Chinese scientists, army veterans and students Saturday commemorated the 40th anniversary of the explosion of the country's first atomic bomb.
At a commemorative forum in Malan of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region- a place that served as the country's nuclear experiment base 40 years ago- General Xu Ruichen, a retired army official of national defense who once worked at the base, said that China's decision to develop atomic bomb was of great historical significance at a time when the country was put under an adverse international environment.
In Beijing-based Qinghua University, students were urged to learn from scientists who devoted themselves to the country's nuclear programs. Many of the Qinghua graduates participated in the country's first atomic bomb experiments.
Chen Xi, the university's secretary of the Communist Party of China, urged students in Qinghua to learn the spirit of cooperation and perseverance the older generation of scientists had showed in their work.
China's first atomic bomb was exploded at 3:00 p.m., on Oct. 16, 1964 in the desert of Xinjiang.
The night after the explosion, the Chinese government publisheda declaration, announcing that the bomb was made for defense use and in order to break the "nuclear monopoly."
The Chinese government suspended its nuclear weapons program on July 30, 1996.
