Building for Oil: Daqing and the Formation of the Chinese Socialist State by Hou Li (review)

Toward the end of the 1950s, the People's Republic of China (PRC) faced great challenges. Domestically, agriculture and the petroleum industry were the weak links in the national economy. Internationally, tensions with the Soviet Union would soon make China's relations with both of the world's superpowers incredibly hostile. China needed to be independent more than ever. At this critical moment, the Daqing Oil Field was discovered. Hou Li's Building for Oil documents the important history of this discovery and the construction of the Daqing Oil Field in 1959. The book also explores the oil field's significance for China's independent development in industrialization and modernization in the 1960s and the 1970s.

Moving in a largely chronological fashion, the book devotes its first two chapters to the founding period of the Daqing Oil Field. Chapter 1 describes how the Daqing Oil Field was discovered in 1959 by situating the discovery in the context of continuous efforts at modernization that were made by a variety of political actors—such as the Monarchists of the late Qing dynasty, the Republicans who ruled after the fall of China's last dynasty as well as the Communists who have ruled since 1949. All these actors prioritized the needs and goals of the state. Chapter 2 discusses all the difficulties that were overcome through the "total mobilization" of the nation's resources before the first tank of oil was shipped in the autumn of 1960. The central government and local governments provided full support for this process. New graduates and demobilized soldiers became engineers or workers in Daqing. They and their families built their own gandalei homes to ward off the harsh winters, and they also hunted and farmed to fight hunger and make ends meet while working on the oil field. All individuals residing in Daqing became the objects and the agents of the state industrialization process.

Chapter 3 explains how Daqing came to be recognized as the ideal model of industrial development in 1963. After the Great Leap Forward (1958-1959) became a national famine (1960-1962), Chinese planners overwhelmingly valued cutting costs on "non-basic" and nonproductive construction, which was clearly evident in Daqing's experience. Daqing's low-budget development, based on the slogan, "Production first, livelihood second," the spirit of self-reliance, and austerity measures all combined to form what seemed to be the best solution to all the shortage problems China faced at that time. In 1963 Premier Zhou Enlai praised Daqing by saying that its development based on the "integration of workers and peasants" and the "integration of urban and rural areas" was "good for production" and "convenient for livelihood" (pp. 87-88).

Chapter 4 traces the process between late 1963 and early 1966 through which the economics of the construction in Daqing became the politics of construction for the whole nation. Daqing supplied over half of the country's annual crude oil production and led the petroleum industry to be the only sector that fulfilled (and actually exceeded) the ambitious goals set during the Great Leap Forward. In December 1963, China proudly announced: "Those days when our country relied on foreign oil are now gone forever!" Daqing was then aggressively promoted as the correct path for China's industrialization nationwide. In the meantime, Chairman Mao put the leaders of petroleum industry in charge of the nation's development to prepare for the launch of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

Chapter 5 provides a glimpse into the daily lives of the Daqing people, including "Iron Man," "Iron Girls," the dependents, and young intellectuals, and how they were politically educated and transformed to become new socialist men and women throughout the 1960s. Daqing experienced disruptions during the Cultural Revolution, but by mid-1969 normal production had resumed. The oil field in Daqing remained one of...