Ordinary Life within an Extraordinary Project: Demystifying the Third Front
Kendall, P. 2025. Ordinary Life within an Extraordinary Project: Demystifying the Third Front. Modern China.
| Title | Ordinary Life within an Extraordinary Project: Demystifying the Third Front |
|---|---|
| Type | Journal article |
| Authors | Kendall, P. |
| Abstract | Since its establishment in the 1960s and 1970s, the Third Front has undergone a major discursive transformation, from military secret under Mao Zedong and economic anachronism under Deng Xiaoping to industrial heritage under Xi Jinping. In the early twenty-first century, commemorative discourse presents this military-industrial complex of China’s hinterlands as an extraordinary project within which workers led extraordinary lives. While not disputing the extraordinary ambition and scale of the project itself, this article draws on fieldwork and late-twentieth century textual sources to argue that many aspects of Third Front everyday life only seem extraordinary – and become heritage-worthy – when viewed through the lens of contemporary urban life. In contrast, when examined alongside the wider danwei (work unit) system, the Third Front everyday appears extraordinary not as a radical departure from Maoist industrial practices but rather as the ambitious extension of these practices into inhospitable terrain. Approaching the Third Front from this perspective, this paper argues, can help to demystify this project’s legacy and locate it within existing research on the danwei. |
| Keywords | Chinese studies |
| danwei | |
| Third Front | |
| space | |
| everyday life | |
| commemoration | |
| Journal | Modern China |
| ISSN | 0097-7004 |
| 1552-6836 | |
| Year | 2025 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications |
| Accepted author manuscript | File Access Level Open (open metadata and files) |
| Publication dates | |
| Published | Dec 2025 |