This project looks at how the equipment, infrastructure, and trained manpower of Fushun oil shale industry (formerly Japanese-occupied Manchuria and today in Liaoning province, Northeast China) and Yumen oil field (Gansu province, Western China) contributed to the PRC’s efforts in discovering and exploiting the Daqing oil field (Heilongjiang province, Northeast China). Continuity is evident not only in material exchanges such as the PRC building upon the resources (technology and manpower) initiated by the Nationalist government but also in non-tangible aspects (e.g. transference of skills and training). Yumen itself may not have achieved absolute self-reliance in terms of oil supply, but it put the PRC on a path in that direction in the three very important areas of equipment manufacture, training, and experience. To show the forms of continuity in the quest for self-reliance, particular attention is given to the three decades between 1931, with the annexation of Manchuria and the buildup of Fushun’s oil shale facilities, which would be useful for the postwar oil industry in China, and 1963, when Daqing production achieved basic self-reliance. This period is crucial in the study of the Chinese oil industry’s transition through different regime, from Japanese-occupied Fushun and wartime Nationalist Yumen to the founding of the PRC oil industry and the eventual development of the Daqing oil field and oil self-reliance. The story ends in 1963 when the PRC declared oil self-reliance, the ultimate goal and longstanding aim of the Chinese oil industry.

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