Summary: The article argues that implementing the petitioning (信访) system is essential for the Chinese Communist Party's governance and social stability, emphasizing that responsibility for this work must be strictly enforced. It cites President Xi Jinping's directives that correcting political performance views (政绩观) is key to fulfilling the party's duty to the people, and that the responsibility system ensures "power comes with responsibility, and dereliction must be held accountable." The piece further elaborates on the need to integrate the responsibility system into the "five legalizations" of petitioning work—prevention, acceptance, handling, supervision, and order maintenance—to achieve rule-of-law-based governance. It highlights the role of leading cadres, joint meetings, differentiated assessments, and supervision to ensure the system's effective implementation and alignment with the "two upholds" (两个维护). No mention is made of the United States or U.S.-China relations.
Summary: The article, authored by a vice director of the Central Party School's Literature and History Teaching Department, outlines strategies for China's public cultural service system during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, emphasizing quality and efficiency improvements. It quotes Xi Jinping on prioritizing people's cultural needs and calls for shifting from supply-oriented to demand-driven services. Key measures include establishing mechanisms to channel quality cultural resources directly to grassroots levels, enhancing digital and AI-enabled platforms, and fostering social participation in service delivery. The system aims to support the goal of building a "culturally strong nation" by 2035 through coordinated, precise, and tech-driven approaches. No mention is made of the United States or U.S.-China relations.
Summary: During an inspection in Shanghai, Xi Jinping emphasized that Communist Party officials must adopt a correct view of performance by prioritizing the people's most urgent concerns and implementing lasting policies to improve their well-being. He called for close engagement with the public to identify genuine needs in areas like employment, education, healthcare, and housing, warning against detached decision-making and formalism. The article stresses that solving people's problems requires sustained effort over generations, citing long-term projects such as the Hongqi Canal and the "Three-North" Shelterbelt. It also criticizes officials who avoid responsibility or engage in superficial work, urging them to build practical skills and persist until the people are satisfied. Ultimately, it concludes that the greatest achievement for Communists is delivering tangible benefits that enhance the people's sense of gain, happiness, and security.
Summary: The article calls for implementing the Party’s policy on overseas Chinese under the guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. It urges rallying overseas Chinese and returned relatives to uphold patriotic traditions and contribute to national unity. The directive emphasizes leveraging their unique strengths to advance the cause of peaceful reunification. It also aims to unite Chinese people at home and abroad for the comprehensive promotion of Chinese modernization. Ultimately, the goal is to gather strength for building a strong nation and achieving national rejuvenation.
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Summary: President Xi Jinping emphasized that smart manufacturing should be the main direction for driving industrial technological change and optimizing industrial upgrades, in order to fundamentally transform manufacturing models and enterprise forms. The article reports that China has made significant progress, building over 35,000 basic-level smart factories and achieving global leadership in industrial robot installations and industrial internet device connections. It identifies structural weaknesses such as insufficient domestic control over high-end industrial software and precision equipment, as well as a digital divide between large and small enterprises. The piece outlines future trends including AI deep empowerment across supply chains, multi-dimensional integration of industrial models, and rising requirements for security, trustworthiness, and green manufacturing. The author, director of the NDRC's Institute of Industrial Economics and Technological Economics, calls for systematic policies to enhance self-reliance in key technologies and optimize the industrial ecosystem.
Summary: The article discusses China's strategy to integrate artificial intelligence with consumption, responding to a shift from survival-oriented to quality-oriented consumer demand. It references a June 2026 policy document issued by the Ministry of Commerce and seven other departments, outlining 17 measures across five areas to promote "AI + consumption." It argues that AI can reshape goods, services, and commerce while addressing structural imbalances in the consumer market. The article also notes that major developed countries, including the United States in the global competitive context, are accelerating AI consumer applications, and that China's market scale gives it unique advantages. It concludes by calling for a governance system balancing innovation, standards, and data security.
Summary: The article outlines China's strategy to enhance its public cultural service system under the "15th Five-Year Plan," emphasizing efficiency, precision, and digital empowerment to meet rising public cultural demands. It cites President Xi Jinping's directive to align cultural construction with the people’s diverse needs and to improve service quality and accessibility. The piece stresses mechanisms for resource allocation, grassroots outreach, and performance evaluation, including a "cultural commissioner" system. It also advocates for coordinated development across regions and sectors, with specific measures for digital platforms and data sharing. No mention is made of the United States or U.S.-China relations.
Summary: President Xi Jinping emphasized that "one case is worth more than a dozen documents," highlighting the unique value of judicial cases in legal practice. The article discusses the construction of the People's Courts Case Database, launched in February 2024, which aims to unify adjudication standards and compensate for the limitations of statutory law by integrating guiding cases and high-quality references. It notes that 279 guiding cases have been issued across 49 batches, but the database still faces issues with update efficiency and coverage gaps in emerging fields like digital economy and green development. Recommendations include optimizing case selection and release mechanisms, strengthening the database's role in guiding court decisions, enhancing legal education for the public, leveraging AI for smarter retrieval, and improving judicial personnel training.
Summary: The article details China's commitment to human rights treaty reporting and review, emphasizing the constitutional principle of respecting and protecting human rights through domestic law and international engagement. It highlights statements by Chinese representatives at the UN in 2008 and 2010, who stressed fulfilling treaty obligations and viewing reporting as an opportunity to improve human rights work. The piece notes institutional progress, including coordinated drafting of reports by multiple departments and social organizations, and cites the 2023 *Barrier-Free Environment Construction Law* as an example of domestic implementation of treaty body recommendations. It calls for enhanced capacity in implementing treaty obligations, participating in norm-setting, and converting review findings into domestic policy improvements. No mention is made of the United States or U.S.-China relations.
Summary: The article analyzes the rapid expansion of AI-assisted diagnostics and treatment ("AI诊疗") in China's healthcare system, highlighting benefits alongside risks such as unclear liability, algorithmic opacity, data security, and regulatory gaps. It notes that current legal frameworks, including the 2017 AI diagnostic management rules and 2025 multi-ministry implementation opinions, define AI strictly as a doctor's assistant, not a replacement. The piece advocates for clearer legal accountability, mandatory algorithm transparency and patient consent, stricter oversight of AI-generated online prescriptions, and enhanced protection of sensitive health data under existing laws like the Personal Information Protection Law. Specific 2025 regulations from the National Medical Products Administration (March) and the Cyberspace Administration with four other departments (April) are cited as addressing AI in drug regulation and interactive services, but the analysis concludes that specialized rules remain insufficient for rapid technological change. No mention is made of the United States or U.S.-China relations.
Summary: The article reports on Huadian Fujian Company’s implementation of a "Five Hearts" project to reform industrial worker队伍建设, following President Xi Jinping’s directive to build a skilled, innovative workforce. The company’s Party deputy secretary and union chair details measures in ideological guidance, skills training, innovation platforms, incentive mechanisms, and worker welfare. Results include over 200 provincial-level awards, 127工匠 and 66 technical experts cultivated, and sustained safety records. No mention is made of the United States or U.S.-China relations.
Summary: The article highlights how Huaxin Shanxi, a new energy subsidiary of China Huadian Group, strengthens grassroots Party building by integrating it with production and management. It introduces the “逢三说事” (Talk on Matters on the 3rd, 13th, and 23rd) mechanism, designed to address the challenges of scattered field stations and diverse frontline worker demands. The mechanism establishes fixed monthly days for collecting worker issues, Party branch feedback, and leadership reception, creating a closed-loop system for resolving problems. Through this approach, the company has implemented over 40 practical measures—such as transport subsidies, dormitory upgrades, and skills training—and collected dozens of worker suggestions to improve operations. The article presents this as a model for new-energy SOEs to enhance governance, worker satisfaction, and enterprise performance.
Summary: The article details how Southern Power Grid's Shanwei Power Supply Bureau, located in a historic revolutionary base, integrates red culture into corporate governance to drive high-quality development. It outlines a nine-character method for immersive red education, including activities like tracing revolutionary paths and storytelling, to internalize party ideology. The bureau also builds a "red cultural brand" through education bases, model party branches, and a 50-person propaganda team. It applies revolutionary spirit to business goals, such as grid construction, rural revitalization via the "Hundreds and Thousands" project, and efficiency gains through AI and big data, with a "four-division" loss-reduction model exported to Egypt. The piece emphasizes converting political and organizational advantages into competitive strengths, asserting that state-owned enterprises in old revolutionary areas must leverage red resources for modernization.
Summary: The article discusses the rise of "amateur writers" in China's new media era, who write about ordinary people's lives without professional credentials or literary gatekeeping. It argues that this grassroots literature creates a new space by answering fundamental questions about who writes, for whom, and why, using everyday language to connect with mass experience. The author places this trend in the context of modern Chinese literature's mission to reach and uplift the public, from Liang Qichao to Lu Xun to Mao Zedong's Yan'an Talks. While acknowledging that pure literature has drifted from everyday reality, the piece contends that amateur writing reconnects literature with ordinary people's emotions and lives. Ultimately, it suggests this kind of writing—rooted in common joys and sorrows—represents a vital future direction for Chinese literature.
Summary: The article profiles Dr. Wu Lien-teh (Wu Liande), a Cambridge-educated Chinese medical pioneer who famously eradicated the pneumonic plague epidemic in northeast China in 1910–1911. It highlights his invention of the "Wu mask," advocacy for separate serving chopsticks and rotating dining tables, and his founding of the Chinese Medical Association and Beijing Central Hospital. The piece also notes his 16-year collaboration on a definitive history of Chinese medicine, correcting Western misconceptions. No current political figures or U.S.-China relations are discussed.
Summary: The article emphasizes that the petitioning system is a key institutional arrangement for the Party to govern for and依靠 the people, with responsibility implementation being crucial for social stability. It highlights General Secretary Xi Jinping's directives on upholding the correct view of political performance, integrating petition work into the Party's mass line and legal framework. The piece details the "five legalizations" (prevention, acceptance, handling, supervision and accountability, and order maintenance) to ensure every petition is processed lawfully. It calls for multi-pronged measures, including the joint conference mechanism, leadership responsibility, differentiated assessments, and supervision, to fully implement the responsibility system. No mention is made of the United States or U.S.-China relations.
Summary: The article profiles academician Ji Jiafu, a leading Chinese expert in gastric cancer, detailing China's significant progress in establishing international treatment standards through domestic research like the RESOLVE study and the development of novel immunotherapies. It highlights China's shift from following global guidelines to producing original evidence, with Ji having served as president of the International Gastric Cancer Association. The piece outlines a proposed new international standard integrating prevention, molecular typing, surgical quality control, and stratified treatment, aiming to address disparities among East Asian countries. China's strategy focuses on disseminating its approach through multinational trials, training networks, and global governance platforms, without any reference to the United States or bilateral relations.
Summary: The article argues photonics is becoming a strategic infrastructure for AI, as traditional electronic computing faces bandwidth, latency, and power bottlenecks. It highlights global efforts, with the U.S. (led by Intel, MIT, and Nvidia’s investments in photonic companies) and the EU prioritizing photonic integration. Chinese scientists Qian Xuesen and Wang Zhijiang are cited for early insights on optical computing’s potential. The piece advocates for photonic-electronic co-integration to overcome“-IO,”memory access, and power walls” in GPU clusters. It calls for completing the industrial chain from photonic chips to software ecosystems to enable next-generation computing.
Summary: The article analyzes the need for modernizing China's labor governance in response to a workforce of over 400 million workers, whose average age is 38.3 years and whose composition is shifting toward higher education and digital skills. It highlights that digital technology and platform-based employment have created over 840 million new-form workers and 200 million flexible workers, challenging traditional labor relations frameworks. Workers’ rising demands for career development, rights protection, and participation require governance to extend beyond basic protections to comprehensive support. The article calls for reforms in stratified rights protections, social security expansion, skills training, and preemptive dispute resolution. It emphasizes building a governance community that shifts from managing workers to relying on collective worker participation, involving government, enterprises, and unions.
Summary: The article argues that protecting China's traditional villages is both a cultural preservation imperative and a systemic governance challenge, requiring integration into grassroots rural governance frameworks. It details achievements, including 8,155 villages listed for national protection by end-2024, with institutional frameworks and public-space revitalization underway. Persistent challenges include cross-departmental coordination gaps, weak incentives, and declining long-term maintenance efforts. Recommended solutions involve unified planning oversight, lifecycle management, small-scale renovation approaches, and diversified participation via village councils, native乡贤 (local elites), and customary norms. No U.S. or U.S.-China relations topics are discussed in the article.
Summary: Chinese President Xi Jinping, speaking at the first meeting of the 20th Central Financial and Economic Affairs Committee, redefined the demographic dividend to emphasize population quality, economic policies, and supporting measures over mere size and structure. The article argues that shifting toward a “comprehensive demographic dividend” — through improved education, health, and skills — is essential to offset shrinking labor numbers, foster new quality productive forces, and sustain high-quality development. It identifies key challenges, including inadequate human capital, labor market segmentation, and insufficient policy coordination, particularly amid aging and industrial transformation. To address these, the piece calls for “investment in people” via education reform, lifelong training, health system upgrades, and unified labor markets. The author, a researcher at the China Population and Development Research Center, stresses the need for a multi-pillar pension system and silver economy initiatives to unlock the potential of all age groups.
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By: 中央社会工作部副部长、国家信访局局长 李文章
The petition system (信访制度) is an important institutional arrangement for our Party to govern for the people and rely on the people in governance. Implementing the petition system and doing a good job of petition work concerns the vital interests of the people and concerns the overall harmony and stability of society; the key lies in the implementation of responsibility. Since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has persisted in taking the implementation of the petition work responsibility system as an important lever for strengthening and improving people's petition work, formulated and issued the Regulations on Petition Work (《信访工作条例》) and the Implementation Measures for the Petition Work Responsibility System (《信访工作责任制实施办法》), actively promoted the construction of a petition work responsibility system of "those who have power must bear responsibility, power and responsibility are consistent, those who have responsibility must be accountable, and those who lose responsibility must be held accountable," continuously tightened and consolidated the petition work responsibility of all regions and departments, and provided a strong institutional guarantee for promoting the high-quality development of petition work on the new journey of the new era.
Implementing the petition work responsibility system is an inevitable requirement for establishing and practicing a correct view on political performance.
The issue of views on political performance is a fundamental issue, concerning governance for the public and exercising power for the people. Petition work, as an important component of the Party's mass work, is an important task for the Party and government to understand public sentiment, pool public wisdom, safeguard public interests, and build public support, reflecting the high unity of the Party spirit stance and the people's stance. Implementing the petition work responsibility system is a concrete practice in the petition field of the correct view of political performance of "producing political achievements for the people, producing political achievements through solid work." Its essential requirement is to proceed from the political nature and people-centered nature of petition work, adhere to the overall leadership of the Party, adhere to a people-centered approach, resolve problems and conflicts in accordance with the law in a timely manner at the grassroots level, and effectively transform the political requirement of "governance for the public and exercising power for the people" into concrete actions of "solving problems for the people, sharing concerns for the Party."
Implementing the petition work responsibility system is the proper meaning of forging political loyalty and practicing the "two upholds" (两个维护). General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that what plays a decisive role in establishing and practicing a correct view of political performance is Party spirit. Whether Party spirit is pure ultimately depends on whether the political stance is high, whether political responsibility is strong, and whether political responsibility is firmly shouldered. The Regulations on Petition Work clearly defines the important duties and missions of petition work in serving the overall work of the Party and the state, safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of the masses, resolving prominent petition issues, and promoting social harmony and stability, fully indicating that petition work is by no means just ordinary business work, but is an important political work that concerns popular support and tests whether the view of political performance is correct. If the responsibility for petition work is not pressed firmly and implemented meticulously, if there is shirking and perfunctory handling of the reasonable demands of the masses, it not only damages the vital interests of the masses, but also damages the Party's image and credibility in the hearts of the masses, and may even affect the mass foundation for the Party's long-term governance. This requires us to raise our political stance, strengthen our political responsibility, deeply understand the extreme importance of implementing the petition work responsibility system, adhere to the principle of "Party-government shared responsibility, dual responsibility for one post, territorial management and tiered responsibility, whoever is in charge is responsible," ensure that the decisions and deployments of the Party Central Committee on petition work are implemented without deviation, and use concrete actions and solid results to profoundly comprehend the decisive significance of the "two establishments" (两个确立) and resolutely achieve the "two upholds".
Implementing the petition work responsibility system is a core measure for adhering to the original aspiration of serving the people and being committed to benefiting the people. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized that Communists must remember that benefiting the people is the greatest political achievement, and should take how many good and practical things have been done for the people as an important standard for testing political performance. As early as when working in Fujian, General Secretary Xi Jinping clearly pointed out that the primary meaning of petition work is to always regard oneself as a member of the people and to keep one's heart close to the people. Petition work connects Party committees and governments on one side and the people on the other, is the most realistic and direct mass work, and is a "bridge of hearts" between the Party and government and the people. Solving problems for the people and sharing concerns for the Party is the indisputable political responsibility of petition work. Implementing the petition work responsibility system, fundamentally speaking, is to transform the mission and sentiment of "keeping the heart close to the people" into an institutional arrangement with clear powers and responsibilities, standardized operation, and strong supervision, and to transform the purpose consciousness of serving the people into practical results and effectiveness in solving the people's urgent, difficult, and anxious problems. History and practice have proven that the more solidly the petition work responsibility is pressed, the more thorough the resolution of the masses' demands; the tighter the chain of responsibility, the more solid the effectiveness of serving the people. This requires us to always firmly stand with the people, take whether the masses are satisfied, happy, and agreeable as the fundamental standard for testing work, promote problem-solving through responsibility implementation, win the trust of the masses through problem-solving, truly do the work to the hearts of the masses, practice the original aspiration and mission in solving problems for the people, and demonstrate responsibility and commitment in sharing concerns for the Party.
Implementing the petition work responsibility system is an important way to prevent and resolve conflicts and risks and maintain social harmony and stability. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that security is the prerequisite for development, and development is the guarantee of security; without security and stability, nothing can be discussed. Petition work is at the forefront of connecting with the masses and the front line of resolving conflicts, serving as a "warning device" for sensing social risks and a "pressure relief valve" for resolving social conflicts, playing an irreplaceable and important role in preventing and resolving conflicts and risks and maintaining social harmony and stability. The letters and visits of the people reflect interest demands, reflect governance levels, and test responsibility and commitment. Promoting the implementation of petition work responsibility is to transform the Party's political advantages, organizational advantages, and advantages in close ties with the masses into governance effectiveness in solving people's worries, resolving conflicts, preventing risks, and maintaining stability, striving to resolve disputes and conflicts at the grassroots level and in the bud, preventing small problems from becoming big problems, preventing general problems from evolving into prominent petition issues, and achieving "small matters do not leave the village, big matters do not leave the town, conflicts are not handed upward." This requires us to coordinate development and security, conscientiously fulfill the important responsibility of petition departments in maintaining political security and social stability, promote petition work to better integrate into the overall social governance, put the responsibility system throughout the entire process of source resolution, diversified resolution, and orderly resolution of conflicts, eliminate potential risks through responsibility implementation, build a solid safety barrier, and consolidate a stable foundation for high-quality economic and social development.
