Picturesque scenery in Baise’s Jiuzhou township. Photos provided to China Daily
 

Guangxi Huayin aluminia plant. Nearly half of the nation’s known bauxite is in Baise.

BAISE - This city in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region is noted as a place of history - from both a very long time ago and modern China.

Discovery of a Paleolithic Age hand ax in some 800,000 years ago in Baise in 1970s surprised anthropologists and rewrote the history of human civilization in Asia.

About 80 years ago, the Chinese Seventh Army was establishing a revolutionary base and Soviet regime in Baise along the Youjiang River

On Dec 11, 1929, Deng Xiaoping and other revolutionaries launched the Baise Uprising, among the earliest battles in the fight against the ruling Kuomintang.

A Baise Uprising Memorial Hall commemorating the event that opened in 1999 is now listed as a national key "revolution scenic spot".

The city has since pioneered "red tourism" to become a famed resort through a program called "footprints of Deng Xiaoping".

Baise now is the key city among the 12 national "red tourism" scenery areas.

In 2009, the city held events to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Baise Uprising and set off a new surge in red tourism, hosting 10.3 million visitors that year who generated 4.4 billion yuan in revenues in city tourism, increases of 59 percent and 46 percent respectively.

’Aluminum city’

More than half a century, after he led an uprising in the city, Deng Xiaoping was again crucial to Baise when he issued the 1986 instruction to "explore Pingguo aluminum". The modern city of Pingguo within Baise has since risen along the Youjiang River due to its bauxite reserves of 780 million tons, nearly half of the country’s total.

In addition to Pingguo Aluminum, major producers today in Baise include the companies of Yinhai, Longlin, Huayin and Xinfa. Together aluminum producers make more than 70 percent of industrial profits in the city.