China’s new Long March: Why its modernisation is a demanding journey

By Chen Ziqi  

In less than eight decades, China has undergone a remarkable transformation. Once grappling with food shortages and limited industrial capacity, it has now become a global trade powerhouse, a major force in technological innovation, and an increasingly important player in the global green transition.

Yet Chinese leaders continue to describe the country’s path to modernisation as a long and challenging journey, likening it to a “New Long March.” How can a country that has come so far still have so much ground to cover?

From the Long March to China’s path to modernisation

The Long March of 1934–1936 was a strategic retreat by the Chinese Red Army to escape encirclement by Kuomintang forces. Facing severe shortages of weapons and supplies, the troops crossed snow-covered mountains and remote grasslands while enduring repeated military engagements. The relentlessly arduous journey came at an enormous human cost.

China’s modernisation today presents a different kind of challenge. As a country of more than 1.4 billion people, it must continue narrowing the development gap between urban and rural areas, strengthening domestic technological capabilities, transitioning toward a greener economy, upgrading its industries, and improving people’s livelihoods.

Of course, the circumstances are vastly different from those of the original Long March, and yet modernisation is an ambitious and enduring undertaking. The achievements of the past do not complete the journey, but merely serve to kick start the next stage.

Narrowing the gap between urban and rural development

China declared extreme poverty eliminated in 2020. The next challenge is to consolidate those gains and find sustainable ways to improve rural livelihoods. For many villages, that means developing industries that can generate reliable income, a task that is more difficult than it sounds.

The river and flat terrain surrounding Duanting Village in Shanxi Province, northern China makes the area well suited to rice cultivation. But for years, growing rice was not a reliable way for local farmers to make a living. The traditional rice variety was vulnerable to disease and the region’s relatively cold weather. In 1997, villagers abandoned rice farming and switched mainly to corn, a safer crop but one that offered less room to increase the value of their produce.

In 2021, the village had a new head in office. Zhao Jibin, a local who had been working away in a larger city, returned to the village to run for the position. After winning the election, he set out to revive the local economy, starting with the industry that had once sustained the village: rice farming.

He firmly believed that rice could bring farmers better returns than corn. The village’s terrain and access to river water were favorable, he reasoned, but simply bringing back the old variety would not solve the problem. What the village needed was a rice better suited to the local climate and more resistant to disease.

After learning that a variety adapted to Shanxi’s conditions had been developed, Zhao began testing it on a small plot. The results encouraged him to expand cultivation year by year. “In the first year, we planted two hectares. The area then expanded to more than 13.3 hectares in 2025,” Zhao said. “The amount we can plant now depends on how many rice seedlings the nursery can supply.”

But expanding production has brought its own challenges. The village needed proper facilities and equipment to protect what it had produced. In 2023, the village’s old, undersized warehouse could no longer adequately store the rice harvest. Some of the crop became moldy, leading to losses.

That year, the village applied for $100,000 in funding to build a new warehouse and purchase modern agricultural machinery. This helped put rice farming on a more promising footing.

Zhao also looked for ways to create income beyond rice cultivation. In 2024, the village introduced rice-crab co-culture, raising crabs in rice fields. The two complement each other: crabs feed on certain pests and weeds, while rice plants provide shelter for the crabs.

Setting up the new system required additional investment. The village applied for about $15,000 in funding to prepare the fields, including digging trenches for the crabs, installing barriers to keep them from escaping, and building tanks for feeding and disinfection.

The unfamiliar approach surprised some villagers, particularly older residents. “I never imagined rice and crabs could be raised in the same fields. Seeing 40,000 crabs released into the paddies really opened my eyes,” one villager said.

Zhao’s efforts also extended beyond the fields. To attract visitors, the village cleaned up the riverside and developed a camping area where families could enjoy the rural landscape, go crabbing in the rice fields and spend time outdoors.

