Covell Meyskens (Naval Postgraduate School)

In 1964, in response to rising tensions with the United States and Soviet Union, the Chinese Communist Party directed resources away from existing cities towards the construction of a massive military industrial complex hidden in the mountains of inland China. This covert military-industrial complex received more government investment than any other developmental initiative of the Mao era, and yet this huge drive to build an urban industrial war machine in underdeveloped regions was not officially acknowledged for over a decade and a half. Drawing on a rich collection of archival documents, memoirs, and oral interviews, Meyskens provides the first history of the Third Front campaign. His research shows how the militarization of Chinese industrialization linked the social and economic geography of the nation to the international tensions of the global Cold War, merging global geopolitics with local change and producing a clandestine urban industrial world.