Peter Wilson also goes to the village where Xi Jinping spent years in hard labour during Cultural Revolution
2-MIN READ2-MINAlbee Zhangin ShanghaiPublished: 9:00pm, 18 Jun 2026The British ambassador to China has paid a rare visit to a Chinese communist heartland where President Xi Jinping performed hard labour as a young man.
State newspaper China Daily said Wilson made the trip at the invitation of the International Department.
Xi Jinping urges stable partnership in talks with UK leaderThe two men toured the former revolutionary site at Yangjialing, the Yanan Revolutionary Memorial Hall, which is an important part of Beijing’s domestic ideology messaging but rarely visited by Western envoys.
The city was a safe haven for the Communist Party during the civil war, enabling forces led by Mao Zedong to recover before defeating the Kuomintang forces.
