Overview

Commander-in-Chief Lu Dahai and the majority of shipbuilders strongly demanded that the 10,000-ton cargo ship Dongfang be should be produced with all domestically produced parts. As the leader at the time, Chen Zongjie, a member of the Party Committee of the Sinotrans Bureau of the Communist Party of China, believed that the quality of domestically produced main engines and navigation instruments was not good, and ordered them to be replaced with imported goods, otherwise no trial voyage would be allowed.