China’s defence industry stronghold of Mianyang gets shot to reclaim former glory amid US tech war
- Located about 100km from Chengdu in Sichuan province, Mianyang is well-positioned to benefit from China’s new inward-facing strategy of domestic development
- Long-time science and technology hub helped give China atomic weapons and space satellites
In the early 1960s, when Chairman Mao Zedong was worried about a possible war with the Soviet Union after an ugly political falling out, he responded with an extensive industrial campaign known as the Third-Front Construction to relocate China’s key institutions, research facilities and military factories farther inland.
As a result, Mianyang city in the southwestern province of Sichuan became a major destination for facilities and talent, turning the once-sleepy town into China’s stronghold of defence research and development. The work done in the science and technology hub helped bring China atomic weapons and space satellites.
The city’s relevance in terms of China’s economic development, however, has been relatively weak since much of the research that comes out of Mianyang is specifically tailored for military use, with few commercial applications.
However, as Beijing is preparing for a protracted trade and tech war with the United States by turning attention inward as part of a new strategy of domestic economic development, Mianyang and other places have gained new strategic importance in the push to ensure that China is not reliant on other countries for key technologies.
To that end, Vice-Premier Liu He, President Xi Jinping’s top economic adviser, visited Mianyang last week and urged the city to do better in serving China’s “innovation-driven” development strategy, saying it “must enhance its indigenous innovation capacity and tackle core technologies to ensure the construction of key national projects”, according to a Xinhua news agency report.
Liu paid a visit to the China Academy of Engineering Physics, China’s top nuclear science research institution, and urged local officials to enhance core competitiveness – particularly in terms of support for satellite navigation, information security and smart equipment manufacturing.
“[The city’s activities] must be based on the needs of national defence, with an emphasis on the integration between military and civil [technologies],” Liu said. “Industrial standards for military and civil uses must be unified.”