The A theme
The base of a former testing site in Xinjiang is being turned into a 'red tourism' destination ahead of the 50th anniversary of China's nuclear debut, writes Tom Phillips
Travellers to this remote and rugged part of northwest China will find no trace of the Red Mountain Command Base on their maps. Guidebooks make no mention of its name. Past a deserted checkpoint policed only by a pair of two-humped Bactrian camels, the only clues to the extraordinary past of this one-street settlement are the fading slogans daubed on its run-down buildings. "Work Hard. Be Loyal to the Party. Be Loyal to the People," they declare. "Long Live Chairman Mao! Long Live The Communist Party!"
Nearly half a century ago, the base was one of the most highly classified locations on Earth: a heavily guarded compound in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, where scientists toiled day and night to catapult Mao Zedong's China into the nuclear elite, alongside the United States, the Soviet Union, France and Britain.
With the US and the Soviet Union locked in a cold war arms race, Mao decided China needed a bomb of its own to fend off what he saw as imperialist bullying. And it was here, on the sand-swept fringes of the Taklimakan Desert, that some of China's most brilliant military and scientific minds gathered to plot a nuclear revolution of almost inconceivable speed that would change their country forever.
In 1964, just five years after the command centre was set up, People's Liberation Army (PLA) scientists detonated China's first atom bomb at a nearby testing site - a 22-kiloton blast that set the desert sky alight and sparked jubilant celebrations in Beijing.
Almost 50 years on, the top-secret facility where the test was partly conceived lies largely abandoned. The clay-coloured dormitories and offices lining its main street are nearly all derelict, their windows shattered, their floors carpeted with sheep dung, weeds sprouting from their roofs. Broken tiles litter the ground outside, beneath washed-out murals that once urged passers-by to "Firmly Support the Proletarian Command".
Extraordinarily, after years of neglect, plans are now afoot to transform this scruffy compound into a 300 million yuan (HK$380 million) "red tourism" destination. When completed, it will boast a communist-themed shopping precinct, a spa-like resort for weary soldiers and even paddocks where the offspring of visiting cadres can hone their horse-riding skills.
