also on the verge of being eliminated within the Soviet Navy.
When they were handed over to China, they were completely second-hand goods with dilapidated hulls and backward technology. And even such second-hand goods, but the price is as high as "68 tons of gold"!
So if you look at it purely from the perspective of money, this is a completely loss-making deal for China, but is this really the case? This depends on the value that this business brought to the People's Navy at that time.
Mao Zedong inspects the Navy, 1953
The People's Navy, founded in 1949, is as poor as new China, although there are some ships available, but they are all very old small and medium-sized ships, the combat capability is worrying, and the troops lack the necessary talents, do not know how to build the Chinese Navy, as for their own ships is more like a fantasy.
However, Chairman Mao Zedong pointed out the direction of work for Xiao Jinguang, the first commander of the Navy: We must actively seek the assistance of the Soviet Union and learn well from the Soviet Navy in the process of naval construction.
In November of that year, Xiao Jinguang, deputy commander of the Navy, Luo Shunchu, and others rushed to the Soviet Union with the drafted Chinese naval construction plan, not only to visit and study, but also to win assistance in naval construction.
However, the negotiations did not go well, and at that time the Soviet Union was worried that the supply of naval ships to our country would irritate the United States, and only promised to transport some small ships and equipment to us by land.
Small ships are better than nothing, but soon with the deepening of the Korean War, China needed to buy a large number of Soviet aircraft and artillery, and at that time, the finances did not have extra money, and the result was only to reduce the navy's funds to contingency.
Xiao Jinguang and others had to repeatedly revise the naval construction plan, and at the same time greatly reduced the number of ships and other equipment purchased, and as a result, even these small ships were gone. As a result, the people's navy in those years did not have sufficient funds, let alone the ships it needed, and life was very embarrassing.
Once, Xiao Jinguang went to inspect the naval forces on Liugong Island in Weihai, Shandong Province, and there was a long distance from Liugong Island to the shore, and it was necessary to rely on a ferry.
However, Xiao Jinguang, who was the commander of the navy, did not find a ship that could be moved, and the people had no choice but to find local fishermen and rent a small fishing boat to land on Liugong Island.
The old fisherman who drove the boat looked at the group of officers in naval uniforms, and then asked Xiao Jinguang with a suspicious heart: Are you really the commander of the navy? But how could the commander of the navy sit on my fishing boat?
This incident left a deep stimulus for Xiao Jinguang, but the conditions were really difficult at that time, and he, the empty-handed naval commander, had no way to do anything.
The difficulties faced by the admirals on the front lines were obviously greater than the dilemma of the naval commander sitting on a fishing boat.
At that time, on the southeast coast, the Kuomintang reactionaries were constantly harassing by virtue of their superiority at sea, while the young PLA naval unit could only drive small boats with a displacement of tens of tons to fight against enemy warships of thousands of tons.
Although with the bravery and fearlessness of the generals, many battles ended in victory, Xiao Jinguang, who learned of these circumstances, was painful in his heart, and he was secretly determined that in the future, we must let our naval soldiers drive big ships and big ships!
However, at this time, the Korean front is the most important, as the commander of the navy, he must focus on the overall situation, and can only put the naval construction one after another.
The Chinese Navy at the founding ceremony
But surprisingly, the early construction of the people's navy was stalled by the Korean War, but the turnaround was also due to the Korean War.
It was in 1952, in order to break the stalemate on the Korean battlefield, the United States attempted to launch a landing operation in the rear of the Sino-North Korean coalition forces. The Soviet Union suggested that China should strengthen coastal defense and said it could provide equipment assistance to the Chinese navy.
So Xiao Jinguang and Luo Shunchu rushed to Moscow again to discuss solving the problem of naval weapons and equipment. Unexpectedly, this negotiation once again had twists and turns because of the number of equipment, delivery time and other issues, during which Xiao Jinguang also tried to propose to buy several destroyers, but the other side did not agree to one.
For this reason, luo Shunchu had to return to Moscow shortly after returning to China to talk with the Soviet naval department and urge them to solve the problem.
Xiao Jinguang sighed at that time: Even if it is something that has been promised, it is not so easy to implement it! In 1953, the two sides continued negotiations, during which stalin's death almost abandoned their previous achievements, but fortunately, the new Soviet leadership quickly changed the previous procrastination practice, coupled with China's willingness to pay a lot of money, so three months after Stalin's death, the two countries successfully reached an aid agreement.
Anshan ship
According to this agreement and subsequent supplementary agreements, China has obtained a total of 137 ships from the Soviet Union, and the combat effectiveness of the people's navy has been greatly improved in a short period of time.
In particular, the four destroyers, which were later known as the "Four King Kongs", added a lot of confidence to the old generation of naval officers and men who confronted foreign destroyers in the South China Sea.
For quite some time, these four warships were the largest surface warships of our Navy, and they were the same warships that we mentioned earlier in exchange for "68 tons of gold".
But rather than being expensive, it's actually about the money spent on acquiring technology. The Soviet Union transferred a full set of technical drawings and relevant materials and equipment for 5 types of ships to China, and after that, China's own shipyards can also assemble and manufacture ships by themselves, which not only exercises the technical strength of the shipbuilding industry, but also paves the way for the future development of self-made ships.
And thanks to the success of this business, the Soviet Union then sold us other ships, and by the end of 1955 the Chinese Navy had begun to take shape, no longer the navy that had been fighting with sailboats a few years ago.
Although these ships are relatively old, the Chinese Navy has developed on this basis, and such a value cannot be bought with many tons of gold.
Content Source:
Xiao Jinguang: Memoirs of Xiao Jinguang, Contemporary China Publishing House
Peng Xuetao, "The Inside Story of the Soviet Union's Assistance to the Construction of Chinese Naval Weapons and Equipment", Wenshi Monthly, No. 2, 2012
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