How China Got the Bomb
on October 16 1964 3 P.M in the afternoon the People's Republic of China detonated their first domestically produced atomic bomb with this China joined the United States Soviet Union and Great Britain as one of the five Atomic Powers it took China less than five years to produce a working nuclear weapon in this video we look at how China got the bomb back when America alone had the atomic bomb Mao Zedong and party leadership feared possible American nuclear intervention in the Chinese Civil War when he visited Stalin in December 1949 to negotiate China's entry into the Soviet Bloc he sought the Assurance of a nuclear umbrella over his then precarious country the Soviets then just a few months removed from breaking the Western Monopoly were reluctant to grant that umbrella even implicitly in the original text of the sino-soviet Treaty of friendship Alliance and mutual assistance the Soviets wrote in the event of an invasion of one of the signatory countries by a third country the other signatory country shall render assistance recognizing that this was a bit watered down don't lie suggested adding the Clause with all means at its disposal the Soviets initially resisted but it was eventually accepted nothing about nuclear weapons was ever put down in formal writing leaving the meaning of all these Clauses to interpretation by all parties such things were shortly thereafter tested during the Korean War as the Americans approached the yalu river the border between North Korea and China the Chinese worried that the Americans would also invade communist China in such an event would the Americans use the bomb with the Soviets back the Chinese leadership eventually did decide to intervene believing in their Manpower advantage and that the Americans would not risk all-out nuclear warfare with the Soviets Mao's bet worked out the Americans did not use nuclear weapons though they certainly threatened to do so but after the hot war in Korea ended the Americans held the nuclear weapons issue over Chinese heads such threats had a strong impact on Chinese leadership who called it nuclear blackmail comments like those by John Foster Dulles Secretary of State under President Dwight Eisenhower who said the Chinese Communist Regime has been consistently and viciously hostile to the United States and then a Whopper from General Curtis LeMay the commander of the Strategic Air Command who said in 1954 there are no suitable Strategic Air Targets in Korea however I would drop a few bombs in proper places in China Manchuria and Southeastern Russia it is hard to read such a comment as a Chinese and not feel a little alarmed during the first Taiwan Strait crisis in late 1954 and 1955 the U.S military leadership recommended the use of nuclear weapons though Eisenhower ultimately refrained then in December 1954 the United States and the Republic of China signed a mutual defense treaty which the Communists rightly believed would embolden the gomidan even if none of this happened Mao zutong and the Communist Party probably would have tried to produce an atomic weapon anyway but this series of crises gave the process a special urgency Mao's first impulse with their new program was to go to their new Ally the Soviets the Soviets were China's largest external trading partner they had given loans and helped China create soviet-style Industrial Development projects they also provided the pla with missiles aircraft and other military equipment the PRC long knew about the Soviet nuclear program a few weeks before the first detonation 1949 a Communist Party delegation led by Leo Sao Chi visited Stalin and unexpectedly asked him to tour the nuclear installations Stalin perhaps surprised instead arranged to show them a nuclear testing documentary the Soviets never transferred any Atomic technology while he was alive the most he was willing to offer was the aforementioned quote-unquote protection of their nuclear umbrella in 1953 Stalin died and Nikita Khrushchev won a power struggle to become leader of the Soviet Union we generally believe that Khrushchev wanted Chinese support to boost his own domestic influence and help him achieve his goal of cleaning out stalinism in September 1954 he said in a speech to the Central Committee before the event of the fifth anniversary of foundation of China if we don't help China to develop its industry we would miss the historic opportunity to solidify our friendship a few days later he led a delegation to the PRC in a meeting that occurred on October 1954 Mao asked Khrushchev to assist China in its nuclear weapons program this caught Khrushchev by surprise after a pause he sought to dissuade China from taking this path he wanted them to focus on economic development pointing out that the Soviets had already provided them a nuclear umbrella the Chinese insisted and in the end Khrushchev and the Soviets agreed to cooperate on certain items for peaceful atomic energy use in April 1955 the PRC and the Soviet Union signed the sino-soviet atomic cooperation treaty in it the Soviets agreed to give the Chinese and a few other Eastern European countries a 6500 to 10 000 kilowatt experimental nuclear power plant and a 12.5 to 25 Mega electron volt cyclotron at a cost of 430 million rubles the Soviets sent a team of nuclear experts led by the head of the Soviet Institute of nuclear physics to show some movies about atomic energy they also gave a lecture to a large audience of 1 400 Chinese scientists and Zoe and Lai himself they would also send several scientists to China to explore China's uranium reserves out in xinjiang any useful uranium would be first used for Chinese domestic purposes and the Surplus exported to the Soviet Union later in February 1956 Khrushchev agreed to expand this cooperation in the form of sending more Chinese students to the Soviet Union and helping to build nuclear research facilities for China in these days sino-soviet relations were at a high yet Mao and his colleagues considered it an alliance of convenience meaning that it will end at some point and they had to make the most of what was being transferred while it was still coming the PRC started by increasing its science research funding from 15 million dollars in 1955 to 100 million in 1956. the Chinese Academy of Sciences received a large influx of money with most of it going towards purchasing science literature from the West talents are critical and the Chinese nuclear program sought some of China's best talents the program also benefited from an influx of chinese-born scientists