The Long March is not confined to history. Its essence and vitality are seen in China every day.
Crowds of visitors flock to see the immersive production The Great Expedition at the Guizhou Long March-themed Digital Art and Science Museum, in Guiyang, Guizhou Province.
I first heard of the Long March in the 1960s, as a college student in the United States. Like many Westerners, at the time I understood it as a distant, heroic tale from China’s past – a military relocation transformed into legendary status. It was only after reading Edgar Snow’s Red Star Over China in the mid-1970s that I began to grasp its deeper meaning: not merely a story of survival, but a testament to endurance, collective sacrifice, and unwavering belief in the face of impossible odds.
By 1976, I had earned my Ph.D. in sociology. Yet instead of pursuing an academic career, I spent the next three decades as a full-time volunteer labor organizer in impoverished American communities. It was during that period that I read Snow’s vivid account of the Long March, which left a lasting impression on me. At the time, I saw the Long March as a glorious chapter in Chinese history: an arduous journey defined by relentless perseverance, extraordinary courage, and an unshakable faith forged through extreme hardship.
Today, after more than two decades living in China, observing the country’s dramatic transformations, speaking with people from remote villages to modern cities, and visiting revolutionary sites such as Zunyi in Guizhou Province and Xibaipo in Hebei Province, I have developed a far richer and more personal understanding of that Long March spirit. In my early days in China, I composed my first Chinese-themed song “Huai’an – Promise of the Future” (Huai’an in Jiangsu Province is the birthplace of Zhou Enlai, the first premier of the People’s Republic of China), inspired by the tangible progress I witnessed while living and traveling across the country.
The Long March is clearly not a closed chapter of history. From the tremendous changes I have witnessed, I see it as a living, evolving spirit for the new era. It carries lasting value and global significance – a modern Long March spirit that I have experienced firsthand during my many years in China.
The original Long March (1934-1936), undertaken by the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army and led by the Communist Party of China (CPC), was a journey of survival and hope. Facing harsh natural environments, rugged terrain, and constant military suppression, China’s revolutionary leaders chose faith over despair, unity over division, and the common good over personal gain. As Chairman Mao Zedong wrote in his 1938 treatise On Protracted War, victory would not come quickly, but it would surely come.
For a long time, Western narratives have treated the Long March as a historic event belonging only to museums, an outdated relic of revolutionary romance. What they have overlooked, however, is its universal spirit: courage in the face of adversity, resilience amid relentless challenges, and commitment to shared progress over personal gain. My time in China has demonstrated to me that this spirit has never faded. It has simply taken on new meaning and adapted to the needs and dreams of the new era.
I have seen the new Long March spirit in China’s most remote corners. In western China, villages once isolated by treacherous terrain and entrenched poverty are being rejuvenated, not by dramatic interventions, but by the persistent, grinding work of local people. Village teachers crossing rivers to reach a handful of students. Engineers building roads through mountains one meter at a time. Healthcare workers carrying medicine to communities that have never seen a doctor. There are no grand battles or dramatic heroics here, but there is the same perseverance and selflessness that carried the Red Army across China 90 years ago.
I have also seen this spirit in China’s response to difficult times: the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, the devastating winter storms of that same year, and the COVID-19 pandemic. I wrote songs about each of these events because I was watching a society respond to catastrophes not with panic, but with coordinated resolve.
And I see it now again, as China navigates technological blockades and an uncertain global economy. Against this backdrop, China’s pursuit of independent innovation, green development and inclusive growth represents a new-era Long March of exploration and innovation. Faced with barriers that would paralyze many nations, Chinese policymakers, researchers, workers, and students simply keep moving forward. They keep experimenting, carrying forward the fearless spirit of the Long March in service of national development.
Most importantly, the new Long March spirit has grown beyond the China story to become a valuable spiritual asset for the world. Its core values are universal: resilience in the face of hardship, unity in times of difficulty, and dedication to long-term collective progress. Today’s world faces interconnected global challenges: worsening climate change, unequal development, ongoing regional conflicts, and persistent public health risks. No country, no matter how powerful it is, can solve these complex problems alone.
Division, selfishness-driven competition, and zero-sum efforts only widen global gaps and slow human progress. This makes the timeless wisdom of the Long March more relevant than ever.
But perhaps the most powerful manifestation of this legacy is one that few foreign visitors ever see.
The memorial museum of the Xiangjiang River Battle during the Red Army’s Long March – a dedicated museum displaying the history of the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army during the Long March, in Guilin, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, on May 4, 2026.
For nearly two decades, I have taught at Minzu University of China in Beijing, an institution dedicated to ethnic unity and educational equity.
My students mainly come from the high plateau, deep mountains, and borderlands of western and southwestern China. Many are from ethnic minority communities in regions that were, not long ago, as isolated and underdeveloped as the terrain the Long March once crossed.
They arrive at university barely out of adolescence, often speaking Mandarin as a second language, bearing the weight of their families’ expectations and economic reality. The academic pressure is immense. The cultural adjustment is harder. And yet they persevere.
They study not merely to escape their circumstances, but to return home as teachers, doctors, engineers, and cultural stewards. They talk about revitalizing their villages, preserving their languages, and building bridges between their traditions and the modern world. This quiet dedication to collective progress and willingness to overcome personal hardship for the public good, represents a youthful continuation of the Long March’s perseverance and communal spirit.
My own work has been shaped by this same ethos. As a songwriter, author, and chief expert of the “Telling China Stories” Workshop, I have worked to break Western stereotypes that often reduce China’s development to superficial headlines and biased political narratives. Instead, I have focused on field research, grassroots interviews, and real-life artistic creation. I have spent years traveling through inland provinces, ethnic autonomous regions, and former poverty-stricken rural areas. I have sat with farmers, village teachers, civil servants, artisans keeping intangible cultural heritage alive, and young community workers. I have learned their untold stories: years of persistent infrastructure building, the revival of fading ethnic traditions, and steady efforts to help villages overcome backwardness.
I share these stories with global audiences because I believe the world needs to hear them – not as propaganda, but as human testimony. My workshop’s mission is straightforward: to replace prejudice with understanding, and ignorance with respect. In a media landscape dominated by superficial headlines and political posturing, this kind of patient, ground-level storytelling is its own form of endurance. It is, in my own small way, my practice of the Long March spirit.
Through my teaching and cross-cultural work, I have come to deeply understand that this spirit rejects stagnation and embraces continuous renewal. Western views once fixed the Long March as a distant, static historical story. But my years of immersive experience prove otherwise. It is a living force, visible in the social responsibility of my students, the resilience of rural communities I have documented, and the courage of innovators pushing against technological barriers. It lives in the tech pioneers who refuse to accept that a shortage of foreign components defines the future. It lives in the farmers who stay behind to rebuild the villages while their children study in cities. It lives in every person who chooses collective progress over personal comfort.
This is not nostalgia. It is not politics. It is a practical philosophy for a troubled, interconnected world. Climate change, inequality, pandemics, and conflict do not respect borders. No nation, however powerful, can solve them alone. The Long March reminds us that division and zero-sum competition only deepen human suffering. What endures is resilience, solidarity, and the stubborn belief that a better future is possible – even if the road is long and victory comes slow.
That spirit is not China’s alone. It belongs to anyone who has ever faced an impossible journey and kept moving forward. 
MARK H. LEVINE is chief expert of the “Telling China Stories” Workshop at the School of Foreign Studies, Minzu University of China.
