This film was shot in Yumen in Gansu Province, soon after 1949.
It shows how oil was being extracted at the time.
Despite the best efforts of the country’s oil workers, the state only produced 120,000 tons of oil a year.
The aspiration was to build China’s own independent industrial system.
In 1953, the first Five-Year Plan called for the entire nation to unite and actively participate in the industrialization drive.
During his first trip to the Soviet Union, Mao Zedong visited the Stalin Automobile Factory.
Seeing a line of new cars on an assembly line, he said to his entourage: "We need big factories like this one."
The Changchun Number One Automobile Factory produced a sedan car - the Dongfeng.
Early on the morning of May 21, 1958, a red Dongfeng sedan drove into the government compound at Zhongnanhai in Beijing. It circled the lawn twice, before coming to a halt.
A beaming Mao Zedong stepped out and exclaimed, "Wonderful! I’ve ridden a car of our own!"
Among the mountains, on the plains and in the deserts, driven by the burning passion of the times, a new project was started or completed every day.
In early 1950, PLA units were dispatched to Tibet. The order from Mao Zedong was to "Build a road in the course of their advance.”
One hundred and ten thousand PLA soldiers, engineers and local people worked side-by-side, carving out the new road.
Their only tools were sledgehammers, chisels, shovels and pickaxes. Their only safety equipment was a rope around the waist.
With their lives hanging by a thread, they slowly pushed on towards Lhasa.
When Mao Zedong visited the Soviet Union in 1957, he made a point of visiting the Chinese students in Moscow.
He told them: "The world belongs to you. It belongs to all of us, but ultimately, it belongs to you. You are young and full of vigor. In this thriving age, it would seem that the morning sun at eight or nine a.m., is shining on you."
The People's Republic of China was developing rapidly, and one success quickly followed another.
The goals of the First Five-Year Plan were met in 1956, a year ahead of schedule.
