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Main text:
Introduction
Heavy industry is a rather broad category within industrial classification, encompassing everything from machine tools, transport, and energy, to large-scale infrastructure. It is the backbone of modern life, enabling everything from agricultural production and powering home appliances to crafting cutting-edge smartphones. Yet, it also casts a long shadow—transforming people into cogs in a machine, discharging heavy metals, and polluting the very water and air we depend on to survive.
Nonetheless, driven by factory relocations, shifts in urban planning philosophies, and technological advancements, heavy industry has slowly faded from the fabric of daily life. Before the era of the Internet, most people—even workers—could only catch glimpses of it through the shimmering heat, welding sparks, or the hiss of steam. From its outset, heavy industry has been a capital-intensive arena, with massive facilities and assembly lines making it difficult for most participants to see the full picture. Although factories adopted the apprentice system from traditional workshops, both novices and master craftsmen found it challenging to grasp industrial production in the same way one might understand a craft.
This limited understanding of the production processes, however, did not stop “heavy industry” from forming a clear image in people’s minds:
“Steam rising from cooling towers, molten iron pouring from blast furnaces, concrete laying the foundation, steel building the city, and train wheels rolling over crushed stones.”
This impression carried a mix of complex emotions.
At the beginning of the 20th century, heavy industry, an imported concept, rapidly transformed the work and lives of everyone. People were both amazed by its complexity and terrified of its unknowability.
Over time, as communities adapted, they built their lives around this industrial giant, growing to admire its grandeur and depend on its stability.
However, as we entered the 21st century, an invisible wave of industrial transformation and deindustrialization swept through, erasing 90% of the physical structures of these steel-and-concrete cities almost overnight. All that remained was confusion, alcohol, and nostalgia tinged with the scent of rust.
The rise of heavy industry was born out of national strategic decisions, reshaping cities at their very core and redefining how people connected and saw themselves. Yet its decline has left behind a collective yearning for a bygone era. This essay will explore the story of heavy industry, including its rise, its golden age, and its inevitable decline.
The Origin: Heavy Industry and the Nation
It is no coincidence that heavy industry has always held a special appeal for late-developing nations and their people.
At the beginning of the 20th century, this foreign concept stormed onto the global stage with a force that was nothing short of transformative. Through iron, fire, and blood, it shattered old beliefs, melted entrenched social relations, and reshaped ways of production and life. For emerging modern states, heavy industry was not just a tool for progress; they made it a national priority to master this newfound power after quickly realising its importance. By incorporating the concept of “heavy industry” into national identity, what had once been a source of fear became a guiding flame of self-reliance and strength.
As a result, heavy industry was no longer a distant threat; it became a dream within reach. In the ruins of bloodlines and geographical ties, the nation-state was born, a machine giant wielding a torch of steam and molten iron. Stooping down, it whispered, with its voice filling every inch of the land with a solemn pledge:
“Feed the flame of this torch. The more you give, the stronger I grow. With that strength, I will carry you out of the mire of blood and tears, so that you can once again stand tall this land!”
People’s fascination with heavy industry also stemmed from their confidence in controlling it. While each person could only see a small part of heavy industry, they believed that every cog meshed closely with the next: Turn the first, and the second, third, and fourth would inevitably follow. As long as you followed the right steps and made the correct investments, there would be predictable results—a stark contrast to the earlier eras of fishing, hunting, herding, and agriculture. In those times, harvests were left at the mercy of nature’s whims. In contrast, people in the era of heavy industry relied on a new division of labour, with hundreds or even thousands working together on a single project. The collective effort brought a sense of security and assurance in the outcomes, which was enough to drive those who had suffered the cycle of abundance and scarcity to keep moving forward.
Beyond the shift in the mindset of ordinary people, the most crucial factor was the attitude of the nation and government. For governments reborn from the impact of heavy industry, the rapid development of this sector to catch up with other industrial nations became their primary goal. However, heavy industry required substantial upfront investment, with slow returns, making direct government involvement indispensable.
Thus, the 20th century saw a consensus across different ideological systems: Hyper-Industrialism1. The core of this concept was the belief that the state could rely on planning and administration to channel resources into heavy industry, rapidly industrializing the economy and enhancing its production and military strengths.
This idea was also closely related to the concept of High Modernity2, where the government used science and technology to expand production and meet both production and living needs. It did not only sought to control the laws of nature but also aimed to design social structures in line with the philosophy of scientific development.
