Daqing

Daqing, Wade-Giles romanization Ta-ch’ing, oil field and new city, western Heilongjiang sheng (province), northeastern China, one of the country’s most important sources of oil. It is situated in the northern part of the Northeast (Manchurian) Plain east of the Nen River, between Qiqihar (northwest) and Harbin (southeast), in the general vicinity of Anda. The field was discovered in the late 1950s, and drilling began in 1958; often the drilling was carried out under difficult conditions caused by the extreme winter cold and the deep permafrost in the soil. Large-scale development began in the early 1960s. A large refinery was built there in the 1960s, and by 1980 the field’s refineries were producing a significant proportion of China’s domestic oil total. A number of subsidiary chemical plants using petroleum by-products and waste were also installed. A crude-oil pipeline was built to the port city of Qinhuangdao in 1973 and extended to the refineries of Beijing in 1975; some of the crude oil continues by rail from Beijing to other parts of the country.

During the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), Daqing was publicized as a model centre of a large industry organized on Maoist lines, receiving praise for the self-reliant “can-do” attitude of its workers, whose improvised technical innovations helped them develop a new oil field by means of only primitive equipment. The growth of the oil industry in the locality was paralleled by the development of farms by the oil workers’ families.

A new city was set up in the area in the early 1960s; it was subsequently relocated west to its current site, and it was renamed Daqing in 1979. The city is linked by rail with Harbin and Qiqihar, and, through Da’an (Jilin province) to the southwest, it is connected with other trunk lines. There is also an expressway between Harbin and Daqing. In addition to oil and petrochemical products, some textile and food-processing industries have been developed. The Daqing Petroleum Institute (established in nearby Anda in 1960, moved to Daqing in 2002) and several other colleges are located in the city. Pop. (2002 est.) 879,288; (2007 est.) urban agglom., 1,693,000.