Unswervingly implement the petition work responsibility system throughout the entire process and all aspects of the rule-of-law-based petition work.
Promoting the rule-of-law-based petition work is a major reform task deployed by the Third and Fourth Plenary Sessions of the 20th Central Committee of the Party, an important measure for fully implementing the Regulations on Petition Work, and a common responsibility of all levels and departments. To achieve the goal of "every demand of the masses is handled by someone and handled according to law," the key is to put the responsibility system throughout the work of the "five rule-of-law-based approaches" (五个法治化): prevention, acceptance, handling, supervision and accountability, and maintaining order, truly achieving clear powers and responsibilities, standardized procedures, strong accountability, ensuring clear powers and responsibilities, clear baseline data, handling according to law, good order, and public satisfaction.
Focus on the rule-of-law-based prevention, and consolidate the territorial grassroots source governance responsibility. Grassroots are the source of petitions and also the key to solving petition problems. Most petition problems arise at the grassroots level. Implementing source governance responsibility and resolving conflicts at the source has the lowest cost, least risk, and best effect. Promoting the rule-of-law-based prevention is to strictly implement the territorial management responsibility and industry competent department responsibility of Party committees and governments at all levels and functional departments, through institutionalized and mechanized methods, maximize the prevention and reduction of conflicts from the source, and resolve disputes and conflicts that may lead to petition problems at the grassroots level and in the bud. To implement this goal, all regions and departments must adhere to decision-making and handling in accordance with the law, strictly implement the social stability risk assessment mechanism for major decisions, strengthen asking the people for needs, asking the people for advice, and asking the people for effectiveness, ensure that all work conforms to the law, conforms to laws, and conforms to reality, effectively preventing and reducing policy-based and group-based problems. We must adhere to and develop the "Fengqiao Experience" (枫桥经验) in the new era, build a normalized and long-term mechanism for investigation and resolution of disputes and conflicts, coordinate the role of grassroots comprehensive management centers and petition reception centers, timely and properly resolve the people's urgent, difficult, and anxious problems and budding and tendency issues, effectively discover conflicts early and resolve them small, strictly prevent accumulation, transformation, overflow, and escalation.
Focus on the rule-of-law-based acceptance, and consolidate the petition department's procedural advancement responsibility. Acceptance is the "first kilometer" of handling petition matters, a key link for clarifying the entity responsible for handling and determining the processing channels and procedures. Promoting the rule-of-law-based acceptance is to strictly implement the petition department's procedural advancement responsibility, achieve the separation of nature, clear jurisdiction, transfer and supervision in place, ensure that petition matters can be followed through the rule-of-law-based "roadmap" to completion, and guarantee substantive resolution through procedural advancement. To implement this goal, petition departments at all levels must comprehensively and accurately register and accept petition matters, carefully distinguish the demands of the masses' letters and visits, implement the requirements of "three non-acceptance" and "two no longer acceptance," achieve precise diversion and precise transfer. They must strictly implement the first-reception first-handling responsibility, whoever first handles follows up, and for difficult and complex petition problems and those where functional departments fail to handle properly, tackle them toughly and follow through to the end, track and supervise the resolution work, and push petition matters to operate in an orderly manner according to law. They must strictly standardize the issuance of notification documents, let the masses clearly understand through which channels their demands are processed, based on which legal provisions, and according to what procedures, ensure that the masses have a document in hand and an expectation in mind when petitioning, and consciously follow legal procedures and the "roadmap" to petition according to law.
Focus on the rule-of-law-based handling, and consolidate the functional department's substantive resolution responsibility. The effectiveness of petition work ultimately depends on the actual effect of resolving the reasonable and lawful demands of the masses. Promoting substantive resolution of problems, the key lies in the functional departments performing their duties according to law. Promoting the rule-of-law-based handling is to further urge functional departments to strictly handle petition matters within their responsibilities according to legal procedures and time limits. To implement this goal, the organs and units that have the authority to handle must adhere to the priority of mediation, actively build diversified mediation and resolution mechanisms, comprehensively use various means such as people's mediation, administrative mediation, and judicial mediation, guide petitioners to resolve disputes and conflicts through mediation and conciliation negotiations. They must adhere to classification and handling according to law, strictly follow the six types of classification and handling methods specified in the Regulations on Petition Work, accurately distinguish different situations, introduce corresponding procedures for handling according to law, and protect the legitimate rights and interests of the masses. They must adhere to substantive resolution, comprehensively use legal, policy, economic, administrative, and other means, as well as education, mediation, guidance, and other methods, properly resolve the reasonable and lawful interest demands of the masses, ensure substantive resolution in place through procedural standardization, truly achieve "case closed, matter settled, people reconciled," and withstand the test of law, history, and the masses.
Focus on the rule-of-law-based supervision and accountability, and consolidate the supervision department's precise effectiveness-seeking responsibility. Effective supervision and precise accountability are important guarantees for promoting the implementation of petition work responsibility. Party committees and governments at all levels, the joint meeting for petition work, petition departments, and functional departments all have supervisory responsibilities. The Regulations on Petition Work has made comprehensive and systematic institutional arrangements around "who supervises, how to supervise, who is held accountable, and what is held accountable." The Regulations on Disciplinary Measures of the Communist Party of China added Article 135, which specifically provides for disciplinary measures for failing to perform or improperly performing petition work duties. Promoting the rule-of-law-based supervision and accountability is to strictly implement relevant institutional regulations, and handle violations of discipline and law and dereliction of duty in the petition field according to regulations, discipline, and law. To implement this goal, we must give play to the supervisory role of petition departments and discipline inspection and supervision departments, increase the evaluation and inspection of the standardization of petition work, promptly discover and rectify prominent problems such as "those that should be accepted but are not accepted, those that should be handled but are not handled, those that should be held accountable but are not held accountable, those that should be investigated but are not investigated," and conscientiously perform the duty to propose suggestions for improving work, improving policies, and pursuing accountability. We must focus on forming work synergies, promote the two-way connection between petition supervision and mechanisms such as discipline inspection and supervision, inspection tours, and cadre supervision, and promptly transfer leads on issues where the performance of petition work duties is inadequate and there are serious problems. We must strengthen the application of supervision results, promptly notify and expose typical and universal problems found in petition work, play a warning and deterrent role, and force work implementation in place through accountability implementation in place.
Focus on the rule-of-law-based maintenance of order, and consolidate the political and legal organs' responsibility for handling according to law. The Regulations on Petition Work not only stipulates the procedures and requirements for various organs and units to handle petition issues according to regulations and law, but also clarifies the rights and obligations of petitioners to express demands through legal channels and procedures. Promoting the rule-of-law-based maintenance of order is to adhere to the principle of unity of rights and obligations, strengthen the "two-way standardization" of petition work behavior and mass petition behavior, handle illegal acts according to law, and effectively maintain good petition order. To implement this goal, we must strictly implement the measures for further standardizing the registration of mass visits, strengthen legal education and publicity for the masses, do a good job of path guidance, legal explanation and reasoning, hardship relief, and other work according to law, guide the masses to visit in an orderly manner according to law and civilization; we must standardize petition work behavior according to law, guide all regions to focus their main energy on solving the masses' interest demands, resolutely correct acts of blocking and intercepting the masses' normal visits, and effectively protect the masses' right to petition; we must severely crack down on illegal acts in petition activities, have political and legal organs handle illegal acts such as causing trouble and disturbing order, persistent petitioners and petitioners making trouble according to law, establish a clear orientation of petition according to law and rights protection according to law, and form a good atmosphere in the whole society where affairs are handled according to law, laws are turned to when encountering problems, problems are solved by law, and conflicts are resolved by law.
Take multiple measures to promote the implementation of the petition work responsibility system.
General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized that the vitality of the system lies in its execution. To promote the implementation of the petition work responsibility system, we must make great efforts to establish systems and set rules, and even more so, make great efforts to implement and execute. We must use important levers such as the joint meeting for petition work, consolidating the responsibility of leading cadres, and assessment and supervision to ensure that the advantages of the petition system are effectively transformed into social governance effectiveness.
Use the joint meeting mechanism to promote implementation. The joint meeting mechanism for petition work is an important lever for strengthening the Party's leadership over petition work. Currently, this mechanism has achieved full coverage at the provincial, municipal, county, and township levels. Further improve and perfect the joint meeting mechanism for petition work, strengthen institutional construction, improve procedural rules, standardize operating procedures, promote the substantive operation of joint meetings at all levels, ensure normal operation and efficient performance of duties. Further strengthen the responsibility of member units to "grasp the system and grasp the system," jointly tackle and resolve difficult and complex problems, promote the optimization of policy supply, and solve mass-related petition problems in batches at the policy level. Joint meetings for petition work at all levels and the joint meeting offices must effectively perform the duties of overall coordination, overall promotion, and supervision and implementation, further improve supporting mechanisms such as information analysis, matter assignment, and follow-up supervision, connect the entire chain of source prevention, coordinated handling, and resolution of conflicts, form a work closed loop, and promote the improvement of the petition work pattern of unified leadership of Party committees, government organization and implementation, coordination by the joint meeting for petition work, overall guidance by social work departments, promotion by petition departments, and joint management by all parties.
Strengthen the responsibility of leading cadres to promote implementation. The Regulations on Petition Work clearly stipulates the principle of "Party-government shared responsibility, dual responsibility for one post." Leading cadres at all levels must effectively perform the responsibilities for petition work, regularly study petition work, regularly read and handle letters and online petitions from the masses, receive mass visits, and settle the prominent issues strongly reflected by the masses by taking responsibility for individual cases, not only responsible for the specific business work of their posts, but also responsible for the petition work tasks that should be undertaken for their posts. Leading cadres receiving visits and going down to the grassroots is an important institutional arrangement personally advocated, promoted, and demonstrated by General Secretary Xi Jinping. Leading cadres at all levels must firmly stand with the people, consciously promote the fine style of "going to the grassroots four times" (四下基层), take the lead in receiving visits, going down to the grassroots, and handling cases, resolutely oppose formalist problems such as fake reception visits and paper reception visits, go deep into the grassroots front line to connect with the masses, promptly discover and solve practical difficulties in the production and life of the masses. Petition departments at all levels must smooth and standardize channels for the expression of mass demands and the protection of rights and interests, strengthen random inspections of leading cadres' reception visits and case handling, promote the normalization and institutionalization of leading cadres' reception visits and case handling, effectively solve problems at the first time and the first location, and effectively safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the masses.
Optimize differentiated assessment to promote implementation. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized the improvement of the differentiated assessment evaluation system to enhance the targeted nature and scientific nature of assessment. Petition work assessment is a "weather vane" for strengthening and improving petition work and improving overall quality and efficiency. In recent years, the National Public Complaints and Proposals Administration has focused on the theme of rule-of-law-based petition work and continuously promoted differentiated assessment of petition work, achieving positive results. Petition departments at all levels must deepen reform according to the requirements of rule of law, further optimize the setting of assessment indicators, take correcting the problems of "those that should be accepted but are not accepted, those that should be handled but are not handled, those that should be held accountable but are not held accountable, those that should be investigated but are not investigated" as the main measurement indicators, carry out differentiated and multi-dimensional assessment, promote all regions and departments to further focus their main energy on solving mass petition problems according to law and safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of the masses according to law, and continuously improve the level of rule-of-law-based petition work.
Strengthen supervision and inspection to promote implementation. Supervision and inspection are important means for promoting the implementation of petition system reform measures and solving prominent petition problems. Petition departments at all levels must adhere to and improve effective mechanisms and methods formed in recent years, such as focused research, regional scheduling, and on-site inspections, strengthen problem orientation, go deep into the grassroots front line, and continuously improve the quality and efficiency of supervision and inspection work. Firmly grasp this work focus of supervision and inspection, take standardizing the handling of petition matters and effectively protecting the rights and interests of the masses as the focal point, strengthen supervision and inspection of key and difficult issues, and drive improvement of the overall level through breakthroughs in key areas. Pay attention to improving supervision methods, use measures such as listed supervision, interviews, and notifications, closely monitor problems found in supervision and follow through to the end, ensure that every case has an outcome and every matter has a reply, truly use supervision and inspection to promote the implementation of petition work responsibility and the landing of the system.
Return to TopBy: 李媛媛
The public cultural service system is an important carrier for safeguarding the people's cultural rights and interests, improving cultural livelihood, and raising the level of social civilization, and is also a key support for the construction of a cultural power. The Outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan has made strategic arrangements for "improving the public cultural service system" and "letting the people enjoy a higher-quality cultural life," marking that the construction of China's public cultural service system has entered a new development stage of "improving quality and increasing efficiency." Facing the 15th Five-Year Plan period, anchored to the strategic goal of completing the construction of a cultural power by 2035, it is urgent to strengthen collaborative innovation, adhere to precise supply, advance digital-intelligent empowerment, and promote the high-quality development of public cultural services, laying a solid foundation for the construction of a strong country and the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
Strengthen effectiveness-oriented thinking and implement the action to improve the quality and increase the efficiency of public cultural services
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out, "We must always adhere to keeping cultural construction focused on people and resting on people. Focus on meeting the people's diverse, multi-level, and multi-faceted spiritual and cultural needs, improve the supply capacity of cultural services and cultural products, and enhance the people's sense of cultural gain and happiness." The ultimate purpose of public cultural services is to meet the people's ever-growing spiritual and cultural needs and safeguard the people's cultural rights and interests. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, China's public cultural service system has been continuously improved, the level of public cultural services has been gradually raised, and a modern public cultural service system that covers urban and rural areas, is convenient and efficient, guarantees basic needs, and promotes fairness has been basically established. At the same time, the people's demand for realizing cultural rights and improving the quality of spiritual and cultural life is getting higher and higher, and the focus of public cultural service system construction is transforming from "wide coverage and basic guarantees" to "high quality and high efficiency." The Proposal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China for Formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development (《中共中央关于制定国民经济和社会发展第十五个五年规划的建议》), adopted at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, states: "Adhere to benefiting the people through culture and implement the action to improve the quality and increase the efficiency of public cultural services." This requires shifting the focus of work to optimizing service supply and improving service experience, earnestly giving play to the function of public cultural services in nourishing people, cultivating people, and guiding people, and enriching the people's spiritual world and strengthening the people's spiritual strength through high-quality cultural products and services.
Adhere to the people-centered work orientation. The "strength" of a cultural power must ultimately be reflected in the people's ideological realm, mental state, and cultural cultivation. Adhering to the people-centered approach requires taking the enhancement of the people's sense of cultural gain as the starting point and the ultimate goal, promoting the shift of the concept and path of public cultural services from "supply orientation" to "demand orientation," improving the quality of cultural services and the supply capacity of cultural products, and enabling the people to obtain a fuller, higher-quality, and more convenient cultural life.
Establish a mechanism for high-quality cultural resources to directly reach the grassroots. Cultural construction is rooted in the grassroots, which requires lowering the center of gravity, sinking services to the grassroots, and continuously improving the quality of grassroots cultural service supply. For example, through the Digital Library Promotion Project (数字图书馆推广工程) and the Cultural Sharing Project (文化共享工程), high-quality cultural resources at the national level can quickly reach the grassroots; encourage provinces, cities, and counties to build cultural resource databases and comprehensive cultural service terminal platforms, integrate grassroots public cultural resources scattered across different departments, and enable grassroots units to allocate resources with one-click ordering, forming an efficient demand-response mechanism; improve the talent delivery mechanism, implement the "cultural special commissioner" (文化特派员) system, under which Party committee propaganda departments, together with government organs, universities, and other units, select and dispatch personnel to guide townships (subdistricts) in carrying out propaganda, ideological, and cultural work, forming a long-term mechanism for cultural talent to sink to the grassroots.
Improve the effectiveness evaluation mechanism for public cultural services. In the field of public cultural services, there has long been a situation of emphasizing input over output, emphasizing construction over operation, and emphasizing the short term over the long term. The key to solving these problems lies in optimizing the assessment and evaluation system and fully giving play to the guiding function of effectiveness evaluation. This requires further establishing and improving a scientific and standardized evaluation standard system, dynamic monitoring, and performance evaluation mechanisms, taking facility utilization rate, fiscal expenditure performance, and the people's participation and satisfaction as important standards. At the same time, improve the evaluation and restraint mechanism jointly participated in by the government, the recipients of public cultural services, and third parties, incorporate routine evaluation into the government's assessment indicators for public cultural services, link assessment results with fund allocation, project arrangement, and so on, and intensify rewards for excellence.
Adhere to coordinated development and advance the optimal allocation of cultural resources through systematic construction in an overall manner
Improving the public cultural service system is a systematic project, the core of which lies in properly handling the relationship between balanced development and efficiency improvement. Through systematic construction, promote vertical through-connection and horizontal coordination, improve the efficiency of resource allocation, form a smoother mechanism for the cross-regional and cross-departmental flow of cultural resource factors, and increase the coverage and practical effectiveness of public cultural services.
Improve the coordination mechanism for public cultural service system construction. At present, public cultural service resources are scattered across different departments such as culture and tourism, radio and television, sports, and industry and information technology, and problems such as fragmentation along vertical and horizontal lines, duplicate construction, and poor policy linkage still exist, making it difficult to give play to overall benefits. It is urgent to deepen the reform of cultural systems and mechanisms, expand the operational scope, concepts, and methods of public cultural services with the "grand culture" (大文化) framework, strengthen overall coordination and unified planning, promote the integrated development of public cultural services with people-benefiting projects in the fields of culture and tourism, education, agriculture, health, science popularization, civil affairs, and other fields, and form an overall governance pattern featuring horizontal linkage among departments, cross-border integration, multi-subject coordination, and complementary functions.