who were educated or worked in the west one notable example was Dr Chen sha sen who co-founded the jet propulsion lab he controversially lost his job due to American accusations of communist sympathies Chen's persecution was a stain on America and a boon for the PRC other notable expatriate scientists included Chen Wei Tung Chen San Chang and pong Hong woo pong was particularly brilliant a Quantum physicist who earned two doctorates in 10 years and was the first Chinese student to study under Nobel Prize winner Max born studied the fissioning of uranium and gamma rays at The Courier Institute in Paris upon his return to China he became the director of The Institute of physics of the Chinese Academy of space scientists like Dr pong and Dr Chen came back to China to help its development despite their patriotism they were unfairly attacked by far left elements of the Communist Party of China for being rightist intellectuals it got so bad that though and Lai called in Landmark meeting in 1956 to try and end the persecution but it was not until the scientists were taken away from the cities to remote locations that they found peace up until 1957 what the Soviets had transferred over was helpful in accelerating reactor design for peaceful atomic energy there is little doubt about their sincerity and this aim but the Chinese largely already knew how to produce accelerators and even nuclear reactors there was a lot of published literature in the West a nuclear weapon is a different Beast requiring special techniques and a lot of infrastructure to support it the Soviets resisted the notion of sharing design or production knowledge about the nuclear weapons themselves but then in late October 1956 came a series of anti-communist protests in Hungary and Poland the Soviets responded to both with violent repression weakened by these protests the Soviets needed the backing of their primary foreign Ally such friendship came with a price finally in 1957 Khrushchev decided against the advice of the military and Ivan kirchatov the father of the Soviet Atomic program that he would transfer atomic bomb technology to the Chinese thus in October 1957 the Chinese and the Soviets signed the agreement on production of new weapons and Military technology equipment and establishment of a comprehensive atomic energy industry in China in it the Soviets would have provided among other things a teaching model atomic bomb complete with designs and documentation plus technology for casings processing uranium and plutonium and testing guidance this should have been momentous a technology transfer decision like no other but there is a big question one very hard to answer surrounding just how helpful the Soviet Union's transfers eventually were for the Chinese nuclear weapons program Khrushchev and other members on the Soviet side felt that they transferred some of their deepest Secrets Nikita later said in his self-serving Memoirs before the rupture in our relations we'd given the Chinese almost everything they asked for we kept no secrets from them cruise ship wasn't being entirely truthful here the Soviets did tell their scientists to limit themselves and never brief them on what the limits were so they tended to be extremely passive but on what they were allowed to say they were open and genuinely sought to teach though the Chinese did not seem to be so impressed with what they got at least on the specific issue of nuclear weapons design one such Soviet lecture on July 15 1958 covered the theory structure and assembly of a nuclear weapon the Soviets thought they revealed many top secrets there but there were no documents given just one basic sketch on a Blackboard and the audience were mostly administrative Personnel not scientists no parameters nor formula were given nor were notes allowed the reasoning for this being that this would come with the sample teaching bomb more on that later the Chinese also claimed that the 1958 Soviet lecture had completely wrong data that ended up misleading the Chinese scientists later down the line Dr Chen Sun Chang already familiar with the working theoretical concepts of a nuclear weapon thanks to his time in the United States had been in attendance and later said what they told us is the same as the information we can get from other capitalist countries but with a few more details sorting out these opposing claims is made more challenging by the subsequent sino-soviet split both countries were incentivized to play up or downplay their contribution to the Chinese nuclear weapons program regardless and other things of nuclear weapons development the scale of Technology transferred from the Soviets to the Chinese was massive none of this should be discounted for instance the two countries closely collaborated on prospecting and Mining efforts China's uranium mines and xinjiang were quite substantial the Soviets helped with aerial surveys and prospecting Labs though again here the Chinese claimed that Soviet Aid was not particularly helpful they pushed China to Prospect and sedimentary soils but as it turned out China's best uranium deposits were found amidst granite and igneous rock and finally the Soviets handed over some of their best missiles most critically there are 12 intercontinental ballistic missile which their scientists spent many arduous years developing the Chinese got it for free Sergey Khrushchev nikola's son recalls let them take the R-12 2 000 kilometers is not that long a range then father became silent perhaps he had realized that this weapon could be turned against us after a short pause father went on let them take the R-12 and everything else too a 1950s Style nuclear bomb works by mashing together fizzled material into Super criticality an uncontrollable series of nuclear chain reactions so to start we need a lot of fizzle material originally the Chinese sought to dual track a bomb using uranium-235 and plutonium fizzled material a bomb made with uranium-235 would require the use of a gaseous diffusion plant to separate uranium-235 from uranium-238 the Soviets deeply influenced this part of the production line particularly the production of the uranium-235 gaseous diffusion is a now outdated procedure where we force gaseous uranium hexafluoride through a poor Laden barrier u-235 is a little lighter than its 238 cousin so it moves faster and is more likely to go through a pore China's gaseous diffusion plant was located in lanto city in the Gansu Province in Northwest China U.S aerial reconnaissance had spotted this plant as early as August 1959.
