Mao Zedong had grandiose plans in 1958
What could be the reason for the large-scale mobilization of Chinese workers in the smelting of iron and steel in small-scale metallurgy in the fall of 1958?
This question has already arisen in the previous article and aroused great interest. While there are no special finds related to publications or archival documents, and while the CCP does not want to tell how everything really happened, you can take a purely analytical route and put forward a search hypothesis.
In my practice, I quite often encountered confusing topics that were not easy to understand. Such mysteries can be solved by finding and analyzing as many facts as possible related to the topic under consideration, as well as carefully studying the context, that is, the political, social and economic situation surrounding the events. The success of this enterprise largely depends on putting forward a certain hypothesis, which I call a search hypothesis, which sets the direction for the search for the necessary materials. Otherwise, even if you have a fair amount of perseverance, you can get stuck.
Certain conclusions based on facts already known to us lead to a search hypothesis that explains the background of the 1958 steel campaign, which will then need to be convincingly confirmed or refuted.
Some facts
The fact of the first.
The campaign itself, as far as one can judge, was short-lived, from late August to late December 1958. Although we now do not know exactly when exactly the campaign stopped and what then became of the built stoves, in particular, whether they were subsequently used and for how long. Let's start from what we have. Four months for the campaign.
The fact of the second.
Apparently, a lot of metal was smelted during this four-month campaign. For example, on October 18, 1958, Luzhai County of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region smelted 207,2 thousand tons of pig iron and 288,1 thousand tons of cast iron. Apparently this is peak smelting.
However, the county did not achieve this smelting in one day. There was some initial production, then it grew and reached a peak. And after the peak, the county clearly did not stop production the next day.
Total at the peak - 495 thousand tons of metal, and if the county had smelting close to this, say, a couple of days before the peak level and a couple more days after, roughly a week, then smelting could reach 2-2,5 million tons of metal for this week .
Many districts smelted the metal, some quite a lot, so that the smelting per campaign could reach very large values, by eye 10–15 million tons of any metal, if not more. I think that the CCP does not want to publish statistics on the total production of metal by small-scale metallurgy in 1958, although they have it, because the overall figures would be so large that they would pose questions that would be difficult to answer.
At least two main questions.
First - why so much?
However, in the conditions of China at that time, excess metal was more of a benefit than a disadvantage.
Second - why so quickly, and without actually taking into account the expenditure of effort and cost?
This is a more complex question, especially in light of one fact.
The third fact.
In total, about 90 million people out of 266 million workers, or 33,8%, were mobilized. Taking into account temporary support workers, as Luo Pinghai wrote, up to 100 million people. This means that a number of sectors of the Chinese national economy then experienced a sharp outflow of personnel, not excluding agriculture. But if it was difficult to dredge up the Chinese sea of peasants, then many branches of the factory industry at the end of 1958 must have been virtually locked up or sharply reduced output.
About a quarter of China's industrial output was sacrificed for iron and steel. For what?
This means that cast iron and steel at that moment had much greater value for management than all other industrial products. And this is a factor that leads to suspicions that this was all a military mobilization campaign.
Military heritage
Even from the appearance of the 1958 campaign, one can confidently judge that small metallurgy in China had long traditions and trained cadres of craftsmen, and on a decent scale. In total, there were up to 600 thousand ovens. If for every three furnaces there is one master who controls the smelting, then 200 thousand master smelters are already required.
Together with other workers who needed qualifications to work at the blast furnace or furnace, the need for personnel reached approximately half a million people. These personnel were available, since it was possible to organize a metallurgical campaign of such a scale. The unskilled workers were apparently mainly peasants, especially since the campaign itself began at the end of August, after the completion of the flood rice harvest and the beginning of the dry season, which lasts until March of the following year.
In other words, China already had a small ferrous metallurgy industry capable of smelting significant volumes of metal. On the one hand, this is generally a traditional Chinese craft. The districts that produced the greatest smelting apparently were centers of small-scale ferrous metallurgy from ancient times.
On the other hand, this is probably a legacy of wartime. The armies fighting in China needed steel and cast iron for production. weapons and ammunition. Since the needs were very great, China did not yet have its own large industry, and imports were irregular, it is not surprising that the Red Chinese, that is, the communists; White Chinese, that is, Chiang Kai-shekists; Japanese militarists and their various Chinese accomplices of an indeterminate color put all their might on the local small metallurgy industry.
This is a very little-studied issue, but I came across information that the Japanese created artisanal smelting of iron or cast iron in the occupied territories, which they then exported for processing to Manchuria or Japan. I think that all the participants in the long war in China did this, and the communists - first of all, since they could least of all count on external help.
For example, the command of the communist 8th Army in 1939 formed a military-industrial department, which created arsenals in all liberated areas. In July 1943, the 8th and 4th new armies in their arsenals produced about 10 thousand rifles, 100 thousand artillery shells, several hundred thousand mines and grenades, and about 1 million pieces of ammunition.
Production of grenades at the 8th Army factory
Another example.
Chiang Kai-shek organized the production of a 50-mm mortar type 27 (a copy of the Japanese mortar type 89) and produced 40 thousand of these mortars and 1,5 million mines during the war with the Japanese, and then 80 thousand mortars and 600 thousand mines for them during the war with the communists . In 1941–1945, the same mortar was produced by the 8th Army (2 mortars and 500 thousand mines for them).