Promote balanced and coordinated development among regions. Focus on solving the imbalance of public cultural services between urban and rural areas, among regions, and among groups. On the one hand, deepen standardization construction and promote the equalization of basic public cultural services by clarifying investment mechanisms, hardware requirements, technical indicators, and service standards. On the basis of ensuring the implementation of national basic public service standards in place, encourage all provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities to formulate implementation standards for basic public cultural services in their administrative regions in light of local actual needs, fiscal capacity, and cultural characteristics. On the other hand, through central and provincial fiscal transfer payments, focus support on old revolutionary base areas, ethnic minority regions, border areas, areas that have shaken off poverty, and rural grassroots units in carrying out public cultural services, while encouraging and supporting economically developed regions to provide paired assistance to these areas.
Promote the integrated construction of urban and rural public cultural service systems. China has built a six-level public cultural service network covering the national, provincial, municipal, county, township, village, and urban community levels. On this basis, promote the full integration of public cultural services into the overall urban construction plan and the rural revitalization strategy. For example, popularize the central-branch system for libraries and cultural centers, rely on the resources of provincial- and municipal-level centers or district-level centers, set up township, subdistrict, and community branch centers and grassroots service points such as farmhouse bookstores (农家书屋), and realize resource sharing; innovate service scenarios, deeply explore local characteristic cultural resources, rely on city study rooms, community cultural stations, cultural corridors, and other forms to develop new types of public cultural spaces, and promote the integration of the business forms of urban and rural public cultural spaces.
Adhere to precise supply and form a public cultural service mechanism of joint construction and shared benefit
At present, the people's cultural needs present the characteristics of diversification and dispersion. This requires providing cultural products and services in a targeted manner according to the differentiated demands of people in different regions, generations, and circles for spiritual and cultural life, and forming an open, diverse, well-developed, and vibrant public cultural service supply system. Keep the feedback channels for the people's cultural needs unblocked, adopt "order-based," "menu-based," and "appointment-based" service methods, form a routine mechanism for collecting the people's cultural needs, and improve the precision of public cultural services. Guide cultural resources to tilt toward special groups, and provide adaptive public cultural services according to the characteristics and needs of groups such as minors, the elderly, persons with disabilities, the floating population, and left-behind children.
Improve the mechanism for social forces to participate in public cultural services. The Public Cultural Service Guarantee Law of the People's Republic of China (《中华人民共和国公共文化服务保障法》) clearly stipulates: "The state encourages and supports citizens, legal persons, and other organizations in lawfully establishing social organizations in the field of public cultural services and promotes the socialized and specialized development of public cultural services." First, increase the intensity of government purchase of public cultural services from social forces, build a platform for matching supply and demand in the purchase of public cultural services, improve the institutional system for government purchase of services, and attract capable social organizations and enterprises to participate in services through entrustment, bidding, and other methods. Second, encourage and support enterprises, social organizations, and other social forces to participate in public cultural services through donations, investment, project sponsorship, establishment of public cultural service development funds, and other means. Third, explore socialized construction and management models, advance pilot reforms of separating the ownership and use rights of public cultural facilities by level and by category, and encourage social forces to participate in the operation of grassroots cultural facilities. Qualified enterprises and social organizations may be introduced through service outsourcing, project authorization, fiscal subsidies, and other methods to operate or chain-operate public cultural facilities, so as to stimulate the vitality of public cultural service venues, improve use efficiency, and form a supply structure in which multiple subjects such as the government, the market, and social forces are structurally embedded in one another and functionally complementary.
Fully respect the people's principal position and pioneering spirit, and mobilize the enthusiasm of the masses to participate in cultural construction. First, extensively carry out mass cultural activities. Up to now, literary and art groups spontaneously organized by the masses nationwide have exceeded 470,000, and cultural volunteers widely participate in public cultural services, becoming an important force in cultural construction. Second, through training, cultivate "rural internet celebrities" and "cultural operators" (文化主理人) rooted in the grassroots, and encourage talents with professional ability, operational thinking, planning skills, and creativity to carry out project operations. Third, fully stimulate the cultural innovation and creation vitality of the whole nation, so that the broad masses of the people truly become participants, exhibitors, appreciators, and sharers of cultural construction.
Advance digital-intelligent empowerment and build new platforms, new scenarios, and new paths for public cultural services
The Outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan emphasizes, "Promote the integration of culture and science and technology, promote the digital-intelligent empowerment and informatization transformation of cultural construction, and develop new cultural business forms such as digital animation and comics, immersive exhibitions and performances, online broadcasting, short videos, and micro-short dramas." Through digital-intelligent empowerment, realizing the full coverage, scenario innovation, and interconnection of public cultural services will effectively improve the effectiveness of public cultural services.
Build cultural digitalization infrastructure and service platforms. Strengthen the construction of the National Public Cultural Cloud Platform (国家公共文化云平台), encourage all localities, 因地制宜 (yīn dì zhì yí - "formulate measures according to the locality," to adapt measures to local conditions), to build local cultural cloud platforms in accordance with unified standards and norms, and connect them with local smart city platforms, so as to improve the operational capacity of smart museums and smart libraries. In addition, break through data barriers among different institutions, establish digital information service networks, public cultural information networks, and so on, and on the basis of improving cultural data security standards and property rights protection systems, realize cross-platform sharing of data and build a public digital cultural service network with unified standards and interconnection.
Build high-quality digital resource databases and expand the application scenarios of digital cultural services. In 2022, the Opinions on Promoting and Implementing the National Cultural Digitization Strategy (《关于推进实施国家文化数字化战略的意见》) issued by the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council proposed: build a national cultural big data system that is physically distributed, logically correlated, rapidly linked, efficiently searchable, comprehensively shared, and centrally integrated; present Chinese culture in a panoramic way; and share the digitalized achievements of Chinese culture with all the people. Relying on the national cultural digitization strategy, carry out high-precision digital capture of cultural resources scattered in museums, libraries, cultural centers, and art museums. On this basis, through the application of technologies such as human-computer interaction, virtual reality, and holographic projection, strengthen the application of new cultural business forms such as digital art virtual exhibition halls, digital twin museums, and the metaverse in public cultural venues, and create visualized, immersive, and interactive experience scenarios that link online and offline and in which the virtual and the real give rise to each other. With the help of big data, algorithms, artificial intelligence, and other technologies, draw user demand profiles according to users' regions, participation frequency, and duration, and precisely match the people's cultural needs. Establish public cultural big data resource databases, provide effective technical support, and form a public cultural service platform integrating demand collection, procurement ordering, and feedback interaction.
General Secretary Xi Jinping proposed, "Continuously develop the new era socialist culture with Chinese characteristics that has strong ideological guiding power, spiritual cohesion, value appeal, and international influence." The 15th Five-Year Plan period is a critical period for consolidating the foundation and making all-out efforts to basically realize socialist modernization. Constructing a public cultural service system that is balanced and universally beneficial, convenient and efficient, precise in service, and full of vitality will provide position guarantees and a source of driving force for empowering economic and social development, enhancing national cultural soft power, and accelerating the construction of a socialist cultural power.
[The author is deputy director of the Literature and History Teaching and Research Department of the Central Party School (National Academy of Governance) (中央党校（国家行政学院）).]
Return to TopBy: 代江波
Communist Party members’ political achievements (政绩) are doing things that win people’s hearts, warm people’s hearts, and stabilize people’s hearts; they are solving the problems that the masses most care about and most urgently need to resolve. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized during his inspection tour in Shanghai that “in work, one must firmly establish and practice a correct view of political achievements, think what the masses think, urgently address what the masses urgently need, formulate and implement effective policies and measures, persist 久久为功 (jiǔ jiǔ wéi gōng - “persist for a long time to achieve success”), handle properly each and every matter that ordinary people care about, and continuously improve people’s welfare.” Party members and leading cadres must keep this in mind and put it into practice, consciously regard the “matters on the hearts of ordinary people” as their own “matters of top concern,” solidly handle every matter well, and turn more “livelihood visions” into “happy scenes.”
Political achievements that are divorced from the masses, however dazzling, are hollow; things done against the will of the people, however laborious, can hardly warm people’s hearts. Handling matters for ordinary people must be assessed based on their actual needs; one must not engage in subjective assumptions, nor can one oversimplify or take a one-sided view. In reality, some Party members and cadres are accustomed to sitting in their offices “slapping their heads” (making decisions on impulse), satisfied with “I think,” and even though their work enthusiasm may be high, the matters they handle are not necessarily what the masses most need, most welcome, or can most benefit from; often it is “the barber’s carrying pole — one end hot” (one-sided enthusiasm), or even good intentions leading to bad outcomes. The essence of governance lies in bringing peace to the people; the way to bring peace to the people lies in perceiving their hardships. Only by clearly understanding the true concerns of ordinary people can we turn good deeds and practical matters into something that strikes a chord in the hearts of ordinary people. We must “firmly sit on the side of the ordinary people,” earnestly ask the people about their needs, ask the people for their advice, ask the people about their feelings, and especially focus on finding ordinary people’s concerns from their immediate interests such as employment, school enrollment, medical treatment, housing, childcare, and elderly care, so as to truly realize that what Party members and cadres think and yearn for resonates at the same frequency as what ordinary people urgently need and hope for.
In governance, constancy is precious; in administration, constancy is necessary. In reality, the matters that ordinary people care about often involve diverse interest demands and trivial, complex causes. Sometimes one concern is resolved, and a new one arises; solving them cannot be achieved 一蹴而就 (yī cù ér jiù - “reach the goal in one step,” at one stroke) and cannot be 一劳永逸 (yī láo yǒng yì - “get something done once and for all”). Strategic resolve and historical patience are necessary. Projects like the Red Flag Canal, the “Three-North” Shelterbelt Forest Program (三北防护林), the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, and the South-to-North Water Diversion Project — all relied on several generations of continuous struggle, working year after year, to turn these livelihood projects into popular-support projects. Another example is Wu Yaqin (吴亚琴), recipient of the July 1 Medal (七一勋章), who for more than 30 years kept her original aspiration as firm as a rock, day after day helping residents solve urgent, difficult, anxious, and anticipated problems and guarding the warmth and cold of the neighborhood, being praised by the masses as an “alleyway steward” (小巷管家). As long as the concerns of ordinary people do not cease, Party members and cadres must strive without rest. Wherever ordinary people feel unhappy, discontented, or unsatisfied, Party members and cadres must put in effort there, with the perseverance and resolve to “remove the people’s afflictions as if removing a disease from one’s own vitals,” until the people are satisfied. Even if some things are difficult to handle quickly, they must be shouldered without avoiding difficulty or shirking responsibility, so that ordinary people truly feel that someone is looking after their affairs and someone is helping with their difficulties. We must discard “impetuousness” and put an end to “going through the motions,” vigorously promote the spirit of 滴水穿石 (dī shuǐ chuān shí - “dripping water penetrates stone,” persistent effort leads to success), seek incremental progress, be willing to do groundwork work, be willing to grasp unfinished matters, and strive to make ordinary people see change and gain real benefits.
Party members and leading cadres must not only have the determination and willingness to properly handle the matters that ordinary people care about, but also have the work style and capability to ultimately get things done. In reality, some Party members and cadres worry that “the more dishes you wash, the more you break,” believe that “less trouble is better than more trouble,” think that “lying low is better than doing well,” shout “serving the people” as a slogan, equivocate when responding to ordinary people’s concerns, and shuffle problems back and forth in documents. All such phenomena stem partly from the problem that the work style of Party members and cadres is not hard enough, and partly from the problem that their capability and quality are insufficient. Small matters, concrete matters — they may not look as grand as erecting a building, but they benefit the masses; we must handle each such matter properly, one by one. Party members and cadres must take how many good deeds and practical matters they have done for ordinary people as an important criterion for testing political achievements, resolutely put an end to every form of formalism (形式主义) and bureaucracy (官僚主义), and must never turn a blind eye because a matter is small, shrink back because a task is arduous, or slack off because a goal is long-term. Continuously strengthen the ability to work with the masses, deeply study and accurately grasp the characteristics and patterns of mass work under the new situation, improve mass work methods, raise the level of mass work, and create political achievements for the people with excellent capability.
The foundation of political achievements lies in serving the people. On the new journey, Communist Party members must remember that benefiting the people is the greatest political achievement. We must adhere to the attitude that “great affairs under Heaven must be done in detail,” with the realm and responsibility of “achievements need not be attributed to me, but achievements certainly have my contribution,” and with the tenacity of “biting the green mountain and not letting go,” genuinely and pragmatically relieve the people’s worries, dispel the people’s grievances, warm the people’s hearts, sincerely handle each matter that ordinary people care about, one by one, and strive to make the people’s sense of gain more substantial, their sense of happiness more sustainable, and their sense of security more assured.
Return to TopOn the new journey, it is necessary to take Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era as the guide, fully implement the Party's overseas Chinese affairs policy, closely focus on the overall work of the Party and the state, better consolidate the hearts and strengths of overseas Chinese, guide the vast number of overseas Chinese and returned overseas Chinese and their relatives to uphold fine traditions, deeply cultivate feelings for the family and the country, leverage their unique advantages, demonstrate greater achievements, actively serve the great cause of national reunification, promote the united struggle of Chinese sons and daughters at home and abroad, and gather majestic strength for comprehensively advancing the construction of a strong country and the great cause of national rejuvenation through Chinese-style modernization.
Return to TopBy: 刘泉红
Intelligent manufacturing is the core engine of new industrialization and the main direction for developing new quality productive forces in accordance with local conditions and for building a manufacturing power. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized that “we must take intelligent manufacturing as the main direction to drive industrial technological change and optimization and upgrading, and to promote a fundamental transformation of manufacturing industry models and enterprise forms.” This provides the fundamental guidance for accelerating the empowerment of advanced manufacturing by artificial intelligence and promoting the high-quality development of China’s new-generation intelligent manufacturing. Currently, the new round of global technological revolution and industrial transformation is accelerating breakthroughs; new technologies such as large models, industrial networks, and digital twins are deeply integrating with manufacturing; and China’s intelligent manufacturing is at a critical stage of moving toward technological iteration, universal penetration, and ecosystem improvement. Taking the paths of self-reliance in core technologies, synergy in enterprise transformation, universal empowerment of factors, and advanced industrial ecosystems, we must continuously promote the high-end, intelligent, and green upgrading of manufacturing, continuously consolidate and expand China’s manufacturing advantages, and build a more solid foundation of the real economy for advancing Chinese modernization.
China’s intelligent manufacturing development has achieved notable results
Manufacturing is the foundation of the country and the basis of a strong nation; advanced manufacturing is the main battlefield of international science, technology, and industrial competition. Intelligent manufacturing is an advanced production method that deeply integrates advanced manufacturing technologies with new-generation information technologies such as artificial intelligence, covering the entire life cycle of product design, production, sales, and service, and plays an important role in comprehensively improving manufacturing production efficiency and flexible supply levels. In recent years, China’s new-generation digital and intelligent technologies have accelerated implementation, and the industrial foundation, application scenarios, and support systems have gradually improved, forming new advantages in intelligent manufacturing development with Chinese characteristics, laying a solid foundation for industrial iteration and upgrading.
Industrial scale has steadily increased, and scale advantages have continued to be highlighted. Relying on China’s world’s most complete industrial category system and super-large market advantages, the digital and intelligent transformation of manufacturing has been solidly advanced, building a complete intelligent manufacturing industry chain covering intelligent equipment, industrial software, system integration, and industrial Internet. By the end of 2025, China had built a total of 35,000 basic-level, more than 8,200 advanced-level, more than 500 excellence-level smart factories, and cultivated 15 leading-level smart factories. Manufacturing production efficiency, yield rate, and resource utilization have greatly improved, with significant results in improving quality and efficiency. The installed capacity of industrial robots and the scale of industrial Internet equipment connections rank first in the world, and a number of world-class smart factories have emerged in fields such as new energy vehicles, high-end equipment, and electronic information.
Deep integration of artificial intelligence and manufacturing, with new business forms and models emerging rapidly. Different from traditional automation transformation, the new-generation intelligent manufacturing focuses on the deep integration of artificial intelligence and manufacturing scenarios; new technologies such as industrial large models, digital twins, virtual reality, and predictive maintenance are accelerating application, breaking traditional production boundaries. New business forms such as networked collaborative manufacturing, mass customization, service-oriented manufacturing, and shared manufacturing are becoming increasingly common, and manufacturing is transforming from single product production to “product + service + intelligent solution.” Industrial intelligent agents and embodied intelligent applications in China are increasingly widespread. Artificial intelligence has penetrated more than 70% of business scenarios in leading factories, accumulated over 6,000 vertical domain models, driven the large-scale application of more than 1,700 key intelligent manufacturing equipment and industrial software, and formed a number of industrial intelligent agents with perception, decision-making, and execution capabilities, promoting the evolution of intelligent manufacturing from “automation” to “autonomy.”
The policy system has gradually improved, and the development level continues to rise. At the policy level, major strategies such as the “AI+” action, the innovative development of industrial Internet, and the industrial foundation re-engineering have been continuously introduced; the national standards and industry standards system for intelligent manufacturing has been continuously improved, with hundreds of core standards released cumulatively, and active participation in international standard setting. New types of infrastructure such as 5G-A, computing power centers, and industrial networks have gradually been deployed to industrial parks, providing more solid hardware support for the universal implementation of new-generation intelligent manufacturing.
At the same time, it must also be noted that there are still structural shortcomings in the development of China’s new-generation intelligent manufacturing. The independent and controllable capability in core areas such as high-end industrial software, precision intelligent equipment, and industrial underlying chips is insufficient; the transformation differentiation problem between large and small enterprises is prominent, with low penetration of intelligent transformation in small and medium-sized enterprises and high transformation costs; the coordination among industry, academia, research, and application is not smooth, and the shortage of composite talents is large, restricting the deep evolution of intelligent manufacturing toward high-end and autonomous development.
Judgment of new-generation intelligent manufacturing development trends
The “Fifteenth Five-Year Plan” outlines proposed “promoting the ‘intelligent transformation, digital transformation, networking, and interconnection’ of manufacturing, implementing the intelligent manufacturing project and the industrial Internet innovation development project,” providing institutional guarantees for the high-quality development of new-generation intelligent manufacturing. In the future, China’s new-generation intelligent manufacturing will inevitably develop continuously in the direction of deep empowerment, multi-dimensional integration, iterative innovation, and safety and greenness.
First, artificial intelligence deeply empowers the entire industrial chain. In the future, industrial equipment will evolve into various intelligent agents; the human-machine relationship will shift from master-slave control to two-way collaboration; the focus of intelligent manufacturing development will shift from partial process automation to autonomous perception, autonomous decision-making, and autonomous optimization of the entire industrial chain and product life cycle. Domestic industrial operating systems and core industrial software will increasingly achieve import substitution, and an autonomous, controllable, safe, and efficient industrial intelligent technology foundation will be basically formed. Specialized system solutions and service providers for intelligent manufacturing, as well as digital-native enterprises, will accelerate their emergence.
