ON THIS DAY ·
China’s first nuclear test
16 Oct 1964 — China exploded its first atomic bomb in the Xinjiang desert, becoming the fifth nuclear power. The device was codenamed 596 for June 1959, when Moscow reneged on its promise to supply a sample bomb. The test came two days after Khrushchev’s fall, and China had achieved it largely without the promised help.
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The moment in context
In spring 1961 Liu Shaoqi spent 44 days in rural Hunan. Liu was head of state and second only to Mao in the Communist Party, which governed at every level. He found empty granaries and peasants who blamed officials and their orders for the disaster. The Great Leap Forward, Mao’s drive launched in 1958, had ended in famine; seeing the countryside helped persuade leaders that its policies had to change.
From Recovery after the Great Leap, chapter 8 of The People’s Republic under Mao, 1949–1976 (1964).
The place: China’s first nuclear test — map and full story →
Teach this in 5 minutes
- Why it happened — The famine could no longer be denied. By 1960–61 Party investigators had brought evidence of mass death from Xinyang and elsewhere to Beijing, and China had to import grain from Canada…
- The turn — The Seven Thousand Cadres Conference, January 1962. More than 7,000 officials heard Liu Shaoqi say that the disaster was mostly man-made. Many criticized the Leap openly for the first time since…
- What it changed — Mao turns on the Party. Mao’s suspicion came to rest on Party “power-holders” through the Socialist Education Movement and the Twenty-three Articles of January 1965. The…
Then ask the room: Why did the recovery of 1961–65 lead to the Cultural Revolution instead of to lasting reform? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
The atlas that shows it
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