I spent last week at a national education retreat (国情教育) in the central city of Linzhou, Henan province. Popularly called “red tourism”, these retreats take Communist Party of China (CPC) members to locations around the country with historical significance to the development of the CPC. The idea is to bring the Party’s history alive for the rank-and-file, to rekindle their revolutionary and proletarian spirit (even if Chinese people tend, nowadays, to aspire to Mercedes-Benz cars and Hermes bags rather than class struggle).

Since the CPC began promoting red tourism in 2005, it has become big business. China Daily said in March that over 800 million red tourism trips were made in 2018. According to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the average amount spent on a single domestic trip is around CNY930 (about $135). So the red tourism market may be worth nearly CNY750 billion per year (about $110 billion). But before you get too excited by the potential investment opportunities, keep in mind that it’s a market essentially closed to the private sector. As far as I can tell, these study tours are almost entirely subsidised by public funds and mostly spent at state-owned enterprises or government-owned destinations. Locals in those generally poor inland locations where red tourism takes place do benefit from some trickle-down, but it’s a small drip to be sure.

The usual agenda of these retreats include sightseeing visits to important revolutionary locales, followed by classroom sessions and group study. Linzhou wasn’t my first taste of red tourism. Last year I attended a retreat at Yan’an in Shaanxi province, the endpoint of the Long March and important for being where the CPC based itself for most of the Second World War (or the Chinese War of Resistance Against Japan). The theme of that earlier retreat was highlighting the CPC’s resistance credentials. It also included a visit to nearby Liangjiahe, a small farming village where CPC General Secretary Xi Jinping spent the Cultural Revolution.

So what’s at Linzhou? Situated at the crossroads of Hebei, Henan and Shanxi provinces, it’s a rugged mountainous region where the Zhang River cuts through the Taihang mountains. The closest city is Anyang, about two-hours away by car, the first capital city of China, during the Shang Dynasty (between 1,600 BC to 1,000 BC), and where archeologists discovered examples of the earliest known forms of the Chinese writing system in oracle bones. But for the CPC, the area’s importance stems from much more recent history.

Linzhou is the location of the Red Flag Canal (红旗渠, or hongqiqu), a massive waterworks project from the 1960’s that is held up by the CPC as a shining example of what the communist spirit can achieve even in the face of scarcity and immense challenge. Connect the dots to the present day economic challenges being brought about by Trump’s trade war, and you’ll have a sense of the message the CPC is pushing to its rank-and-file. Self-reliance! As Rob Schneider says, You can do it!

The central plains of China have always had a problem with drought and accompanying starvation. Guangdong province is populated by ethnic Han-Chinese from the central plains largely because, over the centuries, hunger pushed us south in search of more fertile farmland. So when the CPC took control of China in 1949, for the cadres in charge of Henan, and in particular, Linzhou, water relief works were a priority, even if they lacked the requisite technical know-how, money, and materiel.

It took nearly a decade of back-breaking work to complete the Red Flag Canal in 1969. The project consists of a 71-km long main canal feeding an extensive 1,500-km irrigation network. There are 134 tunnels cut through 24-km of mountain, and 150 aqueducts running across 6.5-km of ravines and crevices. It’s not especially pretty if you compare it with any old Roman waterworks in Europe, but it’s impressive nonetheless considering the lack of technical knowledge of the young cadres in charge of the project. And knowing that the work was almost entirely done by volunteer-farmers using no more than hand tools and whatever they brought with them from their farms. They didn’t even have dynamite, resorting to home-made blackpowder to blast away the cliff faces.

While the CPC now upholds Red Flag Canal as the embodiment of collectivism, mass mobilisation, honest labour and national pride (and evidence that the Great Leap Forward wasn’t all bad), the truth is that there wasn’t much support for it in Beijing at the time. The central government agreed to contribute just 15% of the canal’s construction costs, half-expecting that the local authorities would be unable to come up with the remaining CNY58 million-plus (about $200 million in present-day dollars) as that was more than the total CNY52.7 million GDP of Henan province in 1960. What the central government didn’t know, however, and which led to conflicts and serious problems later on, was that the Henan provincial leadership had massively underreported their grain yields for the previous number of years, giving them a secret surplus that would help cover their share of the canal’s costs.

And remember also that, at the beginning of the Great Leap Forward, Chairman Mao was more interested in leading China to overtake Great Britain as a steel-producing nation. In 1958, he had disastrously ordered the creation of millions of backyard furnaces and the melting of all household iron objects, unaware that wasn’t the recipe to make steel. The result was a critical shortage of household tools and farming implements across the country. Even doorknobs and nails were melted down in the heedless enthusiasm.

The steel-making drive and other poorly-thought out policies of the Great Leap Forward caused the worst famine ever in Chinese history, which the CPC now calls the Great Chinese Famine. Frank Dikotter, the Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong, in his book, “Mao’s Great Famine”, figures that more than 40 million people across the country lost their lives. According to the national census bureau, for Henan province, in 1958 at the start of the Great Leap Forward, there were 493,000 people. By 1960, the population had dropped 20% to just 390,000. A nonagenarian cadre who worked on the canal in his youth told me the Red Flag Canal workers lived on no more than 6 ounces of bread per day during this period; “work” was not actually possible. It’s also possible that the diversion of grain to pay for the Red Flag Canal badly exacerbated the famine in Henan, one of the hardest hit provinces.

It’s also interesting that, as I was on the bus going to the Red Flag Canal museum, I was listening to a podcast about the Apollo 11 moon mission, which also took place in July 1969. I know it’s pointless to make a comparison; rural China during the 1960’s was probably little more advanced than rural China in 1560. But it’s still an interesting contrast, and a starting point to think about how quickly rural China has changed, for better and worse, over the last few decades.

Our retreat was based at the Hongqiqu Leadership Academy (红旗渠干部学院), a sprawling modern 28-acre facility with 55,000-sq meters of classroom and dormitory space for 600 students at a time. A second phase is currently being built that will add space for another 1,000 students. More students are housed at nearby hotels and bused in for classes and events. The three-story academy canteen was chock-a-block at meal-times, which had to be staggered to accommodate everyone.

You’re probably thinking this retreat was a silly way to spend a good chunk of my summer break. You could have been at the beach with Daisy, Benji and Georgia! Plus I’m not even a CPC member. The retreat was organised by the United Front Work Dept of Zhuhai in Guangdong province, a southern city next door to Macau from which my maternal grandmother’s family hails. They were kind enough to invite me along as I am active in their overseas-Chinese groups. I always try to go when asked because these events give me a unique insight into the CPC’s current salient issues and policies.

For instance, I can report that Mr Xi’s anti-corruption drive for cadres and CPC members has become incredibly strict. Normally the first evening is marked by an introductory banquet with mandatory baijiu (distilled spirits) toasts. Not this time. No banqueting, just three meals a day at the academy canteen. No wine and no carousing, either. In fact, they didn’t even want us in town (outside of the academy) after dark. A couple of us did sneak out for a few beers at a local pub, only to be caught and given a severe dressing down (including for our party secretary and group leader to have to write a self-criticism, something I thought had gone out of style with the Cultural Revolution).

*A note about the title before anyone gets offended by it. It’s in tribute to one of my favourite songs from Nirvana, possibly the greatest band in human history. Besides the Apollo 11 podcast, I had Kurt speaking to me in my earbuds as we drove through the plains of Central China.

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