Second, the industrial model will show multi-dimensional integration features. Intelligent manufacturing accelerates the deep coupling of digital empowerment, intelligent production, green low-carbon, and service value-added; service-oriented manufacturing, flexible customization, and shared manufacturing become mainstream business forms. Intelligent manufacturing and green manufacturing will tend toward more integrated development, continuously improving resource allocation efficiency, further promoting the integration and convergence of industry, academia, research, and application, and deep adaptation of software and hardware, building a collaborative and win-win value network covering the entire industrial chain.
Third, intelligent products and application scenarios continue to iterate and innovate. Terminal products such as AI phones, AI computers, and smart wearables will deeply integrate lightweight large models, achieving localized and personalized intelligent interaction and reshaping the consumer electronics landscape. Intelligent hardware will be more deeply combined with vertical industries; embodied intelligence and intelligent agents will be deployed on a large scale; humanoid robots, industrial and service robots will deeply penetrate scenarios such as industrial manufacturing, medical care and health, and household services, significantly increasing labor productivity.
Fourth, safety, trustworthiness, and green low-carbon become rigid constraints. Safety and trustworthiness will run through the entire life cycle of intelligent manufacturing and will also become the rigid bottom line and native attribute for market access of intelligent industrial machine tools. At the same time, green low-carbon will also be upgraded from an “optional item” to a “mandatory question.” In the construction of smart factories, energy consumption management and carbon footprint tracking will become standard functions, promoting deep integration of energy efficiency self-optimization and green manufacturing.
Systematic policy implementation to promote high-quality development of new-generation intelligent manufacturing
Fully implement the “Fifteenth Five-Year Plan” outline and the goals of building a manufacturing power, closely follow the development laws and evolution trends of new-generation intelligent manufacturing, implement precise policies and systematic efforts, and promote the high-quality development of China’s intelligent manufacturing.
First, enhance the independent and controllable capability of key technologies. Focus on key shortcomings such as industrial machine tools, high-end industrial software, precision transmission components, industrial underlying chips, and high-precision sensors, and deeply implement the industrial foundation re-engineering project. Support industry-leading enterprises to take the lead in forming innovation consortia, linking universities and research institutes to break through key links such as basic research, concept verification, pilot testing, and industrial application. Improve the incentive mechanism for innovative application of first (set) equipment and first-version software, use real industrial scenarios to drive the iteration and maturity of core technologies, accelerate the layout of vertical industrial large models and industrial intelligent systems, and consolidate the foundation for independent and safe industrial development.
Second, coordinate the layout of new infrastructure for intelligent manufacturing. Systematically layout digital infrastructure adapted to new-generation intelligent manufacturing, accelerate the full coverage of 5G-A, industrial private networks, and edge computing nodes in industrial parks, and promote low-cost penetration of terminal equipment such as intelligent sensors and industrial gateways into small and medium-sized enterprises. Build regional public industrial computing power sharing platforms to reduce enterprise computing costs. Unify standard interfaces for device interconnection and data transmission, open cross-industry and cross-enterprise data transmission channels. Support the intelligent implementation of the entire chain with a complete foundation.
Third, optimize the industrial organization structure of intelligent manufacturing. Research and carry out a leading-chain enterprise pilot action, support industry-leading enterprises to build full-process intelligent and industrial chain collaborative platforms, focus on the intelligent upgrading of the entire chain and entire process, create “lighthouse factories” with industrial chain collaboration, better play the leading, demonstration, and radiation role of chain leaders, and drive upstream and downstream supporting enterprises to simultaneously undergo digital transformation with the lead of the leader, forming a collaborative development pattern where the leader runs ahead and the whole region follows. For small and medium-sized enterprises, implement a special action for lightweight digital empowerment, enriching the supply of low-cost, modular, and easy-to-deploy digital tools.
Fourth, strengthen support for key factors. Optimize financial supporting services for intelligent manufacturing, improve policies such as special credit, transformation interest subsidies, and equipment financial leasing, and effectively alleviate the financial pressure of digital and intelligent transformation for small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises. Deepen the reform of industry-education integration, optimize the interdisciplinary settings for intelligent manufacturing, precisely cultivate high-end R&D talents and high-skilled talents, strengthen the incentive mechanism for digital and intelligent talents, and make up for the shortage of composite talents. Improve the full-chain mechanism of data rights confirmation, compliant circulation, transaction application, and safety supervision, build industry industrial data sharing and circulation platforms, and break down enterprise data silos. Improve industrial network security, data security risk early warning and emergency response mechanisms.
Fifth, continuously optimize the industrial development ecosystem. Regulate market order in the intelligent manufacturing industry, establish a service provider grading certification mechanism, and resolutely rectify disorderly capacity expansion and homogeneous low-price competition. Guide enterprises to form industrial alliances and jointly develop highly adaptable integrated solutions. Continuously improve the intelligent manufacturing quality and standards system, actively participate in the formulation and revision of international standards, and enhance the say in global intelligent manufacturing industry governance. Relying on the “Belt and Road” initiative, expand the international intelligent manufacturing market, orderly carry out intelligent manufacturing technology exchanges and cooperation, and build an autonomous, controllable, open, inclusive, safe, and efficient modern intelligent manufacturing industrial ecosystem.
(The author is the Director of the Institute of Industrial Economics and Technological Economics of the National Development and Reform Commission)
Return to TopBy: 董超
At present, China's consumer market is undergoing profound changes. Household consumption is shifting from subsistence-oriented to development-oriented and enjoyment-oriented; consumption demand is upgrading from "whether it exists" to "whether it is good"; and the consumption structure is evolving from commodity dominance to equal emphasis on commodities and services. At the same time, artificial intelligence, as a strategic technology leading a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation, is empowering a thousand industries and a hundred trades with 前所未有 (qián suǒ wèi yǒu - "not seen before," unprecedented) breadth, depth, and speed. In June 2026, the Ministry of Commerce (商务部) and seven other departments issued the “Implementation Opinions on Accelerating the Development of ‘Artificial Intelligence + Consumption’” (关于加快“人工智能+消费”发展的实施意见), taking the promotion of deep integration of artificial intelligence and consumption as the main line, taking the expansion of intelligent commodity consumption, the empowerment of service consumption, and the innovation of consumption scenarios as the key points, taking the demonstration and application of new artificial intelligence products, new services, and new scenarios as the path, and setting forth 17 measures in five aspects. It can be said that the deep integration of artificial intelligence and consumption is both an inherent requirement for following the law of consumption upgrading and meeting the people's needs for a better life, and a strategic choice for promoting positive interaction between technological innovation and market demand and opening up new business forms, new industries, and new tracks for artificial intelligence.
The deep integration of artificial intelligence and consumption is essentially the co-evolution of technological progress and consumption upgrading. According to the theory of technology innovation diffusion, disruptive technology can be transformed into real productive forces only when it is deeply combined with specific application scenarios. The consumption field, with its rich scenarios, dense data, and timely feedback, provides a natural testing ground for the iterative upgrading of artificial intelligence technology. At the same time, according to the theory of supply-demand balance, by precisely matching supply and demand, reducing transaction costs, and expanding consumption boundaries, artificial intelligence can effectively resolve the structural contradictions existing in the current consumer market and promote a dynamic balance between supply and demand at a higher level. From the perspective of international competition, major developed countries are all accelerating the deployment of artificial intelligence consumption applications, taking this as a key measure to seize the commanding heights of future industrial competition. China possesses the advantage of an ultra-large-scale market and massive consumer data resources, and has unique conditions for promoting “artificial intelligence + consumption” to achieve an early breakthrough.
Artificial intelligence is reshaping the commodity consumption supply system and leading commodity consumption to upgrade toward intelligence and quality. Examined from the perspective of consumer economics, supply-side innovation is a prerequisite for consumption upgrading, and technological innovation is the core driving force of supply-side innovation. On the one hand, the iterative upgrading of artificial intelligence terminal products is expanding new space for commodity consumption. A new generation of intelligent consumer electronic products is moving from functional integration to scenario integration; smart homes are moving from single-product intelligence to whole-house smart connectivity; new wearable devices such as artificial intelligence glasses and brain-computer interfaces have opened up a new dimension of human-computer interaction. These product innovations not only satisfy consumers' pursuit of convenience and personalization, but also reconstruct the consumer value chain through an integrated development model of products, data, and services. On the other hand, intelligent robot consumption is becoming a new growth point. As China's population structure undergoes profound changes and household service demand continues to expand, products such as humanoid robots, elderly-care robots, and companion robots are gradually moving from concept to application, and the achievements of scientific and technological innovation are accelerating their benefit to people's livelihoods. In addition, the effect of the first-release economy is becoming more prominent in the field of intelligent consumption; major exhibition platforms and new product releases by artificial intelligence enterprises resonate with each other, promoting innovative achievements to accelerate from the laboratory to the market and enhancing the international competitiveness of China's artificial intelligence products.
The integration of artificial intelligence with service consumption is breaking through the bottleneck constraints of traditional service industries and injecting new momentum into the expansion and quality improvement of service consumption. Service industries have long faced structural problems such as high labor costs, low standardization, and insufficient quality supply, and the introduction of artificial intelligence provides a new path for resolving these difficulties. In the field of elderly care, the promotion and application of intelligent nursing and rehabilitation-assistance equipment helps build a smart elderly-care service system that coordinates home, community, and institutional care, effectively responding to the caregiving needs brought by population aging. In the field of cultural tourism, functions such as itinerary planning, immersive experiences, and intelligent tour guidance empowered by artificial intelligence have created new consumption scenarios integrating virtual and real, and enriched the supply forms of spiritual and cultural products. In the field of accommodation and catering, applications such as smart hotels and intelligent settlement have improved service efficiency and consumer experience and reduced operating costs. In the field of education, generative artificial intelligence has promoted the inclusive sharing of quality educational resources and satisfied diverse and personalized learning needs. Behind these integrated applications lies the deep logic of the digital transformation of service consumption: artificial intelligence is not simply replacing human labor, but rather, by enhancing service capacity and expanding service boundaries, it realizes the quality transformation and efficiency transformation of service supply.
Artificial intelligence's empowerment of the commercial circulation field is driving a systematic reshaping of the modern commercial system. Circulation efficiency is a key variable of consumer experience, and the application of artificial intelligence in predictive analysis, precision marketing, and supply chain optimization has significantly improved the operational efficiency of the circulation system. In the retail segment, the construction of smart stores and smart business districts has promoted integrated online-offline operations; the deep application of artificial intelligence technology in market analysis and product selection decisions has made possible the precise supply of “a thousand stores, a thousand faces.” In the e-commerce segment, new models such as digital human livestreaming and intelligent customer service have enriched modes of consumer interaction and expanded the growth space for online consumption. In the logistics segment, the development of smart logistics and unmanned delivery has opened up the “last mile” of commodity circulation and improved fulfillment efficiency. From a broader macro perspective, commercial innovation driven by artificial intelligence is changing the traditional chain of production, circulation, and consumption. Data has become an important bond linking supply and demand, driving the commercial system to evolve in an intelligent and collaborative direction.
Promoting the deep integration of artificial intelligence and consumption requires building a governance system with multi-party coordination. The breadth and depth of technology application depend on the inclusiveness and standardization of the institutional environment. On the supply side, efforts should be made to build intelligent consumption clusters and experience centers, and through demonstration and promotion form replicable and scalable experience models, reducing the trial-and-error cost of enterprise innovation. On the demand side, improve relevant fiscal and tax support policies, lower the price threshold of intelligent products and services, and accelerate the release of consumption potential. At the standards level, accelerate the formulation of technical standards and interconnection norms for intelligent products and services, solve the problems of data silos and device barriers, and enhance consumer convenience. At the security level, improve the security assessment mechanisms for artificial intelligence applications, strengthen personal information protection and data security management, and establish a consumer trust mechanism. Only by forming a sound ecosystem in which technological innovation, market application, and institutional safeguards work in synergy can artificial intelligence truly enter 千家万户 (qiān jiā wàn hù - "a thousand families, ten thousand households," every household) and a thousand merchants and ten thousand stores, providing strong support for cultivating new momentum for consumption and promoting high-quality economic development.
(The author is Director of the Institute of Circulation and Consumption Research of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation (商务部研究院流通与消费研究所).)
Return to TopBy: 李媛媛
The public cultural service system is an important vehicle for safeguarding the people’s cultural rights and interests, improving cultural livelihood, and raising the level of social civilization; it is also a key support for building a culturally strong country. The outline of the “15th Five-Year Plan” has made strategic arrangements for “improving the public cultural service system” and “enabling the people to enjoy a higher quality of cultural life,” marking that the construction of China’s public cultural service system has entered a new development stage of “improving quality and increasing efficiency.” Facing the 15th Five-Year Plan period and anchoring the strategic goal of building a culturally strong country by 2035, it is urgently necessary to strengthen collaborative innovation, adhere to precise supply, advance digital and intelligent empowerment, promote high-quality development of public cultural services, and lay a solid foundation for building a strong country and achieving national rejuvenation.
Strengthen efficiency thinking and implement actions to improve quality and increase efficiency of public cultural services.
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out, “We must always adhere to cultural construction that focuses on people and lands on people. We must aim to meet the people’s diversified, multi-level, and multi-faceted spiritual and cultural needs, enhance the capacity to supply cultural services and cultural products, and increase the people’s sense of cultural gain and happiness.” The ultimate goal of public cultural services is to meet the people’s growing spiritual and cultural needs and safeguard the people’s cultural rights and interests. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, China’s public cultural service system has been continuously improved, the level of public cultural services has gradually risen, and a modern public cultural service system covering both urban and rural areas, being convenient and efficient, guaranteeing basic needs, and promoting fairness has been basically established. At the same time, the people’s demand for realizing cultural rights and improving the quality of spiritual and cultural life is increasing, and the focus of public cultural service system construction is shifting from “broad coverage and basic guarantee” to “high quality and high efficiency.” The Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China adopted the “Recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China for Formulating the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development,” which states: “Adhere to bringing cultural benefits to the people and implement actions to improve quality and increase efficiency of public cultural services.” This requires shifting the work focus to optimizing service supply and enhancing service experience, effectively playing the role of public cultural services in nurturing, cultivating, and guiding people, enriching the people’s spiritual world and strengthening their spiritual strength through high-quality cultural products and services.
Adhere to a people-centered work orientation. The “strength” of a culturally strong country must ultimately be reflected in the people’s ideological realm, spiritual state, and cultural cultivation. Adhering to a people-centered approach means taking the enhancement of the people’s sense of cultural gain as the starting point and end goal, promoting the transformation of the concept and path of public cultural services from “supply orientation” to “demand orientation,” improving the quality of cultural services and the capacity to supply cultural products, and enabling the people to obtain a more substantial, higher-quality, and more convenient cultural life.
Establish a mechanism for high-quality cultural resources to directly reach the grassroots. The root of cultural construction lies at the grassroots level, which requires shifting the focus downward and services downward, and continuously improving the quality of grassroots cultural service supply. For example, through the digital library promotion project and the cultural sharing project, high-quality cultural resources at the national level can quickly reach the grassroots; encourage provinces, cities, and counties to establish cultural resource databases and comprehensive cultural service terminal platforms, integrate grassroots public cultural resources scattered across different departments, so that grassroots units can place orders with one click and allocate resources, forming an efficient demand response mechanism; improve the talent delivery mechanism, implement the “cultural special commissioner” system, where party propaganda departments, together with organs, universities and other units, select and send personnel to guide townships (subdistricts) in carrying out propaganda, ideological and cultural work, forming a long-term mechanism for cultural talents to go down to the grassroots.
Improve the performance evaluation mechanism for public cultural services. In the field of public cultural services, there has long been a situation of emphasizing input over output, emphasizing construction over operation, and emphasizing short-term over long-term. To solve these problems, the key lies in optimizing the assessment and evaluation system and giving full play to the guiding function of effectiveness evaluation. This requires further establishing and improving a scientific and standardized evaluation standard system, dynamic monitoring and performance evaluation mechanisms, taking facility utilization rate, fiscal expenditure performance, and the participation and satisfaction of the masses as important standards. At the same time, improve the evaluation and constraint mechanism with the joint participation of the government, public cultural service recipients, and third parties, incorporate regular evaluation into the government’s public cultural service assessment indicators, link the assessment results with fund allocation and project arrangements, and increase the intensity of rewarding excellence.
Adhere to collaborative development and coordinate the optimal allocation of cultural resources through systematic construction.
Improving the public cultural service system is a systematic project, and the core is to properly handle the relationship between balanced development and efficiency improvement. Through systematic construction, promote vertical integration and horizontal coordination, improve the efficiency of resource allocation, form a smoother cross-regional and cross-departmental flow mechanism for cultural resource elements, and increase the coverage and effectiveness of public cultural services.
Improve the coordination mechanism for the construction of the public cultural service system. Currently, public cultural service resources are scattered in different departments such as culture and tourism, radio and television, sports, and industry and information technology. There are still problems such as fragmentation, duplicate construction, and poor policy cohesion, making it difficult to achieve overall benefits. It is urgently necessary to deepen the reform of the cultural system and mechanism, expand the scope, concepts, and methods of public cultural services under a “big culture” framework, strengthen overall coordination and unified planning, and promote the integrated development of public cultural services with people-benefiting projects in culture and tourism, education, agriculture, health, science popularization, civil affairs, and other fields, forming an overall governance pattern of horizontal departmental linkage, cross-border integration, multi-dimensional coordination, and functional complementarity.
Promote balanced and coordinated development among regions. Focus on solving the imbalance in public cultural services between urban and rural areas, regions, and groups. On the one hand, deepen standardization construction by clarifying investment mechanisms, hardware requirements, technical indicators, and service standards, and promote equalization of basic public cultural services. On the basis of ensuring the implementation of national basic public service standards, encourage provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities to formulate implementation standards for basic public cultural services in their administrative regions based on local actual needs, financial capacity, and cultural characteristics. On the other hand, through central and provincial fiscal transfer payments, focus on supporting revolutionary old areas, ethnic areas, border areas, areas that have been lifted out of poverty, and rural grassroots in carrying out public cultural services, while encouraging and supporting economically developed areas to provide counterpart assistance to these areas.
