Chinese President Xi Jinping sounds Long March rallying call as US trade war tensions rise

Trip to Ganzhou includes stop at major producer of rare earths, minerals essential to some low-carbon technology and left off US tariffs list

He was accompanied by Vice-Premier Liu He, his most trusted adviser and China’s top trade negotiator in the year-long talks with the United States

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President Xi Jinping visits China’s rare earths mining base in Jiangxi province on Monday. Photo: Xinhua

Zhou Xinin Hong Kong,Wendy Wuin BeijingandKinling Loin Beijing

Published: 5:38pm, 20 May 2019Updated: 9:48am, 21 May 2019

Chinese President Xi Jinping has sought to tap into the “Long March” spirit of endurance to rally the public as trade and technology tensions rise with the United States, observers said.

In his first domestic trip since the escalation of the US-China trade war this month, Xi visited one of the country’s major rare earths mining and processing facilities in Ganzhou, Jiangxi province, state news agency Xinhua reported on Monday.

He also paid respects at a monument in Yudu, a county in the city, marking the start of the Communist Party’s Long March 85 years ago, the report said.

Xi was accompanied by Vice-Premier Liu He, Xi’s most trusted adviser and China’s top trade negotiator in the year-long talks with the US.

State media gave few details of the trip and made no mention of the trade war, but analysts said the president’s visit sent a strong message of China’s determination in the stand-off.

China has toughened its rhetoric in recent weeks as Washington raised tariffs on thousands of Chinese exports and put China’s telecoms champion Huawei on an export-control list. There is also growing speculation in China that Beijing could consider banning the export of rare earths to hit back at the US.

The Long March was an epic military retreat from 1934 to 1936 undertaken by the party’s Red Army, the forerunner of the People’s Liberation Army, to evade Kuomintang troops during the Chinese civil war. The thousands on the march covered some of the country’s most difficult terrain and the feat is evoked as a symbol of unity in the face of ordeals.