Poster 311-70-70

Personal Comments

In this poster, a woman was working in a pipeline valve of Daqing oilfield, and behind of her there were many other big enterprises, shipping enterprise in sea, train enterprise in railway, granary enterprise with “Independence and self-reliance” flags and so on. The title of this poster is “Industry Learns from Daqing – Establish Daqing Style Enterprises”.

Daqing oilfield was a successful big state-owned enterprise build in CCP China. Before 1949, start year of CCP China, because of many years war and hundreds years ignoring for modern science and technology, there were very rare big and modern enterprise in China. Although there had been a golden decade for Chinese industry in 1930s, it was put down by war between China and Japan.

In 1950s, China got the real peace and unity after so many years warfare, and CCP decided to build some important big state-owned enterprises. It is well known that oil is very important for modern industry, but oil production of China was very small before 1950’s, and CCP even said there was not a drop of oil product in China before 1949. Now most people know it is wrong because there are some middle scale oilfield in west of China before 1949, but it was clear that the oil production of China at that time was not enough to support Chinese modern industry.

How to build Da Qing oilfield is a story full of challenges and difficulties. Before 1950s, many geologists from western countries made a conclusion after many prospecting for oil in China, that it was low possibility to find big oilfields in China because the geological structure of China was hard to make a big oilfield. After 1949, Soviet Union started to support China industry including oil industry, but experts of Soviet got same conclusion that China couldn’t product oil. In the end of 1950s, Soviet stopped the support for China, which made China fall down into a crisis. In this background, Chairman Mao decided to build a big oilfield ourselves.

Li Siguang, a famous geologist who got PhD in USA, found the first oilfield in north-east of China, and it was said that he used a new geology model so he could find oilfield that foreign experts couldn’t find. Da Qing is a new city created for Da Qing oilfield, its Chinese meaning is anniversary for CCP China, which lies in very cold north-east area of China. CCP arranged many workers to build Da Qing oilfield, and the most famous of them was Wang Jinxi whose nickname was “iron man “, because he had jump into cold water to work in a emergency case.

Da Qing oilfield is very successful and it product enough oil to support China industry. CCP wanted to build more big enterprise using Da Qing model, and they exactly build many excellent big enterprises at that time. But only some big enterprises were not enough for a country, people need much more small enterprise to serve for them. The policy which paid most attention to big enterprise made Chinese people couldn’t share benefits from the developing of China, and it was the reason that Soviet Union failed and China started to reform in the future.

There is another interesting thing in this poster: there is a female worker not a male worker. In the history of China, women were forbidden to work outside, their work were feeding children and cooking. After 1930s, women started to work in public, but most people thought it was shameful for her family at that time. In CCP China, women were encouraged to join the “revolutionary work”, and they were same role with man in works. There was a famous words “That women hold half the sky”, I think it is a good changing of China.

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