The village has also registered a brand for its rice, promoting it as a local product grown with water from a nearby river. By combining farming with tourism, the village hopes to attract more visitors and encourage them to buy local produce. Zhao said the new activities had created more opportunities for villagers to earn income at home.

Duanting’s experience reflects a broader challenge facing rural China: how to build industries that can generate stable, sustainable income. As young people leave for larger cities, many villages face a shrinking workforce. Limited resources, short industrial chains and uncertain returns also make it difficult to develop businesses that can withstand market risks.

Yet across rural China, village leaders like Zhao, along with experts and other local actors, are exploring new ways to turn local resources into lasting sources of income. The work is underway, but building viable rural industries takes time, sustained investment and continued effort.

Developing a new way to bring rockets home

Technological innovation is essential to a country’s long-term development, but breakthroughs in critical fields require more than adopting existing technologies. They depend on building expertise, developing technical capabilities and finding solutions to difficult problems. China’s efforts to develop reusable rockets for example offer a glimpse of this process.

A rocket’s journey does not have to end when its first stage separates from the rest of the vehicle. In July 2026, China’s Long March-10B rocket completed its maiden flight, delivering its payload into orbit before its first stage – the section that provides the thrust for liftoff – was successfully recovered by a vessel at sea.

The achievement made China the second country, after the United States, to successfully recover an orbital-class rocket booster. The goal is to recover, refurbish and reuse the booster rather than discard it after one flight, potentially reducing launch costs by avoiding the need to build a new one for every mission.

Lou Luliang, the project’s chief designer, highlighted the technical challenges involved. “Bringing the first stage back and landing it precisely so it can be reused is a challenge on top of a challenge. The recovery process takes about five minutes, during which the booster must slow from around 2 kilometers per second to a complete stop, which is quite tough,” Lou said.

China has developed its own approach to rocket booster recovery. Operational recovery and reuse of orbital-class rocket boosters was pioneered by America’s SpaceX. Its Falcon 9 boosters reignite their engines to slow down before landing on deployable legs, either on land or on a sea-based platform.

China’s Long March-10B, by contrast, is designed to use four hooks on the booster to engage with tensioned cables suspended above a recovery vessel. This hook-and-cable system would secure the returning booster without landing legs and could allow some tolerance in its final position.

It also offers a potential weight advantage. By eliminating landing legs, the rocket may carry less hardware, leaving more capacity for its payload.

The concept may sound straightforward, but executing it requires precision at every stage. The booster must control its descent and reach the recovery area at the right position and speed. Meanwhile, the vessel must maintain its position amid wind, waves and currents, while the hooks and cables must work together to capture and secure the rocket. A failure at any stage could jeopardise the recovery, along with the opportunity to reuse a costly piece of equipment.

Ma Jianrui, a designer of the project, said the period from the start of the project to the first recovery was the shortest of its kind for the team. The compressed schedule reflects the pressure to turn an engineering concept into a working system.

As the booster was successfully captured by the recovery system on July 10 this year, around 100 team members monitoring the operation from the control center burst into tears and cheered, “We made it!” The joy of a breakthrough, and sometimes the tears that come with it, hold a meaning that only those who have worked tirelessly to achieve it can fully understand.

Breakthroughs rarely come easily. Each one is built on years of effort, repeated experiments and the determination to overcome setbacks. Behind the country’s technological progress are teams of people who dream big and keep searching for solutions, even when success remains uncertain.

The road ahead: A new Long March

China’s modernisation remains a complex undertaking, with challenges still ahead. Chinese leaders have likened this process to a “New Long March.” Revitalising rural communities and developing new technologies are just two facets of this broader effort.

The challenges today differ from those faced in the past, but moving forward still calls for many of the same qualities: resilience in the face of setbacks, hard work in pursuit of difficult goals, hope for a better future and cooperation to turn shared aspirations into reality.

These efforts not only help shape China’s future, but also create opportunities to share knowledge, advance technology and address challenges that transcend national borders.

Chen Ziqi is a reporter with CGTN Radio