The air above Wenchang, south China’s Hainan Province, hung hot and salt-tinged beneath a pale subtropical sun as the countdown reached zero on June 23, 2026. The silence broke in a fiery rumble: a Long March 7A carrier rocket, its fuselage gleaming against the glare, shot upward on a pillar of flame, the roar of its engines rolling across the South China Sea like distant thunder. I stood among two dozen spectators – space enthusiasts, local villagers, engineers – all silent in near reverence. This was no ordinary launch. It was a moment where China’s 90-year journey since the end of the Long March met with its ambitions for the cosmos, and where a name synonymous with national resilience took on new meaning.
A modified version of the Long March-7 rocket carrying a new communication technology test satellite blasts off from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in south China's Hainan Province, June 23, 2026. (Photo by Li Wenjun/Xinhua)
The Long March: Forging a Nation’s Resilience Bedrock
The year 2026 marks nine decades since the victorious conclusion of the 1934-1936 Long March, the defining odyssey of the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. Traversing roughly 12,500 kilometers across more than a dozen of provinces – through snow-capped mountains, swampy grasslands, and raging rivers – the march trudged along through extreme deprivation and armed conflict, costing many precious lives but forging a collective memory that remains the bedrock of China’s national identity. To Chinese people, the Long March is not just a historical event: it is a metaphor for perseverance, shared sacrifice, and the unshakable belief that great goals require time, unity, and unyielding will. It is no coincidence that when China launched its first satellite, Dongfanghong-1, in 1970, it named its carrier rocket “Long March” – a deliberate choice to link the nation’s struggle for survival in the 1930s to its quest for scientific and technological self-reliance in the modern era.
Today, the Long March rocket series has completed more than 500 launches, making China one of only three countries capable of independent manned spaceflight and lunar exploration. The 7A variant, equipped with an additional upper stage, serves as the backbone for China’s high-Earth and deep-space missions, safely launching heavy satellites and future exploration probes from the coastal Wenchang Space Launch Site. Watching it soar into the sky above Hainan, I realized I was witnessing not just a technological feat, but a dialogue between two eras: the Long March of mud and blood, and the Long March of metal and starlight.
Tourists visit the venue of the Zunyi Meeting in Zunyi, southwest China's Guizhou Province, Jan. 7, 2025. (Xinhua/Tao Liang)
The New Long March: From Mud-and-Blood Trails to Stellar Voyages
Nowhere is this continuity more visible than in Hainan itself. Just four decades ago, the island was one of China’s most peripheral regions: its economy relied almost entirely on low-value agriculture and small-scale fisheries, and travel to the mainland took days by ferry. Today, Hainan sits at the heart of China’s strategy to open up to the world. In 2020, the central government rolled out the Master Plan for the Construction of Hainan Free Trade Port, designating the island a pilot zone for high-level institutional opening-up, with preferential policies for trade, investment, cross-border capital flows, and tax administration. Massive state-led investment has followed: the Hainan Ring High-Speed Railway, completed in 2015, cut travel time around the island to just 3.5 hours; the island’s two major airports, Haikou Meilan and Sanya Phoenix, handled a combined 45 million passengers in 2025; and 5G coverage now exceeds 95 percent across all administrative villages. Hainan has also emerged as a hub for high-value industries: eco-tourism, international health services, smart manufacturing, and tropical agriculture.
Every spring, the coastal town of Boao hosts the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA), established in 2001 as the continent’s premier platform for economic and governance dialogue. Each year, more than 2,000 policymakers, business leaders, academics, and representatives from international organizations gather there to release flagship reports such as the Asian Economic Integration Report and debate issues ranging from supply chain resilience to climate governance. The juxtaposition is striking: an island once ignored by the global spotlight now hosts both a world-class space launch site and a leading multilateral forum – representing two pillars of China’s dual strategy to boost its technological progress and engage with the world.
When Progress Meets Identity
However, the most valuable image I took away from Hainan belongs neither to a convention center nor a space launch pad. It is found in a small corner surrounded by the sea, where time seems to move at a different pace: West Island.
There, far from the hustle and bustle of big cities and the dizzying speed of technological innovation, I had the opportunity to converse with several islanders whose lives remain closely tied to the sea. Their stories spoke of generations of fishermen, the patience required to wait for the right tide, and the pride of belonging to a community that has successfully preserved many of its customs.
As I listened to them, I thought that perhaps true modernization consists precisely in finding a balance between progress and the preservation of identity.
This contrast between the rustic tranquility of West Island and the thunder of the space launch encapsulates much of the complexity of modern China: a country capable of looking simultaneously toward its roots and toward the stars.
Walking through its narrow streets, I realized that the true dimension of a country cannot be measured solely by the size of its cities or the height of its skyscrapers. It is also discovered in the daily lives of those who inhabit its most remote places.
One of the islanders spoke to me about how Hainan had changed during his lifetime. He remembered a much less connected island, where travel was long and difficult, and he observed with awe the arrival of new highways, better communications, and a growing interest in a type of tourism that seeks to enjoy natural wealth without losing sight of local identity. He did not speak from statistics, but from the lived experience of someone who has watched his environment transform.
Those words made me reflect that great national transformations only acquire true meaning when they reach the lives of individuals.
The Enduring Ethos: Why the Long March Spirit Still Inspires
Hainan’s transformation is not an isolated case, but a microcosm of China’s broader development trajectory over the past four decades. Since the launch of reform and opening-up in 1978, the central government has prioritized two interrelated goals: narrowing regional disparities and improving living standards for all citizens. Massive investment in high-speed rail (now the world’s largest network, spanning more than 50,000 kilometers), highways, bridges, ports, and digital infrastructure has shrunk the distance between historically isolated rural and mountainous regions and urban economic centers. In 2025, 99.9 percent of Chinese administrative villages had access to paved roads, up from just 35 percent in 2000. These infrastructure projects are explicitly framed not as ends in themselves, but as tools for “common prosperity” – a long-term national strategy to ensure that the fruits of growth are shared equitably across regions, ethnic groups, and income brackets.
A key component of this effort is the dispatch of hundreds of thousands of Party members and technical professionals to impoverished villages nationwide, to support local development projects tailored to community needs. For a country of 1.4 billion people with vast geographic, economic, and cultural diversity – home to 56 ethnic groups, each with distinct languages, traditions, and ways of life – reducing inequality is an enormous challenge. Yet the Chinese government has made it a priority in its five-year plans, reflecting a long-term planning horizon that prioritizes stability and inclusive growth over short-term gains.
An employee conducts tests on a transistor at an electronic components company in the Haikou Integrated Free Trade Zone in Hainan on May 23, 2026. (SU BIKUN)
As I flew out of Hainan, I looked down at the island’s patchwork of green forests, azure coastline, and silver highways, and thought about the two Long Marches that define modern China. The first, a grueling journey across harsh terrain to secure national survival; the second, a deliberate, decades-long push toward scientific, technological, and economic advancement. The backdrops have changed – from snow-capped mountains to orbital trajectories – but the underlying ethos remains the same: grand national projects are not sprints, but long-term endeavors that require perseverance, coordination, and a clear sense of purpose. The name “Long March” endures not because it evokes an epic past, but because it reminds China – and the world – that meaningful progress is never the work of a few, but the shared effort of many. Ninety years after the original Long March ended, its spirit continues to inspire new journeys: toward the stars, toward common prosperity, and toward a future where development respects both history and the planet. For nations, as for individuals, what defines them is not the destinations they reach, but the way they walk the path.
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MARTA MONTORO is executive president of the China Chair Foundation (Fundación Cátedra China).
