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Xi Jinping
ChinaPolitics

China’s green future and red past: the message in Xi Jinping’s trip to Shaanxi

  • Chinese president visits a clean-coal enterprise, an ecological park and a memorial to Communist Party pioneers in a province that remains close to his heart
  • Xi will attend the opening ceremony of the National Games in the provincial capital Xian on Wednesday

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President Xi Jinping inspected land rehabilitation projects during his visit to Shaanxi province and paid tribute to Communist Party pioneers at Yangjiagou Revolutionary Memorial Hall. Photo: Weibo
William Zheng
President Xi Jinping began an inspection trip to Shaanxi province in northwestern China on Monday stressing the importance of environmental health and of maintaining the Communist Party’s revolutionary spirit, according to state media.
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State news agency Xinhua reported that Xi visited a clean-coal enterprise, a large-scale soil erosion rehabilitation project and a revolutionary site during his first stop in the city of Yulin.

Xi is expected to attend the opening ceremony of the National Games in the provincial capital Xian on Wednesday evening. It will be China’s first major sporting event of the Covid-19 era and is seen as a rehearsal for Beijing’s Winter Olympics.
The visit is the president’s second inspection trip to follow the leadership’s Beidaihe annual retreat in August.

The province is regarded as the starting point of Xi’s political long march that saw him rise to be the most powerful man in the world’s second-largest economy after serving as the party leader of a village in the 1970s.

This trip also comes less than two months before top party leaders gather in Beijing for a pivotal meeting in the lead-up to next year’s national congress to work out major party policies for the coming years.

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According to Xinhua, Xi inspected China Energy Group’s Yulin chemical plant. The plant, which was built in 2012 for over 1 billion yuan (US$155 million), was China’s pilot project for the complete use of coal to produce chemical products – including methanol to polyolefins – while generating barely any industrial waste water.

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