a plutonium bomb on the other hand requires the construction of a nuclear fuel reactor to produce the material this reactor turns uranium-238 isotope fuel into plutonium-239 when the fuel is taken out of the reactor and cooled it contains a mix of plutonium uranium and other stuff after cooling we need to separate out and process this plutonium to turn it into a metal a dangerous and toxic process China built an integrated plutonium fuel facility also utilizing an early Soviet design for its reactor and chemical separation plant in the Joe Tren prefecture again in the Gansu Province this period of deep military technology cooperation regardless of how helpful It ultimately was went from 1957 to 1960. the sino-soviet split is a long and complicated thing and I'm not going to cover all of it here but as early as 1956 there were issues that was the year Khrushchev made his secret speech criticizing Stalin's Cult of Personality the speech infuriated Mao Zedong who considered it an indirect attack on him then in November 1957 Mao Zedong said at the Moscow Conference of world Communists and workers parties if worse came to worse and half of mankind died in a nuclear war the other half would remain while imperialism would be raised to the ground and the whole world would become socialism in a number of years it would be 2 700 million people again and definitely more Reddit edgelords and Elon Musk say this stuff all the time now but it really did have an impact back then and it got the Soviets thinking one of the big deliverables in the October 1957 agreement was a teaching bomb prototype but Mao's flipping comments they just a month after Soviets and Chinese signed that agreement caused khushev and the rest of the Soviet leadership to grow dismayed so in early 1958 the Soviet leadership decided to renege on this deliverable Khrushchev said they put the thing together packed it up so it was ready to go to China at that point our minister in charge of nuclear weapons reported to me he knew our relations with China had deteriorated hopelessly in the end we decided to postpone sending them the Prototype throughout 1958 endless delays moscow's security advisors were dissatisfied with the room housing the bomb and demanded one modification after another for the next year Chinese workers would go to the train station to pick it up only to come back empty-handed finally the Soviets postponed the bomb transfer indefinitely telling the Chinese that would strain relations with the West then there was the second Taiwan Strait crisis in 1958. Mao started Shah in the jinmen and Matsu islands off mainland China in an attempt to get the nationalists to retreat the ensuing confrontation threatened nuclear war again Stalin had long believed that Mao was consciously trying to provoke World War III hoping that the Soviets and Americans would simply forget about China and Taiwan and fight one another with this series of events Khrushchev realized that he had made a horrible mistake in June 1959 he sent a letter informing the Chinese of the termination of the military cooperation his military advisers were called back most of them left within a month but it was not until July 1960 that the last Soviet advisor packed up and left in the end 40 percent of the equipment in raw materials promised by the Soviets never arrived of the 30 sino-soviet nuclear industry projects only a minority had been completed and nine had to be shut down entirely forcing the Chinese in many cases to start all over again the withdrawal of the Soviet advisers was a blow but it was not entirely unexpected one of pla's top leaders told the Central Committee that the Soviets aimed to maintain a technical gap between itself and China thus their technical Aid was untrustworthy I suspect that some of this rhetoric is face saving sour grapes in January 1960 the Chinese kicked off the 596 project so named to remind them of the quote-unquote shameful date when the Soviets withdrew Aid I don't think you would name it that if it wasn't so important Joe and Lai told his cohorts in a speech that they would use their own hands achieve a breakthrough in three years Master the technical know-how in five years and have a stockpile of bombs in eight years embroiled in economic and social pressures associated with the Great Leap Forward the Chinese decided to abandon the Dual track postponed the plutonium bomb method and move forward only with the uranium-235 design the last Soviet advisors left the Lonzo facility in July 1960 desperate to absorb whatever possible plant leader Wong Jeff who personally escorted the last five to the airport their departure forced the technicians there to pick up the slack sorting through and sourcing tens of thousands of raw materials and supplies for the u-235 production line across all of China despite being so remote the prevailing political atmosphere affected the plan caught up in Great Leap Forward fervor the technicians had actually started disassembling the Soviet provided electrical equipment in the name of quote-unquote technological innovation minister of mechanical industry and future General song Ren Chong had to make a direct appeal to Mao Zedong to get them to stop Mass turmoil regardless continued food