Promote the integrated construction of urban and rural public cultural service systems. China has established a six-level public cultural service network covering the national, provincial, city, county, township, village, and urban community levels. On this basis, promote the full integration of public cultural services into the overall urban construction plan and rural revitalization strategy. For example, popularize the main-branch library system of libraries and cultural centers; rely on resources from provincial, municipal, or district-level libraries and cultural centers to set up township, subdistrict, and community branch libraries and rural bookstores and other grassroots service points to achieve resource sharing; innovate service scenarios, deeply explore local characteristic cultural resources, rely on urban reading rooms, community cultural stations, cultural corridors, etc., to develop new types of public cultural spaces, and promote the integration of formats in urban and rural public cultural spaces.
Adhere to precise supply and form a public cultural service mechanism of co-construction and sharing.
Currently, the cultural needs of the masses show characteristics of diversification and decentralization. This requires providing targeted cultural products and services according to the differentiated demands for spiritual and cultural life of people in different regions, generations, and social circles, forming an open, diverse, well-developed, and dynamic public cultural service supply system.
Smooth the feedback channels for the cultural needs of the masses, adopt “order-type,” “menu-type,” and “appointment-type” service methods, form a normalized collection mechanism for the cultural needs of the masses, and improve the precision of public cultural services. Guide cultural resources to tilt towards special groups, and provide adaptive public cultural services according to the characteristics and needs of minors, the elderly, persons with disabilities, the floating population, left-behind children, and other groups.
Improve the mechanism for social forces to participate in public cultural services. The “Public Cultural Service Guarantee Law of the People’s Republic of China” clearly states: “The state encourages and supports citizens, legal persons, and other organizations to lawfully establish social organizations in the field of public cultural services, and promote the socialization and professional development of public cultural services.” First, increase the intensity of government procurement of public cultural services from social forces, build a supply-demand matching platform for the procurement of public cultural services, improve the institutional system for government procurement of services, and attract capable social organizations and enterprises to participate in services through entrustment or bidding. Second, encourage and support enterprises, social organizations, and other social forces to participate in public cultural services through donations, investment, project sponsorship, and the establishment of public cultural service development funds. Third, explore socialized construction and management models, promote the pilot reform of the separation of ownership and use rights of public cultural facilities by classification and level, encourage social forces to participate in the operation of grassroots cultural facilities, and introduce qualified enterprises and social organizations to operate or chain-operate public cultural facilities through service outsourcing, project authorization, fiscal subsidies, and other methods, thereby stimulating the vitality of public cultural service venues, improving utilization efficiency, and forming a supply structure with multi-subject interembedding and functional complementarity among the government, market, and social forces.
Fully respect the principal role and pioneering spirit of the people, and mobilize the enthusiasm of the masses to participate in cultural construction. First, widely carry out mass cultural activities. To date, there are more than 470,000 spontaneously organized literary and artistic groups among the masses nationwide, and cultural volunteers widely participate in public cultural services, becoming an important force in cultural construction. Second, through training, cultivate “rural internet celebrities” and “cultural curators” rooted in the grassroots, and encourage talents with professional capabilities, operational thinking, planning skills, and creativity to carry out project operations. Third, fully stimulate the creativity and innovation vitality of the entire nation’s culture, so that the broad masses of the people truly become participants, presenters, appreciators, and sharers of cultural construction.
Promote digital and intelligent empowerment and build new platforms, new scenarios, and new paths for public cultural services.
The outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan emphasizes, “Promote the integration of culture and technology, promote digital and intelligent empowerment and information transformation of cultural construction, and develop new cultural formats such as digital animation, immersive performances, online broadcasts, short videos, micro-dramas, etc.” Through digital and intelligent empowerment, achieving full coverage, scenario innovation, and interconnectedness of public cultural services will effectively enhance the effectiveness of public cultural services.
Build cultural digital infrastructure and service platforms. Strengthen the construction of the national public cultural cloud platform, encourage local governments to build local cultural cloud platforms according to unified standards and norms and in light of local conditions, and connect them with local smart city platforms, improving the operational capacity of smart museums and smart libraries. In addition, break down data barriers between different institutions, establish digital information service networks and public cultural information networks, and on the basis of improving cultural data security standards and property rights protection systems, achieve cross-platform data sharing, and build a public digital cultural service network with unified standards and interconnectedness.
Build high-quality digital resource databases and expand the application scenarios of digital cultural services. In 2022, the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council issued the “Opinions on Promoting the Implementation of the National Cultural Digitalization Strategy” (关于推进实施国家文化数字化战略的意见), which proposes: Build a national cultural big data system with physical distribution, logical association, quick linking, efficient search, comprehensive sharing, and key integration, so that Chinese culture is fully presented and the digital achievements of Chinese culture are shared by all. Relying on the national cultural digitalization strategy, carry out high-precision digital collection of cultural resources scattered in museums, libraries, cultural centers, and art galleries. On this basis, by using technologies such as human-computer interaction, virtual reality, and holographic projection, strengthen the application of new cultural formats such as digital art virtual exhibition halls, digital twin museums, and the metaverse in public cultural venues, and create visual, immersive, and interactive experience scenarios that link online and offline, and combine virtual and real.
With the help of technologies such as big data, algorithms, and artificial intelligence, conduct user demand profiling based on the user’s region, participation frequency, and duration, and accurately match the cultural needs of the masses. Establish a public cultural big data resource database, provide effective technical support, and form a public cultural service platform that integrates demand collection, procurement ordering, and feedback interaction.
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out, “Continuously develop socialist culture with Chinese characteristics for the new era that has strong ideological guidance, spiritual cohesion, value appeal, and international influence.” The 15th Five-Year Plan period is a critical period for consolidating the foundation and comprehensively exerting efforts to basically realize socialist modernization. Building a public cultural service system that is balanced and inclusive, convenient and efficient, precise in service, and full of vitality will provide position guarantee and power source for empowering economic and social development, improving national cultural soft power, and accelerating the construction of a socialist culturally strong country.
[The author is Vice Director of the Department of Literature and History Teaching and Research at the Central Party School (National Academy of Governance) (中央党校（国家行政学院）).]
Return to TopBy: 李晓果
General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out, “One case is better than a dozen documents.” This vividly illustrates the unique value of judicial cases in the practice of rule-of-law governance. Compared with abstract legal provisions, judicial cases that originate from reality and directly confront contradictions are not only a systematic summary of trial practice experience but also an important window for the general public to intuitively perceive judicial justice and understand the spirit of the law. The Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Strengthening Judicial Work in the New Era (《中共中央关于加强新时代审判工作的意见》) clearly states that it is necessary to “build the People’s Courts Case Database with high quality.” As a bridge connecting legal texts, trial practice, and social life, the People’s Courts Case Database is an important institutional arrangement to compensate for the shortcomings of statutory law, regulate discretionary power, and enhance the fairness, stability, and authority of judicial decisions.
China has always attached importance to case work, continuously optimizing work mechanisms, and using cases to standardize and unify adjudication benchmarks, thereby promoting the correct and uniform application of law. Cases released by the People’s Courts include guiding cases, typical cases, gazette cases, and cases from publications and books. Take guiding cases as an example. In 2010, the Supreme People’s Court issued the Provisions on Case Guidance Work (《关于案例指导工作的规定》); in 2018, the amended Organic Law of the People’s Courts of the People’s Republic of China (《中华人民共和国人民法院组织法》) clarified in legislative form that the Supreme People’s Court may issue guiding cases. As of now, the Supreme People’s Court has issued a total of 49 batches comprising 279 guiding cases, playing an important role in unifying judicial benchmarks, strengthening rule-of-law publicity, and promoting theoretical research. However, the selection and compilation cycle of guiding cases is relatively long, and the total number is relatively limited, making it difficult to fully cover all causes of action and trial fields, and to adequately meet the diverse needs of judicial practice and social governance in the new era. Other types of cases, due to the lack of unified compilation and review procedures and standards, have insufficiently guaranteed quality and authority, and also suffer from limited coverage and insufficient systematization, failing to meet the needs of judicial practice. To remedy institutional shortcomings and expand the supply of rules, the Supreme People’s Court initiated the construction of the People’s Courts Case Database (人民法院案例库), integrating guiding cases and high-quality reference cases. Since it was opened to the public in February 2024, the case database’s selection and compilation mechanism has been continuously improved; the cases in the database have achieved full coverage of common charges and frequently occurring causes of action, covering major trial categories such as criminal, civil, administrative, enforcement, and state compensation. Cases in specialized areas such as environmental resources, intellectual property, and maritime affairs are being steadily enriched. The construction of special sub-databases such as minor protection and diversified dispute resolution is advancing in an orderly manner, making the overall layout more scientific and complete. At the same time, it must also be noted that the construction of the case database still faces problems such as the need to improve case update efficiency, gaps in coverage in some emerging fields, and the need to strengthen intelligent support and application. Going forward, improvements should be made from the following aspects.
Optimize the case selection and release mechanism to consolidate the supply of high-quality cases. The foundation of case database construction is a supply of high-quality, broad, and reliable cases. To ensure the quality of cases entered into the database, the People’s Courts have currently formed a relatively rigorous work mechanism from selection to review. However, with the rapid development of the economy and society, especially the continuous emergence of new legal issues in emerging fields such as technological innovation, digital economy, green and low-carbon development, and cross-border governance, a large number of cases with class-case guidance value have accumulated in practice and need to be mined and refined. At the same time, new laws, regulations, and judicial interpretations are being continuously issued, and many new legal issues urgently require clarification of applicable rules, necessitating the timely addition of new cases and the cleaning up and replacement of outdated cases. Therefore, on the one hand, case collection channels should be continuously broadened, and mechanisms for level-linked reporting and targeted cultivation of typical cases should be improved, taking into account the typicality, guidance, and forward-looking nature of cases. In particular, efforts should focus on emerging fields such as technological innovation and digital economy, as well as legally controversial issues, to intensify case mining, face adjudication divergences head-on, and ensure that cases entered into the database are not only authoritative and reliable but also have practical reference value. On the other hand, a work mechanism for rapid review and timely release should be established. For types of cases that attract high social attention and are closely related to people’s livelihoods, explore shortening the time cycle from trial to database entry, so that the case supply can keep pace with economic and social development and efficiently respond to practical needs.
Strengthen the role of the case database in adjudication and promote the unification of adjudication standards. Uniform application of law is a basic requirement for upholding the authority of the rule of law. The Work Procedures for the Construction and Operation of the People’s Courts Case Database (《人民法院案例库建设运行工作规程》) clearly stipulates: “When adjudicating cases, people’s courts at all levels shall search the People’s Courts Case Database, strictly follow laws, judicial interpretations, and regulatory documents, and refer to similar cases in the database when making adjudications.” “When people’s courts at all levels refer to similar cases in the database in adjudicating cases, they may use the reasoning and main points of the judgment of the similar case as considerations and reasoning references for the adjudication of the current case, but not as the basis for the adjudication. If the prosecuting authority, parties, and their defenders or agents ad litem submit database cases as prosecution or defense arguments, the people’s court shall respond in the reasoning of the judgment document.” This is of great significance for promoting unified adjudication rules and benchmarks, avoiding “different judgments in similar cases,” and ensuring the correct and uniform application of law. In China, cases cannot serve as direct bases for adjudication, but they can provide important references for judges, reducing discretion bias. On the one hand, judicial organs, relying on the promotion and application of the case database, should proactively refer to database cases to calibrate adjudication thinking, strengthen interpretation of law and reasoning, promote similar-case uniform judgments, and enhance the social credibility and recognition of adjudication. On the other hand, similarities and differences between cases should be accurately identified. The determination of a similar case requires comprehensive consideration of the basic facts, points of dispute, and legal application issues of the case. Some cases, although superficially similar in circumstances, may lead to different adjudication results due to subtle differences in key facts or legal application. Referring to a case is not a simple application of the adjudication conclusion, but making a judgment under the guidance of the adjudication rules established by the case, in combination with the specific circumstances.
Expand the effectiveness of rule-of-law publicity and lead social rule-of-law trends. Every case entered into the database is a rule-of-law public class shared by the whole people. The case database, open to the public free of charge, is an important public platform for universal legal education. The database contains a large number of hot issues closely related to the vital interests of ordinary people, providing vivid teaching materials for all sectors of society to respect, study, abide by, and use the law, guiding market entities to establish rule awareness and contract spirit, and helping the people to reasonably predict litigation risks and rationally express interests and demands. On the basis of steadily increasing the browsing and usage volume of the case database, further attention should be paid to selecting cases that are close to people’s lives and respond to social concerns, clearly conveying to society what the law supports and what it opposes, so that the concept of rule of law takes root in the hearts of the people, and preventing and reducing conflicts and disputes at the source. In addition, the cases in the database are relatively specialized, and there is a certain threshold for ordinary people to directly read judgment documents. It is possible to develop various forms of legal education products for different groups, expand channels for case dissemination, and promote typical cases into villages, communities, schools, and the internet, so that the spirit of the rule of law penetrates people’s hearts, fostering a good social atmosphere where matters are handled according to the law, problems are solved by seeking the law, and conflicts are resolved by relying on the law.
Strengthen empowerment by intelligent technology and enhance convenience and practical utility. The efficiency of using the case database directly affects its governance effectiveness. Quickly and accurately finding the most relevant similar cases to a pending case among a massive number of cases is a common need for judicial personnel and the public. The Sixth Five-Year Reform Outline for the People’s Courts (2024–2028) (《人民法院第六个五年改革纲要（2024—2028年）》) requires improving the “mechanism for intelligent identification and association and precise push of data resources from the People’s Courts Case Database with pending cases.” According to this requirement, first, follow the trend of digital court construction, rely on the “one network” construction of the People’s Courts, and upgrade the functions of the case database platform with the help of big data and artificial intelligence technologies. Optimize functions such as intelligent search, similar-case identification, and precise push of associated cases, reducing the cost for judicial personnel in case retrieval and use. Second, optimize platform carrier construction, improve access channels such as mobile terminals and mini-programs, and facilitate grassroots mediation organizations and the public to query and use at any time. Third, use digital means to strengthen supervision over the application of cases, urge judges to proactively refer to database cases in handling cases, standardize the exercise of discretionary power, and give full play to the constraining and guiding role of the case system.
Strengthen professional team building and consolidate the foundation of case work. The selection, compilation, and application of the case database are closely related to the judicial capability and professional quality of the entire court team. On the one hand, incorporate case literacy into the regular training content of judicial personnel, and through various forms such as special courses, case teaching, and judge forums, enhance judges’ comprehensive ability to summarize adjudication points, analogize legal application, and strengthen interpretation of law and reasoning. On the other hand, improve the incentive mechanism for cultivating typical cases, guide judicial personnel to summarize adjudication experience and refine judicial rules in case handling, truly activate the practical value of the case database in an all-round way, and make case work an important means of improving the judicial capability of the entire court team, laying a solid foundation for impartial justice.
(The author is Deputy Director of the Research Department of the Judicial Case Research Institute of the Supreme People’s Court.)
Return to TopBy: 伍科霖
The constitutional principle that "the state respects and guarantees human rights" is not only reflected in the continuous improvement of the domestic legal system, but also in China's practice of actively participating in international human rights affairs and earnestly fulfilling its obligations under international human rights treaties. The National Human Rights Action Plan (2026–2030) devotes a special section to "continuously advancing the work of human rights treaty compliance review," which fully reflects our country's high regard for the work of human rights treaty compliance review, and also sets higher requirements for continuously advancing the work of human rights treaty compliance review and constantly raising the level of human rights protection.
Human rights treaty compliance review refers to the institutional arrangement whereby States parties, in accordance with the provisions of international human rights treaties, periodically submit compliance reports to treaty bodies, undergo review, and follow up on the implementation of review recommendations. It is an important mechanism for a state to fulfill its obligations under international human rights treaties and to examine and promote domestic human rights protection. At present, our country's institutional arrangements for compliance review are continuously improving. In 2008, when our country's representative spoke at the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, he emphasized "earnestly fulfilling treaty obligations" and "attaching importance to submitting compliance reports to treaty bodies." In 2010, our country's representative further pointed out that compiling compliance reports is both a "summary and assessment" of our country's human rights work and a "good opportunity to receive advice and improve our work in promoting human rights." The white paper Seeking Happiness for the People: 70 Years of Progress in Human Rights in New China published in 2019 closely linked compliance work with domestic human rights protection, proposing to focus on aligning domestic legislation, law revision, and policy formulation with treaty provisions. On the one hand, various compliance tasks are advancing in an orderly manner. In recent years, our country has coordinated and advanced compliance tasks under different treaties and at different stages, participated in compliance reviews under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and continuously advanced reporting work in areas such as children's rights, prohibition of torture, and elimination of racial discrimination. The continuity and planning of compliance tasks have been constantly improved. On the other hand, the synergy of compliance work has been significantly enhanced. Human rights treaty compliance review involves multiple fields such as legislation, judiciary, administration, and public services, requiring linkage between central policies and local implementation, and joint participation of relevant departments and social professional forces. For example, the ninth compliance report under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women was jointly compiled by 29 departments, and extensively solicited opinions from social organizations, research institutions, and local women's federations (妇联). Relevant social organizations also participated in the preparation of compliance review by submitting written reports, attending informal dialogues, and other means, thereby forming a work pattern featuring departmental coordination, top-down linkage, and broad participation of social organizations and professional forces.
In this process, the positive role of our country in advancing compliance review work is increasingly evident. On the one hand, it helps to enhance the international community's understanding of our country's human rights practices and expand channels for participating in the interpretation of international human rights norms and the construction of mechanisms. On the other hand, it provides an important reference for improving the domestic human rights protection system. In 2022, when the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities reviewed China's report, it put forward relevant recommendations on the participation of persons with disabilities in the construction of barrier-free environments and the promotion of universal design. In 2023, our country adopted the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Construction of Barrier-Free Environments, which clearly stipulates that when formulating or amending laws, regulations, rules, plans, and other normative documents concerning the construction of barrier-free environments, opinions shall be solicited from representatives of persons with disabilities and the elderly, as well as from organizations such as the Disabled Persons' Federation (残疾人联合会) and the Elderly Association (老龄协会), and the concept of universal design shall be promoted. This reflects the effective linkage between compliance review and the improvement of domestic legislation.
As the review standards of international human rights treaty bodies continue to improve, the fields involved in compliance review have become broader, procedural requirements more detailed, and the degree of professionalism higher, placing new demands on the quality of report writing, the level of constructive dialogue, and the subsequent implementation of review opinions. Against this background, to continuously advance compliance review work, efforts must be focused on the following tasks.
