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Zhongshan suits make comeback

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President Xi Jinping appeared at Saturday's state banquet hosted by the Dutch royal family in a formal traditional Chinese suit, which experts say displayed the leader's national pride and confidence in Chinese culture.

The eye-catching dark blue suit, slim-cut with a standing collar, is a simplified and redesigned "Zhongshan suit," or "Mao suit" - a typical formal garment for Chinese men.

Zhou Jiali, a diplomatic protocol expert from China Foreign Affairs University, said Xi's attire not only meets international diplomatic norms, but also manifests China's ethnic style.

"President Xi's outfit at the banquet is not strictly a Zhongshan suit, which normally has four pockets. Instead, it is a type of modified Chinese standing-collar outfit," Zhou said in an interview with a Chinese newspaper.

"The entire design goes with Chinese style, but some subtleties are tinged with a modern tailoring spirit. For example, a Western-style pocket square was designed at the left chest," she said.

"Foreigners will interpret the Zhongshan suit as a political symbol because it has typical Chinese connotations," said associate professor He Yang at the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology.

"It came out during a period when Western culture entered China in 1920. The Mao suit was a fusion of fashion and culture. It had an outline of a Western suit, but it had Chinese elements," said Liu Yuanfeng, dean of BIFT.