Yinanping
Qiushi Chen

In the 1960s, Sino-Soviet relations deteriorated sharply, the border war broke out between China and India, and the Vietnam War expanded into southern China. Faced with such a severe situation, China’s military industry, which is mainly distributed along the coastal border and is very vulnerable to destruction. In this context, since 1964, a large number of industries and military industries have moved to inland mountainous areas, and millions of workers, technical experts, cadres, and PLA officers and soldiers across the country have begun to accept policies to relocate and gather such factories from their original places of residence. Until the end of the last century, the international situation eased and China began to reform and open up. These military-industrial units began to move from state-owned to marketization. Companies that originally relied on state and national defense funds are facing multiple situations such as technology loss, an aging population, and laid-off workers due to their geographical and economic location.
This work takes a military-industrial unit of the air force in central and southern China as an example. It presents the image as a reminiscence gesture, trying to start from the perspective of daily experience and emotional description, showing the background of the “short and painful period” of market economic reform in history Under the circumstances, how does this community face the private and individual life impact brought to them by the change of times, especially the more complex emotional conditions shown by female workers in the context of this system. This is in sharp contrast to men’s rapid adaptation to political forms.

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