Xi Focus-Closeup: Apples of the people

BEIJING - It might be incredibly difficult for travelers who are hungry and thirsty to resist the ripe apples blooming on trees near the road, but the soldiers led by the Communist Party of China (CPC) resisted all such temptations in the autumn of 1948.

Soldiers of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) marched by apple trees with ripe fruit during the Liaoshen Campaign, one of the key campaigns of the War of Liberation more than seven decades ago, in the countryside of Jinzhou city of Northeast China's Liaoning province. The soldiers were thirsty and hungry, yet they did not help themselves to any of the apples planted by villagers.

Chinese President Xi Jinping recalled this story when he visited the Liaoshen Campaign Memorial in Jinzhou during his inspection tour to Liaoning last week.

"Here the fighters were conscious that not eating the apples was noble, whereas to eat them would have been ignoble. They knew the apples belonged to the people," Xi quoted late Chairman Mao Zedong's comments on the story.

"Those apples (of the people), we are not allowed to eat even today," said Xi, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission.

With its iron discipline, the PLA, known as the people's army, won staunch public support for the campaign against the Kuomintang forces.

During the war to liberate the country's Northeast region, more than 1.6 million people joined the people's army, and 3.1 million civilians volunteered to support the military, including carrying more than 200,000 stretchers to transport the wounded, according to statistics exhibited at the memorial.

The victory of the Liaoshen Campaign would not have been achieved without the staunch support of the people in the Northeast, neither would the victory of the Huaihai Campaign (from November 1948 to January 1949) without the efforts of local people who used their handcarts to support the front, and nor would the victory of the Crossing-the-Yangtze Campaign (in 1949) without the endeavor of those who rowed their boats to ferry our soldiers, he noted.

"The decisive battles during the War of Liberation between our Party and the Kuomintang were not only a competition between military strength, but also, more importantly, a struggle about winning people's support," Xi said.

"As long as our Party forever maintains a close bond and throws in its lot with the people, we will be able to pool great strength to surmount all difficulties and hardships," Xi said.