Coordinate the fulfillment of procedural obligations and substantive obligations. Procedural obligations require submitting compliance reports on time, responding to lists of issues, participating in constructive dialogue, and providing follow-up feedback; substantive obligations require implementing the provisions of the convention through legislation, administration, judiciary, and public services, and effectively ensuring the realization of the rights under the convention. The fulfillment of procedural obligations provides an institutional channel for examining the domestic human rights protection situation, while the implementation of substantive obligations provides factual basis for report writing and constructive dialogue. The two are interconnected and mutually reinforcing. Taking the Convention on the Rights of the Child as an example, in terms of procedural obligations, we should promptly respond to the new requirements put forward by the Committee on the Rights of the Child regarding reporting procedures, constructive dialogue, and subsequent implementation, and improve mechanisms for departmental coordination, information collection, and feedback. In terms of substantive obligations, we should promptly follow up on the committee's new interpretations of the convention's content. General Comments No. 25 and No. 26 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child respectively elaborate on children's rights in the digital environment and in the context of climate change. Accordingly, it is necessary to further review our country's laws, regulations, and implementation effectiveness in areas such as children's online protection, personal information protection, and environmental health, and to improve relevant systems and policy measures in a targeted manner.
Further enhance the capacity for compliance review. Compliance review is not only a systematic explanation of the status of rights protection under the convention, but also an important process of linking international human rights norms with domestic human rights practices. Compliance capacity is related both to the accurate understanding and effective implementation of international human rights norms domestically, and to whether domestic human rights protection experience can be transformed into normative propositions with explanatory power and influence. In this regard, capacity building for compliance should be continuously strengthened from three levels. First, enhance the capacity for norm implementation. Accurately grasp the connotation of rights and protection requirements stipulated in the convention, and implement these requirements in laws, regulations, and policy measures. Systematic research on convention provisions, general comments, and concluding observations should be strengthened, and comparative analysis should be conducted in conjunction with domestic legislation, administration, judiciary, and public services. A treaty-specific and field-specific compliance database should be established, and legal policies, statistical data, typical cases, and the implementation status of the previous round of concluding observations should be continuously collected, so as to provide sufficient basis for further improving rights protection measures and compliance review. Second, enhance the capacity to participate in rule-making. Compliance review should not remain at the passive application of existing norms; it should also extract experiences and propositions of universal significance from domestic human rights practices, and provide Chinese solutions for the generation of international norms. Attention should be paid to extracting experiences of universal significance from our country's practices in poverty reduction, social security, equalization of basic public services, and protection of women's and children's rights. We should be adept at starting from the rights and obligations relationships stipulated in the convention to elucidate the rights protection concepts and institutional logic they embody, and by participating in the solicitation of draft general comments, general discussion days, and thematic seminars, put forward professional opinions on the interpretation and development of treaty norms. Third, enhance the capacity for mechanism building. Strengthen research on the rules of procedure, working methods, and reform trends of treaty bodies, accurately grasp the procedural requirements and operational characteristics of compliance review, and improve the pertinence of oral responses and the completeness of written materials. At the same time, improve the coordination mechanism among government departments, experts and scholars, and social organizations, establish a working mechanism of issue assessment before review, professional support during review, and summary and evaluation after review, and through regular training and practical participation, cultivate a team of professional personnel who are familiar with both international rules and domestic practices.
Improve the domestic transformation mechanism for compliance review opinions. The effectiveness of compliance review work must ultimately be reflected in the people enjoying broader rights and freedoms in accordance with the law. Only when the opinions generated during the review process are transformed into concrete measures for improving domestic policies, rule of law construction, and public services can they truly realize their institutional function. First, strengthen the classified study of review opinions. In light of treaty provisions, factual basis, and our country's national conditions, systematically sort out the concluding observations put forward by treaty bodies, and accurately distinguish matters that can be directly implemented, those that need to be advanced in stages, and those that require further communication and explanation. Second, promote the timely transformation of reasonable recommendations. For recommendations that are objective, reasonable, and feasible, they should be promptly transformed into concrete measures to advance legislation and law revision, improve policy measures, enhance public services, and perfect relief mechanisms, and be linked with the implementation of the National Human Rights Action Plan; for matters that require long-term advancement, phased objectives, responsible departments, and implementation steps should be clearly defined. Third, improve the tracking, evaluation, and feedback mechanism. Extensively solicit opinions from relevant departments, experts and scholars, social organizations, and rights holders, objectively evaluate the implementation effectiveness of relevant measures, and provide feedback in the next round of compliance reports, thereby establishing a working mechanism in which "studying review opinions, promoting domestic transformation, evaluating implementation effects, and feeding back follow-up actions" are interconnected.
Return to TopBy: 刘宁
As artificial intelligence deeply penetrates the medical and health field, applications such as AI-assisted consultation, intelligent triage, and automatic generation of electronic medical records are accelerating their deployment. "AI diagnosis and treatment" has already covered multiple scenarios including assisted diagnosis in primary-level medical institutions, intelligent triage in large hospitals, pre-consultation and prescription review on internet platforms, and chronic disease health management. While improving service efficiency and alleviating the uneven distribution of medical resources, it also brings new challenges to medical regulatory order and the protection of patients' rights and interests. In practice, problems such as ambiguous attribution of diagnostic responsibility, insufficient transparency of the algorithm "black box," security risks of health data, and deficiencies in online medication compliance are prominent. These may infringe on patients' right to know and right to privacy, and even directly affect the people's right to life and health. How to find a balance between encouraging technological innovation and safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of patients has become a practical issue that urgently needs to be addressed.
"AI diagnosis and treatment" is a specific application form of AI-assisted decision-making in the medical field. China's existing medical and health and civil legal systems have established a principled institutional framework for the standardized operation of "AI diagnosis and treatment." In March this year, the National Medical Products Administration (国家药监局) issued the "Implementation Opinions on 'AI + Drug Regulation'" (《关于“人工智能+药品监管”的实施意见》), which sets forth regulatory requirements for AI application from the perspective of the entire life cycle of drugs. In April, the Cyberspace Administration of China (国家网信办) and four other departments jointly issued the "Interim Measures for the Management of AI Personified Interactive Services" (《人工智能拟人化互动服务管理暂行办法》), which sets bottom lines for AI services from the aspects of interaction norms and data security. However, overall, problems such as insufficient supply of specialized rules in the field of "AI diagnosis and treatment," poor coordination of departmental regulation, and ambiguous standards for liability determination remain prominent. The existing principled provisions are difficult to fully adapt to the practical needs of rapid technological iteration. To effectively regulate "AI diagnosis and treatment" services, rules should be further refined and standards clarified within the existing legal framework.
Clarify the division of responsibility and legally define the auxiliary role of AI. Medical decisions concern the life and health of patients, requiring decision-makers to possess systematic medical training and clinical experience, and to make judgments by comprehensively considering multiple factors such as individual patient differences and disease progression. Although "AI diagnosis and treatment" has advantages in data processing and pattern recognition, it lacks the ability to comprehensively grasp the overall condition of the patient and does not possess the sense of ethical responsibility required for clinical judgment. In China, the role of "AI diagnosis and treatment" is clearly defined as an auxiliary tool for doctors. The "Technical Management Specifications for AI-Assisted Diagnosis Technology" (《人工智能辅助诊断技术管理规范》) issued in 2017 by the former National Health and Family Planning Commission of the People's Republic of China (原国家卫生计生委) explicitly states that AI-assisted diagnostic technology "cannot serve as the final clinical diagnosis, but only as a clinical auxiliary diagnosis and reference." In 2025, the "Implementation Opinions on Promoting and Regulating the Application of 'AI + Medical and Health'" (《关于促进和规范“人工智能+医疗卫生”应用发展的实施意见》) jointly issued by the National Health Commission (国家卫生健康委) and four other departments, through various specific provisions, embodies the orientation of AI "assisting diagnosis and treatment services." Given that this basic positioning has already been clarified in policy, legal norms should follow up in a timely manner. It is necessary to explicitly stipulate at the legal or normative document level that AI cannot replace the doctor's clinical judgment and final decision-making responsibility, so that the auxiliary positioning obtains a clear legal basis, and to refine the standards for fault determination through judicial interpretations or specialized norms. On the one hand, clarify the doctor's obligation to verify the results of "AI diagnosis and treatment" and its specific content, including the basic verification process, degree of attention, etc., so that doctors clearly understand the boundaries of their own responsibility. On the other hand, clarify the principles of imputation and allocation of burden of proof when damage is caused by design defects or algorithm errors in the AI system, providing clear legal guidance for the application of product liability in judicial practice.
Promote algorithm transparency and safeguard the patient's right to informed consent. The right to informed consent is a basic right enjoyed by patients in diagnostic and treatment activities. However, the "AI diagnosis and treatment" process has a "black box" problem. Doctors find it difficult to effectively verify AI suggestions, and patients have even less ability to understand the basis for forming diagnostic conclusions. In this situation, although patients formally complete the informed consent process, they lack the information foundation needed to make rational judgments. At the same time, the sources and quality of algorithm training data lack effective oversight mechanisms, and data bias may affect diagnostic accuracy. To address the above problems, corresponding safeguard mechanisms should be established at the level of the legal system. First, establish a medical AI algorithm filing and review system, requiring "AI diagnosis and treatment" models to submit algorithm principles, training data sources, and risk assessment reports, and when necessary, have them evaluated by an institution composed of multidisciplinary experts. Second, at the legal level, clarify the interpretability requirements for AI diagnostic results, so that AI diagnostic suggestions can be understood and verified by doctors, and patients can give informed consent on the basis of adequate explanation. Third, establish an oversight mechanism for algorithm operation. For "AI diagnosis and treatment" models that have been put into clinical use, clarify the regular reporting obligations of the operating entities and the supervisory and inspection responsibilities of the competent authorities. When algorithm bias or abnormal diagnostic accuracy is discovered, promptly initiate evaluation and correction procedures.
Strictly manage online prescriptions and strengthen the supervision of the prescription circulation process. Prescription issuance is a medical act with legal effect. The "Drug Administration Law of the People's Republic of China" (《中华人民共和国药品管理法》), the "Law of the People's Republic of China on Practicing Physicians" (《中华人民共和国医师法》), and the "Measures for the Administration of Prescriptions" (《处方管理办法》) all require that prescriptions be issued by practicing physicians. However, in practice, some online drug purchasing platforms adopt a model of "selecting medication first, then issuing a prescription," with AI automatically generating the prescription. This practice transforms physician review from a substantive independent judgment into a formal procedural confirmation, violating current legal provisions. To address the above problems, the qualification requirements and practice norms for internet hospitals should be further improved, and the platform's obligation to verify the authenticity of prescriptions should be strengthened. Prescriptions generated with AI assistance must be independently reviewed and confirmed by a practicing physician before entering the dispensing process. At the same time, enforcement efforts against violations such as "first medication, then prescription" and "automatic prescription issuance" should be intensified, and enforcement standards should be unified to form effective institutional deterrence.
Strengthen the protection of health and medical data and safeguard patients' rights and interests in personal information. Health and medical information falls under the category of sensitive personal information as stipulated in Article 28 of the "Personal Information Protection Law of the People's Republic of China" (《中华人民共和国个人信息保护法》) and is subject to strict legal protection. AI consultation relies on the training and iteration of massive amounts of health data. Once sensitive information such as patient medical history, physical signs, and medication records is leaked, it can easily lead to secondary harms such as targeted fraud and illegal pharmaceutical marketing. In traditional diagnosis and treatment, patient information is mainly used for the diagnosis and treatment of the current illness, and the scope and purpose of use are relatively clear. In the "AI diagnosis and treatment" scenario, health and medical data is not only a resource for serving the current patient but also "raw material" for continuously training and optimizing algorithms, significantly expanding the scope and purpose of use. In practice, some internet medical platforms have problems such as collecting information beyond scope and sharing data with third parties without consent, reflecting that the current protection mechanism still has deficiencies in the full lifecycle management of medical data. A classified and graded protection system for health and medical data should be implemented, setting differentiated protection measures according to the sensitivity of the data and the usage scenario. At the same time, strengthen data access rights control and desensitization processing mechanisms to ensure that data is subject to strict institutional constraints at all stages including collection, storage, use, and sharing. "AI diagnosis and treatment" platforms that use user data to optimize models should fulfill the procedures of adequate notification and express consent, and provide convenient channels for information withdrawal and deletion, so that patients enjoy full choice and decision-making rights in all aspects of data collection, use, storage, and processing.
Return to TopBy: 陈文新
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that it is necessary to deepen the reform of industrial workforce construction, accelerate the building of a large contingent of knowledge-based, skill-based, and innovation-based industrial workers, and cultivate and bring forth more master craftsmen of the nation and high-skilled talents. China Huadian Group Co., Ltd. Fujian Branch (hereinafter referred to as Huadian Fujian Company), as the power generation enterprise with the largest installed capacity in Fujian Province, thoroughly implements the decisions and deployments of the Party Central Committee on the reform of industrial workforce construction, implements the “Five Hearts” project (五心工程) of “leading to forge the heart, nurturing talent to strengthen the heart, building platforms to unite the heart, mechanisms to gather the heart, and rights and interests to warm the heart,” and guides industrial workers to promote high-quality development in practical work, embrace the changes of the times through innovation, and enhance professional skills through training.
Highlight leading to forge the heart, build a spiritual high ground for industrial workers. Huadian Fujian Company has always regarded strengthening the ideological guidance of industrial workers as an important task, armed the mind with Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, guided industrial workers to listen to the Party’s words and follow the Party, establish lofty aspirations, and bravely shoulder the heavy responsibilities of the times.
Innovate the theoretical learning model. Created the “Three Revisit” learning model (三重学习模式) of “revisiting the research route, recreating the scenes of the time, and revisiting important instructions,” built the “Three Revisit” learning hall of Miantan Hydropower Company (棉花滩水电公司), which has cumulatively received over 130 batches and more than 2,000 person-times of study, and was rated as “the first batch of practice sites in Longyan of Fujian Province’s Research Center for Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” and “on-site teaching site of Fujian Gutian Cadre College.”
Strengthen exemplary and leading role models. Vigorously promote the spirit of model workers, the spirit of labor, and the spirit of craftsmanship, and have successively conducted 4 editions of model worker selection and commendation and 3 editions of skilled craftsman selection and commendation. In the past 3 years, a total of 5 collective honors and 31 individual honors at the provincial and ministerial level or above have been added. Established a model worker and craftsman propaganda group, organized Hong Yu (余虹), a delegate to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and chairmen of trade unions at all levels to go to the front line to give lectures, carrying out more than 200 lecture sessions, ensuring that the Party’s innovative theories reach the grassroots, workshops, and teams.
Deepen nurturing talent to strengthen the heart, forge the excellent skills of industrial workers. Huadian Fujian Company focuses on the skill improvement needs of industrial workers, constructs a systematic, digital, and practical skill cultivation system, and promotes industrial workers to strengthen their abilities and grow their talents.
Improve and upgrade education and training resources. Built two skill talent training bases for thermal power and hydropower, which have been registered with the vocational skill certification body of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security; carried out talent training and evaluation for more than 40 types of work; trained an average of over 35,000 trainees annually; promoted “holding certificates to take posts” as a rigid requirement; achieved 100% safety skill certification for electric power production personnel; and realized full coverage of new energy post certification. Cooperated with Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University to open “industry-education classes” and other school-enterprise cooperation practices, which were selected as excellent cases of education and training in the national electric power industry.
Digitally empower全员学习. Developed the “Micro-Optics Academy” (微光学堂) application, gathered a micro-course development team of over 600 people and an internal trainer team of 244 people, constructed a course system centered on three major modules—job knowledge maps, expert special topics and columns, and actual problem solving—developed 1,978 professional skill micro-courses, included 25,600 questions in the question bank, and built a mobile learning and exchange platform for industrial workers.
Promote training through competition to forge elite soldiers. For 13 consecutive years, jointly held with Fujian Provincial Federation of Trade Unions a full-staff business skills competition, covering operation and maintenance specialties such as thermal power, hydropower, wind power, and photovoltaic, as well as business fields such as electric power trading, finance, and disciplinary inspection and supervision; cumulatively commended 256 business technical experts; in the past 3 years, added 23 technical experts at the level of China Huadian or above. Cumulatively cultivated 127 craftsmen and 66 technical experts at the provincial and ministerial level or above.
Implement building platforms to unite the heart, stimulate the innovation vitality of industrial workers. Huadian Fujian Company built three major platforms for contribution — labor competitions, innovation and efficiency creation, and team construction — so that industrial workers play the leading role and become the main force in high-quality development.
Labor competitions empower development. For 4 consecutive years, carried out themed labor competitions of “gathering green momentum, assisting the ‘dual carbon’ goal,” setting 5 competition items each year to ensure that competition tasks are deeply bound to the enterprise’s annual goals. Constructed a full-cycle management model, promoted the completion of key projects such as the Kemen Phase III project (可门三期项目), a major national energy supply guarantee project during the “14th Five-Year Plan,” the first pumped storage power station among the five major power generation groups, and the first offshore wind power project of China Huadian; three subordinate units achieved over 10,000 days of safe production.
Innovation and efficiency creation achieved fruitful results. Promoted the “twelve haves” (十二有) standardization construction; all 27 production-oriented enterprises under its jurisdiction have innovation studios fully covered, 9 received provincial and ministerial level accreditation, and 2 were rated as provincial key ones. Established a “1+N” pairing and collaboration model for leading studios, and selected topics to carry out “answering the same question together” research activities. Widely carried out “five small” (五小), QC, and employee innovation and efficiency creation release and selection activities; more than 200 results received commendation at the provincial and ministerial level or above; an average of over 100 patents were authorized annually; organized industrial workers to participate in key R&D projects such as digital and intelligent power plant construction and offshore wind power hydrogen production.
Team construction strengthens the foundation and consolidates the base. Innovatively implemented the “addition, subtraction, multiplication, division” team construction improvement action: “addition” of motivation — implemented the “North Star Plan” (北辰计划) for three-year rotation training of team leaders, established Party member responsibility areas and Party member pioneer posts; “subtraction” of burden — formed a burden reduction list of 71 items, reducing recorded workload by 55%; “multiplication” of synergy — established a co-construction mechanism with Party committee leadership, administrative support, trade union platform building, and professional performance; “division” of shortcomings — achieved full coverage of the safety responsibility system evaluation mechanism. One team won the “National March 8th Red Banner Collective” (全国三八红旗集体), cultivated 11 provincial and ministerial level winning teams and 40 China Huadian benchmark teams.
Emphasize mechanisms to gather the heart, motivate industrial workers to grow and become successful. Huadian Fujian Company insists on “those with high skills get more, those who work more get more,” opens up the “fast track” for skill talent promotion, so that industrial workers have prospects and can shine.
