Snow wrote about how the Red Army, whose members were mostly poor peasants, trekked mountains, crossed rivers, survived on little food and dodged Kuomintang pursuits in the journey to reach Yan'an.
"That was a big impact to Western readers," said Wu Shulin, vice executive director of the Publishers Association of China. "The Red Army's resilience and ability to overcome hardships are admirable."
And the Communists won support from the masses who suffered in the Kuomintang regime.
The CPC introduced extremely popular policies in the Red zone: eliminating opium, child slavery, compulsory marriage, and promoting mass education.
Their honest, upright and down-to-earth behavior, compared to Kuomintang arrogance, arbitrariness and corruption, had a strong appeal.
The Red Army had a growing number of new recruits as it was billed "a poor man's army."
"Snow wrote about many soldiers enlisted for that simple reason," said Cao, the Peking University professor.
At the end of his book, Snow wrote that the Communist revolution would "eventually win."
Its triumph, according to Snow, will be "so mighty, so irresistible in its discharge of catabolic energy."
NEW LONG MARCH
Today's China is a world apart from Bao'an in the 1930s. Yet the CPC carries on its traditions. The Chinese leadership has called on fellow comrades to "remain true to our original aspiration," and to "never forget why you started, and you can accomplish your mission."
The mission has always been the same: seek happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation. But the Party has set a more concrete goal -- to build China into a great modern socialist country by the middle of the century.
On the road to the new goal, the CPC is leading a new Long March.
Until 2021, arduous efforts are particularly required to fight the battles against extreme poverty, financial risk and controlling pollution, the leaders said.
Meanwhile, a Long March to improve cadres' conduct has begun.
Over the past five years, large and long-running campaigns to rid the Party of corruption and undesirable conduct were launched, leading to broad improvement in the political ecosystem.
Scholars say this reflect efforts to return to the Party traditions that gave it popular support to win the great revolution.
"It's to Snow's credit that we see how the revolution grew from the start," Cao said. "It is in the simple code of conduct, the 'three rules of discipline and eight points for attention' that the CPC enforced from the very start that gives the Party its strength."
Snow died in Switzerland in 1972. As per his wishes, some of his ashes were buried at Peking University.
Inscribed on the tombstone are words in both Chinese and English, "Edgar Snow, American friend of the Chinese people."
