Searching for the heritage of the Second Sino-Japanese War: A study on the site selection strategy of the defence industrial buildings of the National Resources Commission (1937–1945)

China's heritage protection programme has gradually included the defence industry, and many industrial buildings related to defence have been included in the national list of cultural relics for protection. The relevant research mainly concerns the value of these heritage sites, lacking of research on the site selection and construction of buildings. This field also ignores the significant historical background of the Second Sino-Japanese War. This paper researches the National Resources Commission (NRC) during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It studies its site selection strategy for the 28 factories built by the organization in Hunan and Chongqing. First, the NRC-related historical data were sorted, including the list of factories built before and during the war, and their own historical construction database was established. Then, "Historical Position Finding - Site Feature Construction - Site Selection Factor Evaluation" is used to analyse each site. Finally, the site selection strategy of the NRC before and after the war was analysed. The innovation of this research is to put forward a research method combining field investigation and historical archives based on the perspective of institutional history. The study determined the spatial location of each plant and provided a direct basis for subsequent protection and utilization.