Xi Jinping Met Representatives of the National Model Workers and Affirmed Role of the Working Class

On April 28, 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping attended a reception forum and met the representatives of the national model workers. In his speech, Xi re-emphasized the role that the working class played as the main force [of society] and called for creating a prosperous future through hard work, an old Chinese Communist tradition that the first generation of Communist leaders in Mao Zedong’s era had started. It is worth noting that Hu Zhiqiang, the Captain of the Daqing Oilfield 1205 Drilling Team, and Guo Fenglian, former Party Branch Secretary of Dazhai Village in Xiyang County of Shanxi Province were among the model workers invited to the reception forum. In Mao’s era, the Daqing Oilfield 1205 Drilling Team and Dazhai Village were the two most famous models representing the working class and the peasant class, respectively. In Mao’s era, Guo Fenglian herself [the most famous "iron maiden" in post-revolutionary Chinese history], was the model promoted to the whole country. The old adage was “Learn from Daqing in industry; learn from Dazhi in agriculture.”