Daqing

Its population was 2,781,562 as of the 2020 census, of whom 1,574,389 lived in the built-up (or metro) area in four out of the total of five urban districts: Sartu, Longfeng, Ranghulu and Honggang.According to the sample survey of 5‰ population changes in 2024, the resident population of the city at the end of the year was 2.663 million, a decrease of 37,000 compared with the end of the previous year. Among them, the urban population is 1.996 million and the rural population is 667,000.

History

The region now known as Daqing Prefecture was a reasonably insignificant place until the Qing dynasty, known only as an unsettled hunting ground of Dörbet Oirat tribes due to its wetland and prairies. The region began to grow slightly after the Russian Empire constructed the Chinese Eastern Railway (KVZhD) through the area in 1898. The railway has a station at Sartu in today's Sartu District. It was not until 1959 that oil was discovered in the region as part of the large scale oil exploration put into motion across the Northeast China Plain.

The Daqing oilfield was discovered in the late 1950s, and drilling began in 1958. A town with the same name was founded in 1959 to house workers extracting oil and gas from the oilfield and to host industries which could take advantage of the energy and petrochemicals, shortly before the 10th anniversary of the founding of the PRC. The oilfield and the town had the same administrative body until 1983.

The successful construction of the Daqing oil field despite harsh weather conditions and supply limitations became a model held up by the Party as an example during subsequent industrialization campaigns. The project also delivered critical economic benefits because without the production of the Daqing oil field, crude oil would have been severely limited after the Soviet Union cut off supplies as a result of the Sino-Soviet split.

Original plans for Daqing included the development of a "new socialist mining district" (rather than a city) with families in which the husband would work in industry and the wife would work in agriculture. Ultimately, the city expanded incrementally with clusters forming around developing refineries and oil wells. All settlements used a single-story mud technique called scientific gandalei, with multistory brick buildings being introduced in the late 1960s.

The name Daqing literally means "Great Celebration". On 26 May 1960, Anda City was established at former Anda town (today's Anda City in Suihua prefecture), administering Daqing oilfield area. Five months later, the administrative organs of the oilfield relocated in Sartu. On 23 June 1964, the city was established Anda special administrative region, with Anda county administering its surrounding area.

The first two years of the Cultural Revolution resulted in major disruptions to China's petroleum industry and an oil shortage by 1967. In March of that year, the People's Liberation Army was called to Daqing to maintain order so that oil production could proceed. This made Daqing one of the first places brought under military control during the Cultural Revolution. In May 1968, the Daqing Revolutionary Committee was established. Iron Man Wang Jinxi became its vice director. The oil field continued to be a major driver of economic growth during the Cultural Revolution period.

In the mid-1970s, Daqing was administratively organised into three large towns (about 50,000 people each) along the major railway, 60 industrial-agricultural villages (about 10,000 people each), and 164 "residential points" around the villages.

The Daqing Oil District became a city in 1980. Its first master plan set a goal of growing Daqing into "a new industrial city" through a development strategy of "relative dispersion with several modest concentrations. Academic Hou Li summarizes that as a result "new settlements became much more concentrated. The three existing towns, thirty-four central villages, and 260 settlement points were restructured into six workers' towns, twenty-four central villages, and twenty-seven resident villages."

The city revised its master plan in 1989, setting a new goal of building an oil city centered in Saertu, Dongfeng, and Longfeng. This plan shifted Daqing's urban planning focus away from decentralization to centralization.

In 1990, the city received the top recognition in the Heilongjiang Province Science and Technology Awards. In 1994, its population reached one million. After the mid-1990s, urban expansion in Saertu was halted in order to provide more space for oil production. Urban construction was instead transferred to East Town and West Town areas.

Daqing has been advocated as a model of good practice in industry and healthcare by the Chinese government.

Learn from Daqing in industry

The fact that Mao Zedong promulgated his Supreme Directive, Learn from Daqing in Industry, in the 1960s reflects how important a role Daqing has historically played in industry in China. Learn from Daqing in industry (Chinese: 工业学大庆; pinyin: gōngyè xué dàqìng) was a slogan during the Cultural Revolution telling the people to use the city as an example for industrial production.

Daqing was promoted as a model communist industrial city. Daqing's development had resulted in an integration of rural and urban and community self-sufficiency. Premier Zhou Enlai summarized its achievements with the phrase, "Integration of workers and peasants, integration of urban and rural areas, good for production, and convenient for livelihood." Equality was achieved through distribution of resources, public land management, standardised housing, and communal work. Men worked in the oil fields and received state salaries and pensions. Women and older children worked in agricultural production and supplied food for the community. As mechanisation of agriculture increased over time, small factories were established. Students participated in production, either through agriculture or work-studfy in factories. Services like public canteens, medical clinics, nurseries, and schools were collectively run.

The film Entrepreneurial Pioneers (创业), made in the early 1970s, is a literary rendition of the history of Daqing. During the Mao era, Daqing's agricultural counterpart was Dazhai, a village in the hilly Xiyang county, Shanxi Province, for which Chairman Mao issued the directive In agriculture, learn from Dazhai, also in the 1960s.