Party marching China to further greatness

One of the issues that has always fascinated me after reading about China was the Long March.

I often wondered, how did these millions of people walk such a long-distance? How did they overcome all the obstacles and dangers that lay in wait in their path? Bombs were poured on them as the enemy besieged them, and bullets flew in every direction. But despite all these obstacles, they walked the path. What drove them to go on for all that distance?

I came to realize the secret to all these strides and achievements was their belief in big ideas and dreams, and their determination to fulfill them. A rebel is, above all, a dreamer. He dreams of a better world and begins to fight for it. That's what they did.

While I was reading, I imagined them in front of me. And when I went to the student restaurant to have lunch, I saw them in the face of a female worker carrying a bag of cement on her back. I would see them in every successfully-built metro line in Wuhan, and I would see them in every newly-built bridge in the city. When I look at fellow students studying for hours and hours in the library, I could only imagine soldiers crossing the Yangtze River, with all the hardship that one could feel when looking at a painting that commemorated this event. Same warriors, but in different eras.

The Long March was the event that helped me understand the concept of China more clearly. I believe that the Great Wall, the Terracotta Army, and the Three Gorges Dam are all part of this process, and each of them had its own time.

I discovered that the greatest thing about China is its people. The people are the ones who did it all. The people are those who built the wall, created the army, and walked that Long March. It was them who made and believed in glorious China that we all came to know.

Yes, people are the main power. However, this force cannot produce great achievements if it is not united with a clear goal. I looked at China at the time of division, wars and colonialism. Can anyone believe that only a hundred years ago, China was living in an era of humiliation, occupation and division?

What has actually changed?

Allow me to say it, without a shred of doubt -- China would never have achieved what we see today had it not been for the presence of the Communist Party of China. Here, I return to the Long March spirit. This continuous march, led by the Communist Party of China, has a clear goal, to realize the dream of the Chinese nation for the well-being and happiness of its people.

The greatness of the Communist Party of China is that it revived this mighty power that the Chinese people had stored. It is the same force that built a Great Wall that has survived for thousands of years. However, it is not enough for a country to be a great power simply by having a large population. On the contrary, this may have been precisely its weakness. But when you know how to awaken and harness the energy of millions towards a common vision and goal, no one will defeat you. When millions of Chinese walked that Long March, they were making new history, and no force could have ever stopped them. The revolution led by the Communist Party of China guided them towards the path of their salvation, and they marched towards it.

Adham Sayed is a researcher with the China-Arab BRI Research Center at Zhejiang Gongshang University, and author of the book "This Is How It Was in Wuhan: Diaries of Quarantine Days".