Xi: Ready for bloody battle, won't cede an inch of Chinese territory

BEIJING: Chinese president Xi Jinping raised his nationalistic pitch, saying on Tuesday China was ready to "fight the bloody battle" against its enemies. He was speaking at the end of the parliamentary session which confirmed his second term and laid the path for his perpetual rule.

"The Chinese people have been indomitable and persistent. We are resolved to fight the bloody battle against our enemies, and on the basis of independence we are determined to recapture the relics," he said in a nationally televised speech.

Xi did not identify enemies. But he said China would not cede a single inch of its territory.

Analysts are asking if Xi would be able to arouse nationalistic fervour with his strong rhetoric in the manner Mao Zedong, founder of Communist China, did. He is being widely compared to Mao because the Chinese parliament has removed the two-term limit + on the president, allowing Xi to rule as long as he wishes.

Kerry Brown, director of the Lau China Institute at King's College in London, believes that Mao had penetrated the inner lives of the Chinese people which is not happening in the case of Xi.

"There is not that level of personal, emotional engagement," Brown said at a lecture in Beijing while comparing Xi's charisma with Mao recently. Today's Chinese people are largely apathetic to political changes and more interested in material goods, he pointed out.

Speaking at the National People's Congress, the Chinese parliament, Xi did not identify enemies. "The Chinese people and the Chinese nation have a shared conviction which is not a single inch of our land will be and can be ceded from China," Xi said.

There are signs he said this in the context of Taiwan. But this view may be interpreted later to include areas like Arunachal Pradesh, which does not belong to China but Beijing insists that it does.

Xi said told 3,000 legislators that "since modern times, rejuvenation of the great Chinese nation has become the biggest dream of our nation".

"We have strong capabilities of taking our due place in the world. We have fought for that big dream for about 170 years. Today more than ever the Chinese people are close to that dream, ever more confident and capable of realising the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," he said.

Besides India, China has territorial disputes in the East China Sea with Japan and South China Sea with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.