Most of China’s atom bomb testing took place in Lop Nur, Xinjiang Autonomous Region, and it was done without the help of the Soviet Union. From 1954 to 1959, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) helped the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.) start an atom bomb program. At the same time political philosophers in both the U.S.S.R. and P.R.C. developed conflicting ideas about the future role of global Communism, resulting in a permanent split by 1960. This was not known to most people in the Euro-centric ‘western’ world, thanks to the western propaganda machine known as ‘the news media’.
By 1960, the U.S.S.R. removed all its nuclear advisers from P.R.C. because it was feared that Mao Tse Tung (aka Mao Zedong) would consider a nuclear weapon the same as a conventional weapon. In 1961, the P.R.C. denounced the so-called communism of the U.S.S.R. as being a form of western imperialism! From 1960 onward the P.R.C. continued their atom bomb program on their own.
The United States of America (U.S.A.) assigned the code word CHIC to China’s nuclear weapons tests. Apparently it was not an acronym and didn’t mean anything as I’ve found nothing to indicate so.
I edited from a People’s Republic of China documentary about their atom bomb program, Project 596 bomb #1 (CHIC-1), October 1964, part-1 preparations:
Project 596 (CHIC-1), part-2, detonation at 15:00 on 16OCT1964, and ‘recovery’:
Wargames were conducted in the immediate aftermath of the detonation of CHIC-2.
CHIC-2 bomb #2, 14MAY1965:
China’s third nuke (U.S.A. designation CHIC-3) contained uranium-235 and lithium-6, making it a thermonuclear bomb.
CHIC-3, preparations:
CHIC-3, detonation, at 16:00 on 09MAY1966:
CHIC-3, results and conclusions; it is easy to survive a nuclear war as long as you are sheltered below the surface of the ground:
Live animals, even plants, were used in exposed and sheltered positions some distance from ground zero and the scientists claimed most survived, which prompted the Chinese leaders to conclude that nuclear war is survivable and that the threat of ‘nuclear armageddon’ is a “paper tiger” used by the imperialists (specifically the United States) to frighten smaller countries into submission!
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