{"id":76872,"date":"2026-03-31T08:00:24","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T23:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/mar\/31\/third-front-china-mao-military-factories-defences"},"modified":"2026-03-31T08:00:24","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T23:00:24","slug":"the-third-front-china-resurrects-maos-military-capabilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=76872","title":{"rendered":"The \u2018Third Front\u2019: China resurrects Mao\u2019s military capabilities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As ties with Washington sour, China is reviving a cold war strategy to defend against a US attack<\/p>\n<p>Dotted across the mountainous roads of Sichuan and just a few hours\u2019 drive from some of China\u2019s most bustling cities, the crumbling ruins of an abandoned<strong> <\/strong>military experiment are eerily quiet.<\/p>\n<p>Top secret factories that once housed thousands of workers are now overgrown with vegetation; nearby villages, empty of young people who were once shipped in from across the country to build China\u2019s future, are plastered with advertisements for hearing aids and, in once case, a bundle deal on coffins.<\/p>\n<p>Millions of workers were deployed to these remote mountain locations as part of a huge defence program that stayed secret for over a decade.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/mar\/31\/third-front-china-mao-military-factories-defences\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As ties with Washington sour, China is reviving a cold war strategy to defend against a US attackDotted across the mountainous roads of Sichuan and just a few hours\u2019 drive from some of China\u2019s most bustling cities, the crumbling ruins of an abandoned m&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5238,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50,695,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-mao-zedong","category-xi-jinping"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76872"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76883,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76872\/revisions\/76883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}