The Vietnam War and China’s Third-Line Defense Planning before the Cultural Revolution, 1964–1966

Introduction

The U.S. escalation of the Vietnam War in 1964 and 1965 posed a significant threat to the security of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The leaders of the PRC responded with a three-pronged policy. First, they increased their military and economic aid to North Vietnam as early as the summer of 1964, in anticipation of the U.S. escalation of the war in August.¹ Following the arrival of U.S. marines in South Vietnam on 8 March 1965, the Chinese authorities also signaled to Washington that they preferred to keep the Vietnam War confined to Indochina but that the PRC was prepared for war and would fight if attacked by the United States.² Finally, Chinese officials in the summer of 1964 devised and subsequently implemented an ambitious strategic program for the relocation and even new construction of cities and vital economic enterprises in the country's interior that was dubbed the Third-Line Defense (TLD). After the landing of U.S. marines in South Vietnam in March 1965, the PRC also hastily engaged in general defense preparations. The TLD planning in 1964–1966 and the related defense preparations are the focus of this article.

Apart from an article written by Barry J. Naughton two decades ago, the TLD project has not attracted much scholarly attention outside China. Naughton focused on the concept and the basic characteristics of the TLD program in the 1960s and 1970s, highlighting two distinct phases of intensive TLD construction. The U.S. escalation of the Vietnam War was the catalyst for the first phase, which lasted roughly from 1964 to the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. The Soviet threat to the PRC following the border clashes in March 1969 spurred a second phase that continued until 1971.³ Although Naughton correctly attributed the causes of the TLD program to security threats, he had no access to a wide range of Chinese archival and published materials that have recently become accessible, and he did not address the defense preparations in 1965 that were closely linked to the TLD program. The new Chinese evidence permits a more nuanced and detailed picture of the early phase of the TLD project, the defense preparations of 1965, and their close connection to the security problems facing the PRC.

In general, the TLD initiative shared many of the previous and subsequent development initiatives for China's western provinces but differed in its purpose. The First Five-Year Plan (FYP) from 1953 to 1957 and Soviet investment in the 1950s focused on heavy and military industrial development in Shaanxi, Ningxia, Gansu, and Qinghai.⁴ Unlike the western development initiative that began in the late 1990s, which is supposed to develop the country more evenly, TLD construction in the 1960s and early 1970s focused on the western provinces solely for strategic and military purposes.⁵ The geographical remoteness and defensibility of these provinces, not their economic underdevelopment, were essential to the decisions made in Beijing.

The basic idea behind the TLD project was the relocation from first-line (coastal and border) provinces to newly constructed cities and industrial enterprises in China's interior, or the third-line defense (TLD) areas of the PRC. The remainder of China's provinces formed the second-line defense zone.⁶ When the U.S. Marines landed in Vietnam in the spring of 1965, the TLD program was extended to provincial TLD projects and to ad-hoc defense preparations. These activities, however, suffered a major setback in the run-up to the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), providing a natural endpoint for this article. The resumption of TLD construction following the Sino-Soviet border clashes of 1969 is another story and thus is not covered in this article.

Figure 1.

TLD Areas in the People's Republic of China, 1964–1966

General Characteristics of the TLD Program

The TLD program that emerged in 1964 and 1965 in response to the perceived rising U.S. threat encompassed the relocation...