Optimize the talent evaluation mechanism. Implemented a three-year action for optimizing the cadre talent structure, promoted the “8090” project (8090工程), the “Elite Plan” (英才计划), the “General Plan” (将才计划), and the “T-shaped Talent Cultivation Plan” (T型人才培养计划). Established four major groups and six types of development channels, improved the job rank promotion system. Completed the talent points system design, constructed an enterprise talent star chart. The competitive appointment rate of management personnel reached over 72%, and the proportion of skilled personnel at senior worker level and above reached 56.87%.
Strengthen the implementation of incentive measures. Promoted salary distribution to tilt toward key positions and high-skilled talents. 71 model workers and craftsmen enjoyed treatment promotion; business technical experts enjoyed rank upgrade benefits; set up “mentoring” allowances. Implemented the “new eight-level worker” system (新八级工制度), promoted two-way recognition of professional titles and skill levels, and strived to achieve a proportion of senior workers and above of 65% by 2030.
Fulfill rights and interests to warm the heart, enhance the happiness index of industrial workers. Huadian Fujian Company takes “doing practical things for employees” as an important measure to implement the reform of industrial workforce construction, and uses heart and strength to solve the difficult and troubling matters of industrial workers.
Improve the long-term service mechanism. Issued the “Management Measures for ‘Doing Practical Things for Employees’,” printed and issued ten major task lists each year, forming a full-chain mechanism of “target—responsibility—assessment.” Used channels such as “Employee Voices e-Family” (职工心声e家通) to extensively listen to opinions, and incorporated the progress into the annual party building assessment.
Solve the urgent, difficult, and anxious problems of employees. Implemented a three-year improvement action for “aging equipment, factory appearance, and production duty facilities,” solved the problem of handling residential property right certificates for a total of 794 employees in Kemen and Gutianxi. Constructed a service system of “health check-up + medical mutual aid + recuperation and convalescence,” cumulatively applied for medical mutual aid subsidies of 935,700 yuan, and paid supplementary medical insurance subsidies of over 10 million yuan. Opened summer care classes for employees’ children, carried out 82 sessions of youth friendship and dating activities, and employee satisfaction continuously remained at 100%.
Through deepening the reform of industrial workforce construction, Huadian Fujian Company has fully demonstrated the main force role of industrial workers, continuously consolidated the foundation of enterprise safety production, and successfully completed the task of energy supply guarantee; the overall quality of the team has advanced comprehensively, and skill levels and innovation capabilities have significantly improved.
Looking to the future, Huadian Fujian Company will continue to push forward the “Five Hearts” project in depth, strive to cultivate and bring forth more craftsman talents and technical experts, make every effort to build a knowledge-based, skill-based, and innovation-based large contingent of industrial workers, and provide solid talent support for the enterprise to create first-class benchmark goals and the high-quality development of the energy industry.
(The author is the Deputy Party Secretary and Trade Union Chairman of China Huadian Group Co., Ltd. Fujian Branch)
Return to TopIn the new era, doing Party building work well in state-owned enterprises means adhering to the people-centered development philosophy, promoting the deep integration of Party building work with production and operation, and transforming the Party's political advantages and organizational advantages into enterprise development advantages and governance effectiveness.
As a new-energy state-owned enterprise, dispersed primary-level stations, employees stationed on the front line, and diverse scenarios of appeals are typical characteristics of the industry, and they also pose entirely new challenges to primary-level Party building and mass work in state-owned enterprises in the new era.
Huadian New Energy Group Co., Ltd. Shanxi Branch (华电新能源集团股份有限公司山西分公司; hereinafter referred to as Huaxin Shanxi), basing itself on the characteristics of the industry and the realities of primary-level governance, and focusing on China Huadian Group's brand positioning of "dedicating clean energy and creating a better life," has innovatively constructed the "Speak on the Third" (逢三说事) working mechanism, expanded Party-mass communication channels, solved primary-level governance problems, and rallied employees' combined force for progress. It is a vivid practice in which a state-owned enterprise in the new era practices the mass line, deepens Party building empowerment, and consolidates the primary-level foundation, and it provides a useful exploration for improving the quality and efficiency of primary-level Party building in the new energy industry.
Innovate the operating mechanism and build a closed-loop system in which Party building leads mass work
The key to improving the quality and efficiency of primary-level Party building lies in mechanism innovation, and the core lies in implementation and tangible results. Huaxin Shanxi adheres to upholding fundamental principles and pursuing innovation, bases itself on the practical work of new-energy enterprises, follows the working principles of "close to the primary level, pragmatic and efficient, all-staff participation, and long-term empowerment," builds a standardized, lightweight, fully closed-loop "Speak on the Third" work system, abandons formalized and cumbersome working models, and, with the lightweight service concept of "low cost, wide coverage, high efficiency, and deep empowerment," makes the Party's mass work have warmth, strength, and effectiveness.
With the "three-fixed" model of fixed time, fixed procedure, and fixed responsibility, Huaxin Shanxi builds an all-round, barrier-free Party-mass communication system, truly enabling employees to "have a place to raise matters, dare to raise matters, and have every matter resolved." The 3rd of each month is fixed as the problem-collection day. It adheres to 开门纳谏 (kāi mén nà jiàn - "open the door to accept remonstrance," to welcome criticism and advice) and all-staff participation, breaking down barriers among levels, departments, and stations; takes "speaking on matters, discussing matters, and resolving matters" as the core goals; encourages all staff to raise appeals and work suggestions without barriers; creates an open and equal communication atmosphere; completes the aggregation and breakdown of appeals on the same day; and, after review by the work leading group, issues handling tasks, realizing the transformation from "cadres predicting problems" to "employees proactively raising problems" and providing a solid basis for precise policy implementation and targeted governance. The 13th of each month is fixed as the Party branch feedback day. It implements the graded handling mechanism, establishes the hierarchical handling mechanism of "simple problems handled immediately, cross-cutting problems handled jointly, and difficult problems reported upward for handling," strictly implements the work requirement that "whoever is in charge responds," ensures that minor matters at the primary level do not leave the Party branch, difficult matters do not leave the area, and major matters are coordinated by the Party committee, effectively solves governance problems such as problem backlog, lagging handling, and implementation spinning in place, and truly resolves conflicts at the primary level and implements services on the front line. The 23rd of each month is fixed as the leadership reception day, on which members of the company's leadership team and heads of functional departments face employees' appeals directly, 答疑解惑 (dá yí jiě huò - "answer doubts and resolve confusion") on the spot, and coordinate and allocate resources. At the same time, it establishes a linked mechanism of quarterly review and public disclosure, satisfaction evaluation, and performance assessment, deeply binds the effectiveness of mass work with performance assessment of duty fulfillment, and guarantees service effectiveness through institutional rigidity.
Based on industry characteristics, deeply advance the "Speak on the Third" working mechanism
The mass line is the Party's lifeline and fundamental working line, and "I Do Practical Things for the Masses" (我为群众办实事) is an important practical vehicle for Party building work in the new era. State-owned enterprises, as the backbone force of national economic development, always adhere to the work orientation of Party building leading development, Party building serving employees, and Party building empowering the primary level, and take serving employees, rallying people's hearts, and stabilizing the workforce as the foundational work of primary-level Party building.
From the perspective of the industry's actual needs, the 45 enterprises under Huaxin Shanxi's jurisdiction and its wind and photovoltaic stations in 34 counties and districts across the entire region present the notable characteristics of dispersed sites, remote layout, and employees stationed at stations for long periods. The special production and operation model creates pain points such as poor communication channels for primary-level employees, an overly long chain for transmitting appeals, shortcomings in livelihood security, and difficulty in precisely matching growth and development needs. The traditional monolithic and passive mass work model can no longer adapt to the high-quality development of new-energy enterprises and the diversified needs of employees.
On this basis, Huaxin Shanxi deeply grasps the requirements of Party building work in state-owned enterprises in the new era, bases itself on the five core dimensions of "serving development, serving the masses, serving society, serving the primary level, and serving employees," builds a four-level linked governance system of "Party committee overall coordination, Party branch implementation, trade union leadership, and work team execution," and deeply advances the "Speak on the Third" working mechanism.
Through an institutionalized, normalized, and standardized communication and deliberation model, it breaks down hierarchical barriers, unblocks channels for public opinion, solves problems in a closed loop, practices the Party's original aspiration and mission, and implements measures that benefit the people.
Deepen practical exploration and demonstrate the value and results of Party building in state-owned enterprises in the new era
The ultimate value of Party building leading mass work lies in rallying people's hearts through heartwarming services and empowering development through solid work and tangible results. The normalized implementation of the "Speak on the Third" mechanism has effectively solved the problem of primary-level Party building and production and operation being "two skins" (两张皮) in new-energy enterprises, achieving a multi-dimensional win-win of improved employee welfare, enhanced team building quality, and accelerated enterprise development.
Relying on the fully closed-loop service system supported by the "Speak on the Third" mechanism, it has precisely implemented more than 40 practical livelihood matters, including transportation subsidies, dormitory upgrades, assistance for those in difficulty, station renovation, and skill improvement, thoroughly solved the practical problems of front-line employees in commuting, accommodation, growth, and security, resolved employees' appeals through multiple means, and further improved employee satisfaction. At the same time, it guides front-line employees to offer suggestions and proposals based on their posts, has cumulatively collected more than 30 high-quality suggestions in areas such as maintenance and technical transformation, safety in production, operation and maintenance optimization, and cost reduction and efficiency enhancement, implemented multiple innovation projects for tackling key problems, effectively solved industry pain-point problems such as relatively low power generation efficiency, equipment operation and maintenance losses, and the treatment of long-dormant wind turbines, and continuously improved the level of specialized operation and maintenance, equipment reliability, and enterprise operation quality and efficiency, empowering the enterprise's quality and efficiency improvement with employees' wisdom. Huaxin Shanxi has successively won multiple honors, including Huadian Group's "Striving for a First-Class Benchmarking Enterprise," "Five-Star Power Generation Enterprise," and "Intrinsically Safe Five-Star Enterprise," as well as Shanxi Province's Model Employee Small Home and "Pacesetter Civilized Unit of Shanxi Provincial Directly Affiliated Units," realizing improved employee welfare and high-quality enterprise development and providing a practical reference for innovation in primary-level ideological and political work in new-energy enterprises and for serving the central tasks and overall situation.
(Huadian New Energy Group Co., Ltd. Shanxi Branch)
Return to TopBy: 李果
China Southern Power Grid Guangdong Shanwei Power Supply Bureau (hereinafter referred to as Shanwei Power Supply Bureau) (南方电网广东汕尾供电局（以下简称汕尾供电局）) is located in the Hailufeng Revolutionary Base Area (海陆丰革命根据地). On this red land that gave birth to the first county-level Soviet regime in the country, it contains rich revolutionary spirit and profound historical and cultural heritage. Shanwei Power Supply Bureau deeply studies and implements Xi Jinping’s thoughts on Party building, makes efforts in deeply tapping red resources, creating a red culture brand, and promoting the connotation of red spirit, activates red genes, and truly makes red resources the “engine” driving high-quality development of the enterprise.
Construct the “nine-character formula” (九字诀) work method to promote red education to enter the brain and enter the heart (入脑入心). To transform red resources into development momentum, the first priority lies in internalizing them into the spiritual world of cadres and employees and externalizing them into practical actions of undertaking work and starting businesses. Through systematic design, Shanwei Power Supply Bureau extracted the nine-character formula work method of “search, observe, think, write, speak, compare, reform, integrate, act” (寻、观、思、写、讲、比、改、融、行), constructing a complete closed loop of red education.
Consolidate ideological cognition. In-depth carry out activities to search for descendants of revolutionary martyrs, conduct visits and discussions, consult archives, sort out 49 descendants of revolutionary martyrs and establish a special ledger. Fully utilize local red resources, carefully design characteristic red education routes, organize cadres and employees to retrace the red routes, allowing everyone to touch the pulse of history and draw strength for endeavor in an immersive environment.
Deepen theoretical identification. Organize Party members on a regular basis to freely discuss insights and reflections in the form of sharing sessions, conduct discussions and sharing through carriers such as the “July 1” themed Party Day activities and the “Three Meetings and One Lesson” (三会一课) system. Through essay solicitation activities, organize employees to write manuscripts and reflections on red themes, and set up a special section on Party history online, expanding red education from “one time, one place” to “anytime, anywhere.”
Leverage demonstration effect. The bureau’s leading group takes the lead to go to the podium to give Party lessons, explore and carry out the “cross-giving Party lessons” (交叉讲党课) model. Organize and plan the “Secretary Lecture Hall” (书记讲堂) and annual outstanding “Secretary Project” (书记项目) evaluation activities and a series of Party lesson evaluation activities. Through using comparison to promote learning and using evaluation to promote construction, create a batch of brand projects that are well-known and sustainable, forming a strong atmosphere of comparing, learning, catching up, and surpassing.
Adhere to a problem orientation. Focus on prominent issues reported by the masses, form key livelihood project lists and problem lists, implement a rectification and cancellation mechanism to ensure every item is addressed. In the past three years, organized Party members to have cumulatively done nearly 2,000 practical things for the masses around them, putting into practice the tenet of “People’s power industry serves the people” (人民电业为人民). Integrate red elements to produce series programs such as “Youth Talk on Century-old Party History” (百年党史青年说), “Secretary Says” (书记说), and “Party Member Says” (党员说), and hold activities such as speeches on red themes, poetry recitations, calligraphy, painting, and photography exhibitions, creating a strong red cultural atmosphere.
Test the effectiveness of education. The Party committee focuses on “five first-class” (五个一流) and “ten breakthroughs” (十大突破), the leading group takes the lead to take on topics and assume command, coordinate to resolve difficulties and blockages at the grassroots. In-depth carry out theme practice activities such as “I am a Party Member, Walking Ahead” (我是党员走在前), set up Party member responsibility areas, Party member demonstration posts, and Party member assault teams (党员突击队) in urgent, difficult, dangerous, and heavy tasks such as combating typhoons and peak summer power supply, truly achieving that at critical moments they can step up, and in critical situations they can sacrifice.
Polish the red brand, make red resources “come alive.” On the basis of deepening internal education, Shanwei Power Supply Bureau further promotes the branding and positioning as battle positions (阵地化) of red resources, makes efforts to construct a red culture dissemination system, forming a sustainable and transmissible social influence.
Build and make good use of red education bases. Deeply excavate the incorruptibility stories of revolutionary martyr Peng Pai (彭湃), integrate them into daily warning education and incorruptibility culture construction, create the “Shanmei Qingfeng (Clean Breeze of Goodness)” (善美清风) incorruptibility education brand. Relevant materials have been pushed to the Publicity Department of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee and displayed centrally in the Shanwei City Incorruptibility Exhibition Hall. Use the Haifeng Red Palace and Red Square (海丰红宫红场) site as a regular base for Party history study and education, establish the “First Lesson on Incorruptibility” (廉洁第一课) mechanism, organize newly promoted cadres, new Party members, and new employees to carry out themed Party and League day activities, allowing red genes to take root at the source.
Create red Party branch demonstration points. Relying on local red culture resources, combined with the creation of star-rated power supply stations, build Party branch construction demonstration points at each grassroots unit. Centered on “one branch one brand, one branch one characteristic” (一支部一品牌、一支部一特色), organize each Party branch to unearth local red stories according to local conditions, cultivate a team of red docents, allowing red culture to take root and sprout in grassroots Party organizations.
Form a red culture propaganda delegation. Carefully build the “Four Confidences” (四个自信) red propaganda and education route of Guangdong Power Grid Company, form a red propaganda delegation of 50 people, go deep into the grassroots frontline to carry out red propaganda lessons. The delegation members include leading cadres, business backbone, as well as young employees and descendants of martyrs, using people around to tell stories around, so that red stories are widely spread.
Explore innovative models, drive high-quality development through Party building integration. Shanwei Power Supply Bureau actively promotes deep integration of Party building work with production and operation, transforms the struggle spirit of the old revolutionary base areas into powerful motivation for tackling difficulties, and explores multi-dimensional integration development paths.
Break development bottlenecks. Apply the Hailufeng revolutionary spirit of 敢为人先 (gǎn wéi rén xiān – “dare to be the first,” to take the lead), relying on the masses, daring to struggle, and selfless dedication (敢为人先、依靠群众、敢于斗争、无私奉献) to tackling difficulties in the power grid, carry out the “100-day assault” (百日攻坚) action for power grid construction, quickly advance a batch of key power grid projects, effectively supporting Shanwei’s “strong maritime city, industrial revitalization city” (海洋强市、产业兴市) development strategy.
Assist rural revitalization. Relying on Party member responsibility areas, demonstration posts, and assault teams, actively integrate into the deployment of Guangdong Province’s “Hundred-Thousand-Ten Thousand Project” (百千万工程), extend power services to the front line of towns and villages, promote the “three-line rectification” (三线整治) work across the entire region, eliminate safety hazards, beautify urban and rural landscapes. Implement convenience measures for the people and enterprises such as “Integrity + Power Application” (诚信+办电), with power supply service satisfaction ranking among the top in the city for 12 consecutive years.
Improve operational efficiency. Actively use emerging technologies such as the Internet and big data to promote smart Party building, take the lead in building an “AI+Operations” (AI+作业) production operation control artificial intelligence demonstration team, greatly improving the efficiency of line defect identification and operation and maintenance. The practical experience of “four-part” (四分) loss reduction — the refined management model of dividing by line, by transformer area, by responsible person, and by voltage level — was successfully exported to Egypt’s distribution network loss reduction pilot project, achieving a breakthrough in “going out” of Chinese technical standards. Science and technology investment and revenue from achievement transformation reached a new high over the years.
Build team cohesion. Carry out special activities such as “Party Committee Secretary Reception Day” (党委书记接待日), “Hundred Cadres Enter Teams” (百名干部进班组), and “Secretary Lecture Hall” (书记讲堂), timely grasp employees’ ideological dynamics and actual demands, form a dynamic “public sentiment map” (民情地图), achieve “public sentiment grasped at the front line, problems solved at the front line,” build a bridge connecting the Party and the masses, creating a good atmosphere of unified hearts and smooth spirits for the enterprise’s reform and development.