The idea of “state-led industrial development” had deep roots. It originated from the Enlightenment era when Saint Simon advocated for reason, planning, and large-scale industries and infrastructure. Later, Alexander Hamilton and Friedrich List used import substitution to help Germany and the United States to build up their industries, enabling them to catch up with the United Kingdom. By the late 19th century, this idea was widely adopted in late-developing industrial nations such as Germany and Japan, driven by the efforts of Otto von Bismarck and Okubo Toshimichi. In China, this idea was introduced by figures including Liang Qichao and Song Jiaoren and mirrored Zhang Jian’s advocacy for the vigorous development of cotton and iron industries to safeguard the country’s economic lifeline contemporaneously.
The true elevation of “heavy industry” to a national priority is inseparable from World War I. In the face of total war, Walther Rathenau, head of the War Raw Materials Department of Germany, established a military supply company3, taking control of all heavy industry. Using punched-card computers and an administrative allocation model, he created the first “planned economy” system.
This model had a profound influence on future generations. It demonstrated how critical organisation, mobilisation, and division of labour were to heavy industry production, leading modern states to view heavy industry as the foundation of both national defence and production. Furthermore, this model transformed heavy industry from a concern only for its workers into one that touched every person’s life. Heavy industry was no longer a lofty dream but a reality, palpable as the soot on their faces and the steam against their skin.
Reshaping Spatial Structure: Heavy Industry and the Cities
The integration of heavy industry and modern states not only altered social relations and organisational methods, but also directly transformed physical spaces. At the core of this transformation was the creation of new types of cities.
First, the selection of city locations greatly differed from the pre-industrial era. Ancient cities were typically built along rivers, taking advantage of natural resources for water access, transportation, and trade. However, the control of industrial and technological power brought another geographic advantage into focus: mines, particularly iron and coal. As a result, cities designed to support the dreams of heavy industry rose from once remote mining areas. Magnitogorsk in the Soviet Union, which literally translates to “Magnet Mountain,” was originally a small Cossack village. Due to the presence of 60% iron ore in its geological layers, it became the most famous steel production centre during Stalin’s first Five-Year Plan. Similarly, Anshan in China was once divided into several counties and townships. By 1937, it officially became a city in administrative terms so that it could house a steel factory.
Moreover, transportation infrastructure underwent significant changes accordingly. Traditional cities relied on natural rivers as vital arteries, while industrial cities depended on man-made railways. Rivers, as public goods, supported diverse uses and open access, but railways, with their point-to-point transformation model, were better suited for the bulk transportation of single industrial products. Therefore, by the late 19th century, both the Russian Empire and Japan had begun transforming the Northeast China they had occupied. In the Shenyang Urban Planning Museum, there are several “T-shaped” maps recording the plan of the “Chinese Eastern Railway.” The horizontal line stretched from Manzhouli all the way to Suifenhe, while the vertical line ran from Harbin through Changchun and Shenyang to Dalian, designed to facilitate the transportation of heavy industrial products.
Additionally, the layout of cities was transformed. In the pre-industrial era, some cities grew naturally around a feudal lord’s fort, with the “fort” at the centre and the “market” surrounding, while some were functionally planned with an “outer fort and inner market” arrangement. Regardless of the layout, the market, administration, and religion played a decisive role. However, with the nationwide expansion of heavy industry and the construction of railway networks, cities became integrated into a broader system of industrial division of labour. As a result, many previously consumer-oriented cities with a modern character were reshaped into “production cities.” In these cities, all “non-productive facilities” existed solely to serve the “productive facilities.” Roads, railways, and residential communities were re-planned to ensure workers could quickly reach factories, while factories were located closer to transportation hubs to facilitate the loading and unloading of goods.
Notably, one of the key milestones in modern urban planning emerged in the late 19th century when Napoleon III and Georges-Eugène Haussmann, the Prefect of Seine, carried out a large-scale transformation of Paris. They demolished old, narrow medieval streets, filled in the sewage ditches, and replaced them with wide, well-ventilated boulevards lined with greenery. They also planned large intersections to facilitate inner-city traffic. This concept, alongside heavy industry, spread to East Asia. A typical example is the road in front of Shenyang Railway Station. When the Japanese invaders planned what they called the “South Manchuria Railway Zone,” they followed the most advanced urban planning back then: setting up 90-degree “grid” streets for easy traffic flow, and having three main roads radiate from Shenyang Railway Station to facilitate outward freight transportation.
However, these blueprints faced numerous challenges during implementation: insufficient funding, clashes between industrial and residential land use, and wind patterns causing highly polluted air to flow directly into residential areas… These issues cast a grim shadow over what was once envisioned as flawless urban planning designed to serve heavy industry. Furthermore, the discharge of wastewater and waste materials, the establishment of basic sanitation infrastructure, the creation of water and sewage systems, and the guarantee to provide stable power supply posed unprecedented challenges for these new cities, not just in terms of planning, but also governance. The gap between ideal and reality has long inspired literary explorations of “the other side of heavy industry”—where the roaring steel beasts, fuelled by an unfathomable power, seem unstoppable. Yet, ensuring that they follow the intended trajectory and serve human purposes have always been the most formidable challenge.
