US plan to hit China led Mao to change course - book

BEIJING, May 30 (Reuters) A secret U S plan to attack Chinese nuclear weapons sites more than four decades ago prompted Mao Zedong to temporarily abandon efforts to improve living standards, Xinhua news agency today reported.

Mao moved many factories to mountainous areas in China's remote southwest region to keep them from being hit by U S air raids, it said, citing a new book from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government-funded think tank.

The focus of China's 1966-1970 five-year plan shifted from ''improving people's livelihood to preparing an all-out war against the 'imperialists,' particularly the United States,'' according to the authors of ''The Research Report on China's 10 Five-Year Plans.'' They quoted what they said was a declassified December 14, 1964 document, written by George Rathjens of the U S Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, to show that the United States was considering an attack on China's nuclear facilities.

China's first atomic bomb was developed on the plains of the western province of Qinghai and was detonated on October 16, 1964, in the desert of the neighbouring region of Xinjiang.

Before learning of the alleged plan, Mao and other Chinese leaders intended to reinvigorate China's sluggish economy, which was marked by chronic shortages of food, clothes and other consumer goods.

''The judgment about the world affairs and the war-scenario consideration made Mao change the consensus-based proposal on enhancing the fragile economy,'' according to the book.

Mao has been blamed for a series of disastrous blunders, including the 1958 Great Leap Forward in which he urged farmers to abandon their fields to make steel in backyard furnaces in a drive to develop the economy.

In 1966, he launched the Cultural Revolution, whipping the Asian nation into a decade of bloody turmoil and political fervour in a bid to rid the Communist Party of more moderate voices and cement his rule.

An estimated 30 million Chinese died of famine and violent unrest in the 1950s and 1960s. China's government, however, blames much of the death toll on natural disasters.

Although Mao's decision to refocus on the battle against imperialism dealt a blow to the economy, the relocation of factories had an unintended effect in that it laid a solid foundation for current efforts to revitalise the economy in China's far west, Xinhua said.

REUTERS SY VC1818