Education blog

The forgotten scientists who ran one of China’s largest Cold War-era projects.

When Baitao was chosen as the site for a top-secret nuclear base in 1966, authorities literally wiped it from the map.

Over the following two decades, more than 60,000 soldiers and scientists were sent to this remote town hidden in the mountains east of Chongqing to work on one of the largest Cold War-era projects.

The project resulted in the construction of the world’s largest man-made cave – 104,000 square meters, the equivalent of 20 football fields – but the military base was scrapped in 1982 before it was ever finished.

Today, Baitao is a major tourist attraction and is firmly back in the public eye. The same cannot be said for the experts who dedicated their lives to the multibillion-yuan mission.