A lot of sensationalist stuff gets written on China, and most of it is horsesh*t.
But rarely, some of it is true.
This is the story of a project on which 60,000 Chinese soldiers worked during 18 years in complete secrecy. It was simply known as the "816 project".
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I came across it yesterday, when looking for spots to visit around Chongqing.
About 150km East of the city, I noticed a place in the middle of the countryside simply called "816 Nuclear Military Plant".
My curiosity piqued, I looked into it and could barely believe it.
The project started in the 1960s, during the so-called Sino-Soviet split.
At the time, China had a problem: it had jointly developed its nuclear program with the Soviet Union and it urgently needed to have its own independent capabilities, developed in secure facilities.
That's where the 816 project came about: they'd build a complete nuclear production site in man-made tunnels and cave, including an underground nuclear reactor capable of producing the enriched Plutonium-239 needed for the bombs.
That's why the site is right next to the Wujiang river: the artificial cave with the nuclear reactor, which is the world's largest artificial cave (a crazy 79.6m high!), sits 30m UNDER the river: in operations, 1/3rd of the river's water would be diverted to cool down the reactor
The only visible sign from the outside that there might be something there was relatively humble tunnel entrances and a non-descript chimney up in the hills
The name of the place where it's located, Baitao Town in Chongqing's Fuling District was completely wiped off all maps - it officially didn't exist anymore - and all the residents in the area where evacuated.
The 60,000 soldiers who worked on the project were sworn to lifetime secrecy about it, even to their families, and most didn't even know what they were working on: as far as they were concerned, they were just digging tunnels.
If someone was to ever ask what was there, the name was simply "State-Owned Jianxin Chemical Machinery factory".
This is a good video subtitled in English on China's social network Xiaohongshu that describes the level of secrecy:
https://www.xiaohongshu.com/explore/66bb4de5000000001e01ad07?app_platform=android&ignoreEngage=true&app_version=8.55.0&share_from_user_hidden=true&xsec_source=app_share&type=video&xsec_token=CBErDKil8ocOpE1Ph0QevQCDYcfmffgMp_gkifKGD2G6A=&author_share=1&xhsshare=WeixinSession&shareRedId=ODkzODs3NkI2NzUyOTgwNjg2OTpISz49&apptime=1727398256&share_id=317bbf22e23145a79b1e678d80926c30
All in all, the scale of the project is just unbelievable: it covers 104,000 square meters of floor space (the equivalent of 26 football fields).
That's a 3D rendering of the tunnel network
Again it took the 60,000 PLA soldiers 18 years to build!
That's not all, the place was built so it could withstand bombing by the equivalent of several atomic bombs, AND a magnitude 8 earthquake!
Simply put, I think it's one of the largest scale military infrastructure projects of the 20th century, that we know of...
The whole project was eventually cancelled in 1984 due to China's commitments to nuclear non-proliferation and the changed international context, including the reducing of tensions with the Soviet Union, and with the US.
But its existence was only revealed to the public in 2002.
I find it fascinating that we know all about the Manhattan project - with heroic movies made about it - but close to nothing about similar-scale historical projects such as this one in China, despite all the information about it being publicly available.
Since 2010 the place is open to the public as a tourist attraction, so if ever you pass by Chongqing, I'm sure it's a fascinating visit.