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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
World
Verna Yu

Xi Jinping’s pilgrimage to ‘red Mecca’ brings back the Mao factor

Xi Jinping talks to villagers in an orchard in Yan'an, north-west China's Shaanxi province.
Xi Jinping talks to villagers in an orchard in Yan'an, north-west China's Shaanxi province. Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock

Xi Jinping’s next decade in power will see China increasingly revert to Mao Zedong’s ideology and Communist orthodoxy, a trend confirmed by his pilgrimage to a remote city known as the cradle of the Communist party’s revolution, analysts say.

Days after the president secured an unprecedented third term as the chief of the Chinese Communist party, he took his newly appointed politburo standing committee – China’s top decision-making body, now filled with his allies – to Yan’an in the north-western province of Shaanxi, where the Chinese Communist party retreated and rebuilt its strength amid civil wars from 1935 to 1948.

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