ACROSS THE LAND
China’s First Heavy-Medium Iron Ore Dressing Plant
[This article is reprinted from Peking Review, Vol. 11, #43, Oct. 25, 1968, pp. 30-31.]
BRINGING into full play the leading role of the working class and carrying forward the proletarian revolutionary spirit of boldness in thought and action, workers of the Lungyen Iron Mine in Hopei Province co-operated with technical personnel and revolutionary leading cadres in a self-reliant effort to build China’s first heavy-medium iron ore dressing plant. In trial production, the quality of dressed ore surpasses the standards set by the state and the requirements of smelting. Successful building of this plant fills the heavy-medium gap in China’s ore dressing facilities and creates favourable conditions for fully utilizing the country’s underground resources and promoting the development of the iron and steel industry.
The Lungyen Iron Mine is one of the big supply bases for iron and steel raw materials in north China, but the iron content of most of its ore is low so that it cannot be smelted directly. Many bourgeois “specialists” and “authorities” spent over ten years studying this problem and making experiments to solve it, but without success.
In May 1966, the Lungyen mine was assigned the task of building the heavy-medium ore dressing plant. A construction team was organized composed of revolutionary workers, as the main force, together with revolutionary technical personnel and revolutionary leading cadres. This three-in-one combination, however, lacked genuine ideological unanimity. At that time the handful of capitalist roaders in the Party organization of the mine deliberately created ideological dissension by advocating “putting technique in command” and “depending on experts to run the industrial enterprises.”
Lungyen’s proletarian revolutionaries, revolutionary workers and staff and revolutionary leading cadres finally seized power from the hands of the capitalist roaders and set up a revolutionary committee in the mine. Under its leadership the revolutionary workers united with the technical personnel to unfold revolutionary mass criticism and repudiation. Through scathing denunciation of the counter-revolutionary revisionist line in running industrial enterprises pushed by China’s Khrushchov, their understanding of things was greatly enhanced.
The leading members of the revolutionary committee and technical personnel studied Chairman Mao’s great teachings: Politics is the commander, the soul in everything. “We must have faith in and rely on the masses.” “In a sense, the fighters with the most practical experience are the wisest and the most capable.” They learnt modestly from the practical experience of the workers and particularly from the fine qualities of the working class.
With Mao Tse-tung’s thought in command, the positive factor of man is brought into full play. The construction team for the ore dressing plant overcame the difficulties caused by lack of modern equipment and ready-made materials, solved a series of technical problems and speedily built the new plant.
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