China marked the 90th anniversary of the Red Army's Long March victory with a call for officials to keep the public at the center of their work, according to 中国政协网, the website of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. In an article published Monday, the outlet said the anniversary is a moment to revisit the Party's original mission and to insist that everything is done for the people and relies on the people. The piece was carried alongside related coverage from Xinhua, China Daily and other outlets.
Why it matters
The Long March, a 25,000-li strategic retreat by the Red Army, is treated in the article as a founding episode of the Communist Party's relationship with ordinary people. 中国政协网 argues that the march succeeded because the Party was rooted among the population, and it draws a direct line from that history to the governance priorities of today. The anniversary thus serves as an occasion for the outlet to press a people-first standard on officials at every level.
The argument from history
According to 中国政协网, the Party's leadership was the decisive factor in the march's outcome. The article quotes Mao Zedong asking who made the march victorious and answering that it was the Communist Party, without which such a march could not have been imagined. It also cites Xi Jinping's statement that carrying forward the Long March spirit today requires strengthening Party leadership and strict Party discipline.
The outlet describes the Red Army as having broken through repeated encirclement and pursuit by Nationalist forces, survived the snow mountains and grasslands, and completed a strategic transfer that drew worldwide attention. In its account, the underlying reason was that the Party and the Red Army took root among the people and depended on them. The article calls this a confirmation of the principle that whoever wins public support wins, and it describes the people as the foundation of the Party's strength against every difficulty.
On the question of public sentiment, 中国政协网 writes that the outcome of a war is decided not only on the battlefield but by which side the population backs. It says the Red Army held to its mission of seeking liberation for working people, kept strict discipline, took nothing from civilians, and formed close ties with ethnic groups along the route. That support, the article says, allowed a poorly supplied force on a long march to survive repeated crises and eventually regroup.
The outlet also presents the march as a practical demonstration of the mass line. It recounts that communities along the route supplied grain and medicine at personal risk, served as guides, sheltered the wounded and passed on intelligence, while many young people joined the army. In this telling, the march was not only a military maneuver but a political practice that generated lasting popular backing.
A further section addresses ethnic unity. Much of the route crossed areas where ethnic minorities lived, the article notes, each with its own customs and religious practices. It says the Red Army applied policies of ethnic equality, unity and freedom of religious belief, respected local customs and protected people's interests, earning trust. It cites the sworn brotherhood between Liu Bocheng and the Yi chieftain Xiaoyedan at Yihai as a well-known example. The lesson drawn is that only a united national family can gather the strength to overcome major obstacles.
What the anniversary means for officials today
The article quotes Xi's formulation that the country is the people and the people are the country, and that in governing, the Party is safeguarding the hearts of the people. It says the people's standpoint must remain the Party's fundamental political position, with achievements measured by service and practical work.
It holds up a story from Shazhou village in Rucheng county, Hunan, where three female Red Army soldiers stayed with an elderly woman named Xu Jiexiu and, on leaving, cut their only quilt in half to leave her a piece. The woman's remark, as quoted, was that a Communist is someone who would cut even a single quilt in half for ordinary people. The outlet says conditions have changed greatly, but the bond between the Party and the public and the commitment to serving them must not.
For current work, 中国政协网 urges officials to follow the "four down to the grassroots" system, going to villages, neighborhoods and factory floors to hear what people actually say and to report their concerns faithfully. It calls on them to think constantly about hardships among the public and about ways to raise incomes, and to favor projects that build foundations, deliver long-term benefit and improve livelihoods. It explicitly targets what it calls image projects, face-saving projects and half-finished projects, and asks that decisions be brought closer to what people want.
On unity, the article says public affairs are best handled through consultation, with matters affecting everyone discussed by everyone. It calls for soliciting ideas and needs from the public, respecting the views of different groups, and negotiating on equal terms with tolerance for differences in order to find the widest common ground.
Common prosperity as the next stage
The outlet frames today's task as raising living standards and steadily advancing common prosperity for all. It stresses high-quality development as the primary task of building a modern socialist country and the theme of the 15th Five-Year Plan period. It calls for new development concepts to guide growth, faster cultivation of new drivers, upgrading of the economic structure, and a balance between improving quality and maintaining reasonable quantity. It also urges strengthening the real economy, upgrading industries, supporting businesses of all kinds, expanding employment and widening income channels for urban and rural residents, along with developing new quality productive forces suited to local conditions. Rural infrastructure and public services should be improved to narrow gaps between city and countryside and between regions, it says.
On livelihoods, the article says common prosperity is not rigid egalitarianism and requires both enlarging and fairly dividing the economic pie. It calls for combining investment in physical assets with investment in people, expanding effective investment in the real economy and technological innovation while strengthening human resource development. It lists priorities including care for the elderly and children, education, health care, housing and assistance for disadvantaged groups, and asks for a stronger social security and assistance system and better basic public services. It singles out low-income households, people relocated from inhospitable areas and those left behind in rural areas, and says the bottom line is preventing any large-scale return to poverty so that no one is left behind.
The article describes common prosperity as a long-term, systemic undertaking that cannot be achieved overnight. It calls for the united front to build consensus, for entrepreneurs to take on social responsibility in rural revitalization and charity, and for the tradition of hard work and self-reliance to be carried on so that people can improve their lives through their own efforts.
The piece closes by linking the anniversary to the broader goal of national rejuvenation through Chinese-style modernization, urging officials to turn the Long March spirit into practical results. Watch for how these themes—correct performance incentives, rural investment and social security—are reflected in the 15th Five-Year Plan and in local implementation.
