Status and Trends of Research on China’s Third Front Construction in English Language and Brief Comparison With Chinese Counterpart

Third Front construction was a massive defensive industrialization and economic campaign in response to the threat of war from both the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1960s in the remote and isolated hinterlands of China, which remained a top secret for many years before 1980s. Academic community has been making growing efforts in exploring its origin, history, development and influence ever since. As the largest industrial relocation in modern Chinese history, it is crucial for understanding the complexity of China today. Based on the bibliometric analysis of the retrieved and pruned 370 bibliographic references from Google Scholar, this article identified the major references, leading authors, contributing journals, productive countries or territories and cooperating institutions, as well as hot topics and emerging trends of the research on Third Front construction. By adopting VOSviewer as the visualizing tool, the paper found that Third Front construction continues to be a hot research topic with growing trend from the perspectives of historical background, macro-policy, industrial development, third-front cities and modern development of the Third Front construction in China. It also revealed the potential research trends in urbanization, industrial heritage and Cold War related to Third Front construction. Meanwhile, the paper made a brief comparison between the research on China’s third front construction in English and Chinese languages. The findings could be of theoretical values to the academic community for the revelation of the knowledge landscape of Third Front construction and the entry point to the modern history of China.