Breaking Through: Why the Long March Still Matters to China and the World

Breaking through is a phrase that resonates with many Chinese people nowadays. Facing current challenges, it connects them to an epic military expedition that took place almost a century ago.

"It is an odyssey unequalled in modern times." So wrote American journalist Edgar Snow 90 years ago, after meeting Mao Zedong and others survivors of the Long March in China's northwest.

In October 1934, facing serious military defeat, 86,000 soldiers of the Central Red Army embarked on a journey that forever changed China. After fighting hundreds of bloody battles, crossing roaring rivers, climbing over snow-capped mountains and trekking across deadly swamp-covered grasslands, in October 1935 they arrived in northern Shaanxi. But only some 8,000 of them had survived.

https://youtu.be/KBUVFkBIg-w?is=lAxsw8RDN5jUlauA

As Snow put it, "However one may feel about the Reds and what they represent politically, it is impossible to deny recognition of their Long March as one of the great exploits of military history. Hannibal's march over the Alps looked like a holiday excursion beside it."

In October 1936, with the arrival of the last of its forces in the northwest, the Red Army achieved the convergence of its three main columns.

This October witnesses the 90th anniversary of the end of the Long March.

But was that the end of the story?  This is a key question raised in the new CGTN Documentary Breaking Through. Part travelogue, part history, this series retraces the steps of those intrepid pioneers, reflecting not just on how and why the original Long March happened, but also on the impact it continues to have on the landscape of today's China. And the conclusion it comes to is a thought-provoking one: the Long March's most enduring legacy is perhaps not the monuments that dot the route taken by the original Marchers, but a whole range of endeavors taking place today with the potential to reshape not just China, but the entire world.

For, as the series makes clear, wherever you look across this vast country, you will find people engaged in activities that involve just the same sort of spirit of sacrifice and endurance that was exhibited by the original Long Marchers. Whether it's the ongoing progress of China's commercial space industry or the latest developments in China's homegrown EV-battery industry, the spirit of the Long March is plain to see. What's more, in many cases the imperatives behind such innovations are similar to those that motivated the original Marchers: the burning need to escape encirclement and break new ground.

This was something the men and women who arrived in Shaanxi all those years ago, were very much aware of. They knew they'd survived to fight another day in a struggle that was all about the future.

For them, their arrival in Shaanxi was not the end; it was a new beginning. A surging tide that would change history had risen in far-off Jiangxi and was now converging on a point of temporary rest. But what it left there wasn't a stagnant pool, but rather a reservoir of clear, pure water that continues to nourish and inspire.

Watching Breaking Through on CGTN.com and YouTube：

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2026-10-13/The-March-that-Changed-China-Forever-Breaking-Through-Episode-1-1Rdd9qXpGOk/p.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BrsjXSSWS0&t=622s