shortages hit the plant staff in 1960 but Wong refused to slow progress cut rations across workers and their families and personally when foraging for herbs with his fellow cadres slowly over time there was progress and by the end of 1961 some 700 difficult days after the Soviet Severance of Aid the londos plants Machinery was successfully installed the Chinese were able to find reasonable substitutes for many Soviet components most notably a special lubricant for the gaseous diffusion pumps which the advisors kept in a locked room and took with them when they left by mid-1963 the Lanzo scientists were successfully isolating uranium-235 and mass and by January 1964 the ministry had 90 percent in Richmond Mao Zedong was given a report in scribbled noise in the margin sorry I lied he actually wrote very good once you have the enriched uranium the next step is to design and assemble the bomb itself a nuclear explosion is the end result of an uncontrolled fission Chain Reaction a uranium atom splits and creates more neutrons those neutrons go on to hit other atoms causing more splits until it is self-sustaining the first American nuclear bomb the one dropped on Hiroshima was a gun design which shot one piece into another but that was superseded by an implosion design where we use specially shaped explosives to crush a piece of subcritical plutonium into supercriticality this type bomb was the one dropped on Nagasaki and the one the Chinese eventually chose as it required less physical material but instead of using plutonium as the Americans did they used uranium-235 the key issue the Chinese bomb design needed to do was to properly synchronize the high explosives so to kick start a series of nuclear chain reactions a bad timing issue means stray neutrons running around a premature Neutron burst resulting in an overall unsatisfactory performance the British nuclear weapons program enjoyed the advantage of having some of their scientists working at Los Alamos the Chinese did not have such a luxury but they did know that a bomb was possible and the theory of how to achieve it by the time the Soviets left in 1960 the Chinese had finished their theoretical work and was ready to embark on the actual design they were aided by some sloppy shredding on the part of the Soviets putting together some critical papers one by one working in the Beijing suburbs the team used hand calculators to work through complicated equations and simulations by the end of 1962 they had mastered the theory behind implosions a year later they had the final design for their implosion mechanism in late 1963 the uranium arrived at the nuclear component manufacturing plant in subei in Gansu Province they're a team of Master Craftsmen machined it into a ball of Highly enriched uranium and then finally packaged it together into the 596 bomb the successful nuclear test caught both the Americans and Soviets off guard the American government knew about the Chinese nuclear weapons program as early as 1959 and considered intervening to stop it President Kennedy in 1961 told a journalist that China acquiring nuclear weapons would mean all of Southeast Asia falling to the Communists and then in the early 1960s Kennedy put out feelers to Khrushchev about military intervention to stop the program Khrushchev never broke the idea and several members of the Kennedy administration pushed hard against it downplaying the supposed military consequences of a nuclear China China's decision to go with an implosion type bomb using uranium rather than plutonium considerably confused the American spymasters in 1964 the Americans saw the Chinese preparing a bomb test but seemingly without a proper plutonium fuel plant they knew about the gaseous diffusion plant in nanjal but mistakenly thought it too small for a real nuclear weapon in the end the Americans simply underestimated the Chinese nuclear effort and they did not realize their mistake until the eve of the actual test the People's Republic of China's indigenous nuclear bomb program was one of its biggest ever undertakings it involved several hundred thousand people in 900 plus factories research institutes and schools across 20 provinces it also costs a staggering amount for an undeveloped Nation later estimates find that the 10-year nuclear weapons program cost in total about 10.7 billion RMB or 4.1 billion dollars in 1957 prices many of these costs came during economically difficult years of the Great Leap Forward and the early 1960s forcing Cuts in other projects elsewhere in the government Scholars and keyboard Warriors argue to this day about how much the Chinese program benefited from Soviet technology transfer the true answer is probably somewhere in between in 1966 Deng Xiaoping told the Romanian Ambassador that if the Soviets hadn't broken the tree then the Chinese wouldn't have been able to build the bombs so fast so the Soviets gave a lot but when they left there was still much more to do however the sting and shame of the abrogated treaty gave the Chinese the force of will to finish the job something to think about alright everyone that's it for tonight thanks for watching subscribe to the Channel Sign up for the newsletter and I'll see you guys next time
2023-06-02 18:36