Reshaping Social Relations: Heavy Industry and the People
Aside from viewing heavy industry as a great and imminent dream, or focusing on the emerging industrial cities built according to perfect blueprints but are full of issues, many fictional and non-fictional works focused on the “everyday” life of these cities, exploring how heavy industry altered people’s living habits in unexpected ways. Just like the boiler worker who’d fuel the locomotive for it to charge over mountain passes, only to sit back and catch his breath as the locomotive coasts across the plains—tales about life in the age of heavy industry always circled back to the mundanities, told through their meals, home, and the routinely errands and chores.
The integration of heavy industry and planned economies, not just in China but across many regions, gave rise to the concept of the danwei (work unit) and its offshoot, the dayuan (industrial compound). Heavy industry emphasised large-scale, long-term collective coordination, and thus the collective organisation of industrial production gave birth to new ways of communal life. For many of the older generation, memories of gathering in the dayuan to watch movies together remain vivid. Essential amenities such as canteens, hospitals, bathhouses, and schools were often tied to the industrial units they served. These connections formed unique lifestyles. For example, I was often told by friends of my parents who worked at power plants that their compounds never ran out of hot water, courtesy of the plant’s cooling systems.
Entertainment also took on a collective form. The London Museum Docklands introduced how industrial areas near the docks developed their own football teams. Not only did workers enhance their teamwork skills through work, but the set production and leisure hours allowed people around the factory to organise a match at the same time. This might also explain why football in Northeast China was prominent for a long time.
On the other hand, the establishment of new industrial cities naturally gathered a large influx of newcomers from all walks of life, prompting people to form bonds that transcend regional and familial ties. Besides the factory employees, there were also migrant groups who moved due to urban construction. They left their native places and families, forming identities around the new industrial cities. In the book Oral History of Shanghai: The Small Third Front Movement, many stories featured similar experiences: people migrated to new cities due to factory construction, some had to find new jobs as a result, and in this process, new social relationships were formed around the factories and industry.
Other than these planned migrations, the momentum of industrial growth did not often follow the envisioned plans. No matter where it was, there were always groups operating outside the intended framework. Each time production expanded, migrant workers became the main force filling the labour shortage. However, there were also service workers, briefly recorded in official history, such as barbers, street vendors, and even repair workers, who flooded into the city, spreading around the furnace of heavy industry. These “unplanned” groups often found creative ways to utilise the products of heavy industry, such as children of railway workers sneaking onto trains in their parents’ uniforms for a free ride, or migrant workers secretly hitching a ride on company buses to sell tofu next to the factory. These stories became local tales and are often the topics of chatters shared by older generations during their free time.
The Decline: Rust Belt Nostalgia
The present information age is seldom regarded as the “Third Industrial Revolution,” but its impact on reshaping heavy industrial cities and societies rivals the transformation of agrarian civilisations resulting from heavy industry. From the northwest of England to Pennsylvania in the United States, and from Eastern European cities etched in post-punk music videos to China’s Northeast, the term “Rust Belt” carried a profound meaning. Discussions on the international political economy often revolve around production outsourcing and industrial upgrading, but for the workers in heavy industry, the transition is a brief yet heavy blow. It is a bitter pill to swallow—how could everything they had built their lives around suddenly become irrelevant and outdated? Heavy industry once promised boundless progress: surging coal and iron production, sprawling railway networks, all marching triumphantly toward a brighter future. Then, overnight, the meaning and goals that had fuelled these efforts vanished. The altar of heavy industry’s holy flame still burns, but the machine giant no longer whispers to them.
With the rise of new immigrant cities, the old heavy industrial immigrant cities are left abandoned, almost as swiftly as they had once sprung up. New machine tools and increasingly complex technologies left many people stranded. The new factories became more unreachable to ordinary people, but the goods produced with new technologies have a far more tangible presence than the total coal and iron production figures reported in newspapers and broadcasts. Amid confusion, anger, and misunderstanding, the bygone dreams of heavy industry are reborn, but only in nostalgia—not for a place, but for a time. The people have not left their homes; instead, their homes have left them.
- Koji Hirata, “Steel Metropolis” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 2018), 5. ↩︎
- James C. Scott, Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 4. ↩︎
- Liang Mingde, “The Dream of Planned Economy and the Left Wing within the Nationalist Government—Review of the ‘Reformist Bureaucrat’ Chen Yi,” Potomac and Spring, May 22, 2022, https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/N5zL-GXmigaNBdJPMRa_bw. ↩︎