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President Xi Jinping stands in a Chinese-made Hongqi Red Flag limousine while on his way to inspect troops during a military parade at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on Thursday. Photo: AFP

Flying the Red Flag: China’s Hongqi wheeled out as President Xi Jinping inspects troops at Beijing military parade

A mobile symbol of China’s revolutionary past roared back to life on Thursday when President Xi Jinping rode into downtown Beijing in a Chinese-built Red Flag luxury sedan to inspect troops.

The Red Flag, or Hongqi, line of limousines harks back to the late 1950s when the first one rolled off the production line of local carmaker First Automobile Works (FAW) with the help of Soviet expertise and technology.

The designers modelled the original vehicles on a Chrysler limousine, directly transferring many of the car’s key components like the gearbox.

The cars were designed to reflect the nation’s industrial progress and were largely reserved for the Communist Party elite and foreign dignitaries until about the 1980s.

It lost popularity in officialdom as cadres opted for foreign luxury cars over the heavy, unreliable and fuel-guzzling older-model Hongqis.

But it was still former president Hu Jintao’s car of choice for the October 1 military parade in 2009.

Production has been suspended three times, including from 1981 to 1983 when paramount leader Deng Xiaoping went for another made-in-China vehicle for that year’s military parade. The Hongqi returned to the parade limelight in 1984 when production resumed.

The latest generation of the Red Flag, the H7  series, came on the market in 2013 with a price tag of up to around 480,000 yuan (HK$584,000), but just 3,000 sold that year. In an attempt to reverse the flagging sales, the manufacturer launched the luxury H7 1.8T  in March 25 for 279,800 yuan.

State media announced last year that the military bought 1,000 Hongqi sedans as part of a nationwide campaign to promote frugality and encourage the use of domestic brands.

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