Arsenal products in Chongqing
So, despite the industrial underdevelopment of China, both the Red and White Chinese had weapons production, and it was, of course, supplied with raw materials. And in this supply, local small-scale ferrous metallurgy played a significant role.
Reserve for a proposed war
The urgency and haste of Mao Zedong's steel drive at the end of 1958 most likely stemmed from military needs. This is indicated by certain military-political circumstances.
Firstly, back in November 1957, at a meeting of representatives of workers and communist parties in Moscow, Mao criticized N. S. Khrushchev’s policy aimed at “peaceful coexistence” with capitalist countries as anti-revolutionary and called not to be afraid of a third world war, believing that The USSR and China, through joint efforts, can put an end to the United States. Mao convinced Khrushchev of this during his visit to China from July 31 to August 3, 1958, that is, on the eve of the iron smelting campaign.
Secondly, on August 23, 1958, the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis began, which lasted until December 2, 1958. Formally, these were small battles for the islands of Kinmen and Mazu off the coast of mainland Fujian, but apparently Mao had far-reaching plans. The command of the Kuomintang army also had equally far-reaching plans for landing on the continent and advancing deep into China. In any case, similar plans were developed in 1965 with the participation of former Japanese officers.
This, of course, requires a more thorough analysis of how the situation was perceived by the Chinese communist political and military leadership at that moment. Most likely, many moments that later seemed insignificant were then regarded as a harbinger of a big war, for which it was necessary to thoroughly prepare.
And here a massive campaign to smelt iron and steel suddenly turns out to be very appropriate. If the PRC finds itself in a situation of a large-scale clash with the Chiang Kai-shekists, who are supported by the United States, and the USSR does not want to come out with all its might on the side of the Chinese communists, then the only hope is on its own forces and the local production of weapons and ammunition.
In this situation, the idea could arise that it would be very advisable to create reserves of metallurgical semi-finished products before the onset of a potential conflict: cast iron, steel and cast iron, from which weapons and ammunition would later be made.
Outline of the plan
The plan, if we follow this assumption, was, in general, probably like this.
By mass mobilization and the creation of prefabricated small metallurgy in centers with the most favorable natural and transport conditions, it was possible to achieve the smelting of several million tons of metallurgical semi-finished products. The quality of the resulting metal was unimportant, since it was then intended to be melted down in military factories and workshops by experienced craftsmen who could quite easily obtain cast iron and steel of the required quality.
The metal smelted in small blast furnaces and furnaces was not immediately used, but was stored somewhere, most likely in caches in the rear areas, where military enterprises and workshops were located. Perhaps it was not shown in open statistics. What happened to him later is unknown. It was probably subsequently used up little by little when it was decided that these reserves were no longer needed.
This was not a spontaneous campaign at all, but a carefully planned and organized military-economic operation. Many issues needed to be resolved. Among them: to supply 90 million workers with food for several months, to provide at least a minimum of work clothes and shoes, to deliver building materials and components for the construction of furnaces, iron ore mining, fuel, to transport them to processing sites, and also to organize the transportation of finished semi-finished products.
Iron ore and fuel are generally a serious problem. Iron ore had to be taken from the richest and most easily accessible, so that it could be dug with a pick and shovel and crushed by hand. Strong breeds were not suitable.
Ore grinding in Boai County, Henan Province
The furnaces had to be as close as possible to the sources of ore, because every kilometer of transportation increased costs. Trucks would need gasoline and tires, and horses would need fodder. Now, if the ore is only a couple of kilometers from the furnaces, then you can get by with Chinese wheelbarrows.
Sometimes they resorted to transporting iron ore on horses. Like, for example, in Anyang, Henan Province.
It seems that it was in such advantageous places that the stoves were installed wherever possible, including on the streets of villages and in the courtyards of houses, on any more or less convenient site. The coal was most likely charcoal, although the use of artisanal coke cannot be ruled out. These are large-scale logging, massive burning of coal and equally massive transportation of coal by all available modes of transport.
Here in the photo, most likely, coal is burned. In the background is a heap of coal that has not yet been dismantled.
In addition, there was another aspect.
During this campaign, tens of millions of workers, mostly men of military age, were concentrated in certain areas where mass smelting took place. One call from Mao, one instruction was enough to turn this economic mobilization into a military one. It seems that this point was also taken into account in the planning of the campaign, and warehouses of uniforms and weapons were deployed near such areas of concentration of small metallurgy. A few hours - and the metallurgist brigades are transformed into regiments and divisions.
All in all, it was a big undertaking that required resources, excellent planning, organization and discipline. Party cadres, trained during a long war, accustomed to following orders and not asking unnecessary questions, coped with this task quite well.
Still, one must assume that Mao then had grandiose plans, part of which was this campaign for iron and steel. So grandiose that it was very inconvenient to admit them later. If this were a purely defensive epic, then the Chinese leadership would hardly hide it, much less turn it into a stupid campaign. On the contrary, it would be a diamond in Chinese propaganda.
But here there is silence and even self-spitting. There must be a reason for this.
Now, if the plans were, for example, to bring communism at the bayonets of the PLA to Southeast Asia, India or anywhere else where the regiments of the revolutionary army could reach - then yes, it is better to be a klutz than a conspirator. Moreover, this plan did not succeed, for some, presumably, very compelling reasons.
This is how the search hypothesis turns out. Let's see where it leads and what it will give, being confirmed or refuted.
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