The Rationality of the Ideology: The Third Front Danwei and the Militarized Logic of Chinese Modernity in the Cold War

Boyang Zhang, The London School of Economics and Political Science

The Third Front denotes China's extensive industrial and military development initiatives in the western regions during the Cold War, driven by concerns over potential invasions by the United States and the Soviet Union. Unlike existing scholarly discourses that emphasize the Third Front's economic contributions and military mobilization efforts, this research concentrates on the role of the Danwei—an incremental social unit within the Third Front—in achieving modernization while upholding revolutionary ideology and responding to Cold War geopolitical dynamics. Through a combination of archival analysis and ethnographic interviews, the research elucidates that the autonomous functioning and elevated status of the Danwei within the Third Front represented a strategic compromise by China to reconcile domestic legitimacy with Cold War strategic imperatives. This equilibrium is reflected in two mechanisms: the transformation of the inefficiencies inherent in Danwei operations into propagandistic narratives of security, and the acceptance of privileged social welfare within the Danwei as a form of war risk mitigation. The research further demonstrates how individuals, viewed through the lens of New Cold War history, reconfigure their daily lives, social relations, and local identities for superpower geopolitical narratives. Moreover, it deconstructs the traditional dichotomy between communism and capitalism by showing how the integration of the Danwei system into the Third Front reflects patterns of 20th-century global integration during the Cold War. As Western paradigms of public health and urban planning become embedded within communist practices, China appears to move beyond ideological isolation, engaging proactively in the competition to forge a modern nation-state.

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 Presented in Session 194. Socialist Construction, Economic Reform, and Ideological Production in China and Taiwan