Chinese leader Xi Jinping delivered a speech in Beijing on Thursday marking nine decades since the Red Army completed its Long March, according to a transcript published by Xinhua. The address, released in full by the state news agency, reviewed the 1934–1936 campaign and set out what he described as lessons for the country's current phase of development. The ceremony fell in October 2026, ninety years after the three main Red Army columns and a smaller force concluded their retreat.
Why it matters
The speech is a formal statement of the official historical narrative at a moment when the party is emphasizing continuity between its revolutionary past and its present goals. Xinhua's release of the full text, alongside commentary carried by other outlets, indicates the anniversary is being treated as a major political occasion. Xi used the event to link the survival of the Red Army to the legitimacy of party leadership and to frame the country's modernization drive as a continuation of the same struggle.
The history as the speech recounts it
Xi described the early 1930s as a period of acute danger. Japan was intensifying its aggression against China, he said, while the Nationalist authorities launched successive large-scale encirclement campaigns against Communist-held base areas. Faulty leadership within the party, which he characterized as left-leaning dogmatism, led to the failure of the fifth counter-encirclement effort in the central base area and setbacks elsewhere, leaving the party and the Red Army in a fight for survival.
From October 1934 to October 1936, according to the speech, the party led the First, Second and Fourth Front Armies and the Twenty-Fifth Army on a march that crossed more than ten provinces and covered some 25,000 li. Xi said the troops forded close to a hundred rivers, crossed snow-covered mountains and marshland, fought more than 600 engagements and broke through the pursuit and blocking efforts of a far larger enemy force. The campaign, he said, destroyed the Nationalists' aim of eliminating the party and the Red Army, achieved a strategic shift northward to resist Japan and opened a new phase for the revolution.
He also credited forces that did not join the main march — Red Army units and guerrillas left behind in the base areas, Red Army troops in the northwest, the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, party organizations in Nationalist-controlled territory and other groups — with contributions to the eventual victory.
Xi offered respects on behalf of the party's Central Committee, the State Council and the Central Military Commission to the older generation of leaders including Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and Zhu De, to Red Army commanders and fighters, to the ethnic groups and base-area residents who supported the march, and to surviving veterans.
Four explanations for the outcome
The speech attributed the march's success to four factors. The first was correct party leadership. Xi recalled that early losses under the left-leaning line were reversed after the January 1935 Politburo meeting at Zunyi, which effectively established Mao's leadership position in the party and the Red Army, began to establish the correct Marxist line associated with Mao at the center, and started to form the first generation of collective leadership around him. That meeting, he said, saved the party, the Red Army and the revolution at their most perilous moment, and it opened a new stage in which the party solved its own problems independently. After Zunyi, he said, the party and army recovered and overcame the splittism of Zhang Guotao before winning through.
The second factor was resolve. Xi described party members and fighters holding firm under extreme hardship, surviving against the limits of human endurance, refusing to take anything from local people even while hungry and cold, and in one case vowing to crawl to northern Shaanxi after losing a leg.
The third was independent judgment and practicality. The march, he said, was also a process of working out a revolutionary path. After the costly crossing of the Xiang River and the uncertainty that followed, the party came to understand the laws of the Chinese revolution through hard experience, shed the constraints of dogmatism and began to decide independently where to go and how to fight. Flexible tactics suited to actual conditions, he said, allowed the Red Army to break through successive blockades.
The fourth was popular support. Xi said the Red Army behaved with discipline wherever it went, confiscated from landlords, redistributed land and grain, and relieved the poor, and that local people came to see it as their own army. Civilians made uniforms, raised money and grain, risked their lives to rescue the wounded and carry intelligence, and many enlisted. He cited the farewells of villagers seeing the army off, the night crossing at Yudu, the story of the half quilt and the oath sworn at the Yi-Hai alliance as examples of the bond between soldiers and civilians.
Xi defined the spirit of the Long March as placing the fundamental interests of the nation above all else, holding firm to revolutionary ideals and the conviction that a just cause prevails, refusing to shrink from hardship or sacrifice in the cause of national salvation, insisting on independence and seeking truth from facts, putting the whole above the parts and maintaining strict discipline and unity, and relying closely on the people through shared hardship.
From the past to the present
Xi noted that since the 18th Party Congress the country has entered a new era, that the first centenary goal of building a moderately prosperous society has been met on schedule, and that the party is now working toward the second centenary goal of building a modern socialist country in all respects, with Chinese-style modernization as the route to national rejuvenation.
He set out five requirements for what he called the new long march. The first is to hold to the party's ideals, convictions and purpose, implementing the guiding thought of the new era, maintaining confidence in the path, theory, system and culture, and serving the people wholeheartedly. The second is to pursue high-quality development and meet rising public expectations, advancing the five-sphere integrated plan and the four-pronged comprehensive strategy, applying the new development philosophy in full, building the new development paradigm, keeping to the principle of seeking progress while maintaining stability, improving both the quality and the scale of the economy, and pursuing common prosperity so that development is for the people, by the people and shared by the people.
The third is to take on the struggles characteristic of the present period. Facing a complicated situation at home and abroad, Xi called for courage and skill in confronting difficulties, stronger resolve and confidence across the party, the military and the people, better coordination of development and security, readiness for severe tests, and a proactive approach to risks and challenges. The fourth is to speed the building of a world-class military, upholding absolute party leadership over the armed forces, carrying forward political, reform, technology, personnel and legal measures, preserving the army's red heritage, meeting the centenary goal of military development and modernizing national defense.
The fifth is to uphold party leadership and strengthen party building, implementing the party-building thought of the new era, maintaining the centralized, unified leadership of the Central Committee, continuing full and rigorous self-governance, and improving the party's capacity to lead politically, guide thinking, organize the public and rally society.
Xi closed by calling on the whole party, the military and people of all ethnic groups to unite closely around the Central Committee, carry forward the Long March spirit and press ahead with the cause the older generation began.
Watch for how the anniversary messaging is carried into domestic policy communication and military modernization targets over the coming months, and whether the Zunyi precedent is invoked again in internal party education.