The deep utilization of red resources cannot remain at the level of visits and study; it must be integrated into all links and fields of enterprise governance, production and operation, high-quality service, and scientific and technological innovation, achieving resonance and mutual promotion between Party building work and business work, truly transforming the Party’s political advantages and organizational advantages into the enterprise’s competitive advantages and development advantages. The vivid practice of Shanwei Power Supply Bureau proves that for state-owned enterprises in old revolutionary base areas to achieve high-quality development, they must base themselves on the unique advantage of red resources, further construct a value mining system, an education dissemination system, and a practice transformation system for red resources, let the red spirit bloom with even more brilliant radiance in the reform and development of state-owned enterprises in the new era, and contribute state-owned enterprise strength to comprehensively advancing the building of a strong country and the great cause of national rejuvenation through Chinese-style modernization.
(The author is the Deputy Party Committee Secretary of the Directly Subordinate Headquarters and Director of the Party Building Work Department of China Southern Power Grid Guangdong Shanwei Power Supply Bureau.)
Return to TopBy: 卢燕娟
The new media era has created a context in which everyone can write. People from all walks of life can become authors without needing professional qualifications; works no longer need to go through layers of professional review by publishers or literary journals before reaching the masses directly via the internet. For today's masses, literature is a multi-layered field: literature can concern civilization and the nation, reflect on society and history, question human nature and destiny — contemporary Chinese literature needs to extend forward along the classic lineage of Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and Lu Xun, and it can also, in the faint glimmers of daily life and the debris of existence, illuminate the ordinary and rough joys and sorrows of us ordinary people, and record the weather of sunshine and rain, overcast and snow that cannot be inscribed on the pinnacle of human wisdom yet coexists with every ordinary person's breath. These two dimensions are not merely a binary division of 'elite vs. masses' or 'professional vs. amateur' at a superficial level; rather, the latter is growing a new literary space facing the future in the fundamental underlying logic of literature concerning for whom to write, why to write, and how to write.
From this perspective, although amateur writer (素人作家) is a concept with vague extension and not very clear intension, the emergence and attention given to this concept in today's literary field itself represents this new space that literature is growing towards ordinary people. Today's literary scene pays attention to this space not only because of the superficial reason that the contrast in author identity inherently brings topicality, but also because their writing offers a different answer from traditional professional literature to several questions concerning the fundamentals of literature.
In the case of amateur writers, literature is written by ordinary people. Compared with entering the aesthetic experience and critical discourse of professional critics, entering the life experience and emotional structure of the masses is a more important pursuit of this type of literature. On this point, those amateur writers who toil for a living in the gaps of daily life and bustle in the noise of the marketplace have a natural advantage. They pick up their pens and write the daily grind of ordinary people's livelihoods: "One by one, the rushing deliverymen / hammer the earth with their feet / constantly tempering themselves in this human world" (Wang Jibing (王计兵), People in a Hurry (赶时间的人)); they write the myriad scenes of killing fish, selling meat, and bargaining in the vegetable market (Chen Hui (陈慧), In the Market, In the Human World (在菜场，在人间)). Those shared joys and sorrows of a life of daily necessities — when it comes to amateur writers, they have experienced them, they can write them, and more importantly, they cherish them — this is ordinary people's cherishing of their own lives.
In the case of amateur writers, literature can be written solely for the present moment. Under the pens of amateur writers, the saltiness of today's porridge, the joys and sorrows of the current affair, may quickly be submerged in the 日新月异 (rì xīn yuè yì - "renewed day by day, changed month by month," constantly changing) tide of the times, and even in our personal lives it is merely 转瞬即逝 (zhuǎn shùn jí shì - "turn of an eye and it's gone," fleeting), yet it can still be written and read for this very moment, becoming a window for every ordinary person to see each other's ordinary lives. Countless ordinary people like us meet through their words, meeting in front of the elevator that is late to arrive in their writings, in the morning and evening rush hours when everyone is busy, in the back-and-forth bargaining. Such encounters are not oriented toward historical immortality, but toward the present moment in which ordinary people feel each other's body warmth and breath, thereby seeing themselves and also seeing all beings.
In the case of amateur writers, literature can be written in the language of ordinary people. Amateur writers enter the literary field carrying fewer traces of professional training, and their writing does not quite align with literary theories and narrative techniques from ancient and modern, Chinese and Western sources, but their way of writing stories of ordinary people in the language of ordinary people has 落地生根 (luò dì shēng gēn - "fall to the ground and take root," to become established) and 枝繁叶茂 (zhī fán yè mào - "branches dense, leaves lush," thriving) in today's literary field, amid the spontaneous reading, reposting, and discussion of countless nameless ordinary people. I Am Fan Yusu (我是范雨素) is straightforward and warm; this is the language we ordinary people use to talk to others. The fervor of reposting that this article triggered at the time stemmed largely from this characteristic of its language. The weight carried by life and suffering is condensed into plain and simple language, reaching directly into people's hearts. "Father did not know he had cancer / but I knew / in the last hundred meters home from the hospital / Father walked with great difficulty / Father said, go, pick up the empty bottles in the ditch / they can be sold for fifteen cents" (Wang Jibing (王计兵), The Final Moments (最后的时光)). This poem, with no verbal skill whatsoever, once made me, who was then experiencing my father's serious illness, 泪流满面 (lèi liú mǎn miàn - "tears streaming down the face," crying profusely) in the crowd. At that moment I heard what his father and my father — those fathers who spent their lives toiling with heads bowed and were forever impoverished in speech — wanted to say their whole lives.
Such amateur writing brings back before us the issue that has been a core concern of modern literature since its inception: why is an effective connection with the present and the masses so important for contemporary literature? As everyone knows, classical Chinese literature created an insurmountable aesthetic peak. The legitimacy of modern literature in replacing it lies not in aesthetic superiority, but in its modern nature of being connected to the masses. From Liang Qichao's statement in the late Qing that "to renew a nation's people, one must first renew that nation's fiction," to Lu Xun's abandonment of medicine for literature and his cry from the iron house, modern literature from its very starting point was endowed with the natural mission of enlightening the masses. Therefore, the significance of modern literature's promotion of vernacular Chinese and advocacy of social fiction lies not in updating classical aesthetic paradigms, but in being able to be popularized, and thereby to transform the popular. In 1942, Mao Zedong at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art clearly proposed the direction of literature and art serving the masses of the people, serving the workers, peasants, and soldiers, making laborers, who had little connection with the main themes of literature for thousands of years, the subjects of literary writing, praise, and service. At that time, Zhao Shuli's (赵树理) ideal was not to ascend the literary scene and leave a name for a thousand years, but to ascend the "literary stall" where farmers sat around flipping through pages, and to solve the practical problems of his fellow villagers. In the lineage of modern and contemporary Chinese literature, the masses have always been the core driving force for entering history, shouldering reality, and creating the future, and have always existed as its most central concern. For a period of time, pure literature emphasized formal aesthetics in repairing historical trauma, and raised professional thresholds in resisting consumerism — it had its own legitimacy in what it did at that time. However, objectively speaking, literature has been 渐行渐远 (jiàn xíng jiàn yuǎn - "gradually walking, gradually distancing," drifting apart) from contemporary reality and the ordinary people in daily life, which is also an objective existing problem.
Entering the new era, today's masses, compared with the masses of the 20th century, have significantly higher levels of education. As a result, literature is being needed, paid attention to, and even participated in as never before. Amateur writing is using its own branches and leaves to reconnect literature with the masses, and through this connection, it undertakes a series of complex functions among the masses such as aesthetics and entertainment, cognition and reflection, communication and reconciliation, thereby making itself an existence that can co-exist and co-empathize with the history that is happening and the ordinary people who are breathing. And its more significant meaning lies in reminding us: in a striving, open, and courageous China, perhaps the joys and sorrows, anger and grief, and daily experiences of ordinary people also contain the big questions of history and philosophy. And literature that allows ordinary people to see themselves, to feel their connection to life, society, and the world, carring the warmth of reality and the genuine pain of life, is perhaps exactly where future literature can truly grow.
Return to TopBy: 薛景文
In the height of summer, Beijing is steaming with heat. Passing through the bustling shops and lively crowds of Jinbao Street, one enters the narrow, elongated hutong on the south side; what meets the eye are dense ancient trees and质朴 stone walls, and the clamor of the marketplace is instantly shut out. Amid the row upon row (鳞次栉比, lín cì zhì bǐ - "arranged closely like fish scales and comb teeth," describing a dense row of buildings) of modern buildings, Dongtangzi Hutong (东堂子胡同) preserves the unique tranquility of an ancient capital. Shaded by trees, a three-story red-brick Western-style building with a Mansard roof and delicate dormer windows stands quietly. This is the former residence of Wu Liande (伍连德), the pioneer of modern Chinese medicine and the "plague fighter."
Wu Liande, courtesy name Xinglian, ancestral home in Taishan (台山), Guangdong, was born in 1879 in Penang, Malaya. At 17, he won a scholarship to study at Cambridge University, and later furthered his studies in Germany and France. In 1903, he successfully passed the Cambridge University medical doctorate defense, becoming the first Chinese person to earn a medical doctorate from Cambridge. In 1907, he returned to China to take up a post, and over many years carried out work in epidemic prevention, hygiene, medicine, and social welfare. No. 55 Dongtangzi Hutong (now Nos. 4 and 6 Dongtangzi Hutong) was his residence while working in Beijing.
Wu Liande purchased this plot of land in 1911, and in 1916, following the advice of a German architect, built a three-story east-west symmetrical townhouse, and commissioned Hua Nangui (华南圭), a late-Qing architect trained in France, to design the back garden. This building, blending Chinese and Western elements (中西合璧, zhōng xī hé bì - "Chinese and Western combined into one," describing a harmonious fusion), like its owner, possessed an Eastern character and Western learning, deeply rooted in Chinese soil. The former residence has opened seven permanent exhibition halls, connected by the life and achievements of Wu Liande.
Taking command in a crisis and swiftly extinguishing the plague
On one wall of the introductory hall, evaluations of Wu Liande from home and abroad are displayed together. The Health Organization of the League of Nations (the predecessor of the World Health Organization) awarded Wu Liande the title "Plague Expert." Liang Qichao commented: "Fifty years have passed since the introduction of science, and the only person in the country who can face the world with the qualifications of a scholar is Dr. Wu Xinglian alone." On another wall is "Wu Liande's Maxims." One sentence is particularly moving: what Wu Liande wrote in 1911 in a letter to George Ernest Morrison, The Times correspondent in China: "I am always ready to serve my country and endure any hardship, in order to show my people that I live and work for them." This is not only the professional promise of a physician but also a fervent declaration of a loyal son to his native land.
Continuing forward, in a conspicuous glass display case, an object with a dim metallic luster lies quietly displayed — a microscope produced around 1900. Its brass tube has long lost its original shine, and the base edge bears marks of age and wear. Standing before the case, the pointer of time seems to suddenly turn back to the bitter winter of 1910. At that time, the frigid Siberian air currents swept across Northeast China; more desperate than the cold was an unknown, virulent infectious disease. Its symptoms were high fever, chills, chest tightness, cough, and bleeding; once symptoms appeared, the disease progressed very rapidly, and the mortality rate was extremely high. The epidemic spread south from Manzhouli all the way to Harbin, even reaching the vicinity of the capital, threatening the lives and safety of thousands upon thousands of people. Xiliang (锡良), then Governor-General of the Three Eastern Provinces, described the spread of the epidemic as "like water spilling on the ground, like fire sweeping across the prairie." The crisis came not only from the disease itself; at this difficult juncture, Japan and Russia sought to take advantage of the situation to seize China's sovereignty over the Northeast, using the pretext that China had no capable talent to shoulder the heavy responsibility, and attempted to monopolize the power of epidemic control. That year, Wu Liande, only 31 years old, was entrusted with a mission at a critical moment (临危受命, lín wēi shòu mìng - "to be given a mission at a moment of crisis") and appointed as Plenipotentiary General Medical Officer. He set off immediately, carrying a microscope and some experimental instruments, and arrived in Harbin with his assistant.
To identify the culprit of the epidemic, Wu Liande decided to perform an autopsy. The novelist Chi Zijian (迟子建), in her full-length novel White Snow, Black Crows (白雪乌鸦) set against the backdrop of the great plague in Northeast China, recounts this episode in detail. In an era when neither law nor public sentiment permitted autopsies, Wu Liande, under the pressure of public opinion and at risk to his life, together with his assistant, in the small inn where the deceased had stayed, disinfected the room and completed the first autopsy in Harbin and even in the entire Northeast. Under the microscope, Wu Liande discovered the pathogen; through field investigation and scientific verification, he proposed for the first time that the prevailing plague was pneumonic plague. With extraordinary wisdom and patience, he successfully organized tens of thousands of people to participate in the epidemic prevention struggle. According to some sources, Wu Liande brought this disaster under control in only 67 days.
In the years that followed, he several times organized the suppression of pneumonic plague and cholera outbreaks in the Northeast, Shanghai, and other places. In recognition of his contributions to the study of pneumonic plague, especially in revealing the role of the marmot in the transmission of the disease, Wu Liande was nominated as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1935. In the "Country" column of the nomination form, Wu Liande solemnly filled in "China."
Pioneer of epidemic prevention, promoting hygiene concepts
In the "Epidemic Prevention Heritage Hall," a slightly yellowed gauze object is displayed in a showcase. This is not ordinary medical material, but something that performed remarkable feats in the battle against the plague — the "Wu's mask" (伍氏口罩), which is also a prototype of the masks used today. During the great plague in Northeast China, many foreign experts stubbornly believed that the plague could only be transmitted by rats and fleas. The famous French doctor Mesny, who had directed epidemic prevention work in Tianjin for more than ten years, even refused to wear a mask when entering the ward and eventually died of infection. Mesny's death greatly shocked the medical community and confirmed Wu Liande's scientific conclusions. To protect epidemic prevention personnel and civilians, Wu Liande made use of local materials (就地取材, jiù dì qǔ cái - "to use local materials") and designed a very simple but highly effective protective device. He cut folded gauze, placed a piece of medical absorbent cotton inside, cut the two ends into ties, so that it could fit tightly against the face. This mask was simple in style, low in cost, and highly effective. Within a few days, all personnel involved in epidemic prevention in Harbin were wearing masks, effectively reducing the risk of human-to-human transmission. At the International Plague Conference (万国鼠疫研究会), "Wu's mask" was highly praised: "The mask invented by Wu Liande is simple in style and cheap to manufacture, but its effectiveness in use is also quite good."
The "Epidemic Prevention Heritage Hall" also displays an antique-style square wooden table and several wooden chairs. The special feature is that in the center of the square table is a round wooden rotating tray, and on the tray are two pairs of chopsticks of different colors and lengths. This is the "double-chopstick system" (双筷制) and "rotating dining table" (旋转餐台) that Wu Liande advocated and promoted. During the anti-epidemic process, he keenly perceived that the Chinese custom of "sharing meals from common dishes and drinking from common cups" (共饭合食、同杯共饮) precisely opened the door for the transmission of diseases via saliva and droplets. In 1915, Wu Liande published an article titled "Hygienic Dining Method" (卫生餐法) in the Chinese Medical Journal (中华医学杂志), proposing a plan to reform the old custom of shared dining in Chinese cuisine, thus sparking a trend to improve the dining habits of the nation. To balance scientific epidemic prevention with the warmth of family reunion, Wu Liande suggested designing a rotating dining table and advocated that each person use two pairs of chopsticks: long chopsticks for serving dishes and short chopsticks for eating. This small change preserved the homely atmosphere of a family gathering around the table for a shared meal, while quietly integrating modern public health concepts into the daily lives of the people.
Founding hospitals, advancing medical development
The stairs from the first to the second floor of the former residence have been turned into a "Medical Institution Wall," which sequentially displays Wu Liande's achievements in co-founding the Chinese Medical Association (中华医学会) and medical journals, and in establishing hospitals and medical education. Ascending the wooden spiral staircase, the photographs on the walls string together the long river of time. In 1913, Wu Liande submitted to the government a lengthy memorandum titled Medical Education in China, recommending a "fundamental change in the way medical students are trained." In 1915, Wu Liande published an article in the Eastern Miscellany (东方杂志) entitled "On China's Urgent Need to Advance Medical Education," stating: "Paying attention to medical education in order to seek the benefit of the nation and the welfare of the people is truly an urgent task that our country cannot delay." This demonstrated his strong sense of social responsibility and remarkable foresight. In February of the same year, 21 Chinese doctors, led by Wu Liande, established the Chinese Medical Association in Shanghai; Wu Liande served as Secretary and was appointed to found the Chinese Medical Journal and serve as its Editor-in-Chief.
During his time in China, he led the founding of more than 20 hospitals and medical schools. Among these, the most landmark was the establishment of the Beijing Central Hospital (北京中央医院). In 1915, Wu Liande proposed establishing a modern hospital in the city of Beijing for the common people, and he wanted to make it a model平民 hospital, thereby promoting the scientificization of medicine. Amidst turbulent times, he worked with extreme frugality on the one hand, and on the other hand, he strived to raise funds. During more than four years of hard work, he accepted no salary or compensation. In 1918, the Beijing Central Hospital (the predecessor of today's Peking University People's Hospital) was officially put into use, with Wu Liande serving as its first director. This was the first comprehensive Western medicine hospital financed and managed by Chinese people themselves, marking a solid step forward in China's modern medical and health care cause.
Compiling medical history, promoting medical exchange
Ascending to the second floor of the former residence, one immediately faces the "International Exchange Hall." The hall's furnishings restore a living scene, with bookshelves, sofas, side tables, and other furniture, as if one can feel the everyday warmth of Wu Liande receiving guests and engaging in scholarly work here. On the central wall, a large photograph catches the eye — a group photo taken at the International Plague Conference in 1911. The conference gathered 34 infectious disease experts from 11 countries, with Wu Liande serving as Conference Chairman. This was the first international academic symposium on plague prevention and control, and also the first international academic conference held in Chinese history. It propelled Chinese medicine onto the international stage, and the conference report became a classic in epidemiology.
In a glass display case standing quietly opposite this photograph, a thick English volume comes into view. This is the magnum opus An History of Chinese Medicine, co-compiled by Wu Liande and medical historian Wang Jimin (王吉民) over 16 years and published in 1932. This book can be regarded as a work by two experts to vindicate Chinese medicine. In 1913, the American medical historian Garrison completed An Introduction to the History of Medicine, a book of more than 700 pages, but the discussion of Chinese medical history took up less than one page and contained many errors. This book soon became an authoritative textbook on medical history and was reprinted many times. After reading this book, Wu Liande immediately wrote to Garrison, asking why he had given so little introduction to Chinese medicine and such incorrect evaluations. Garrison replied: "Chinese medicine may have its strengths, but I have not seen it described in Western languages; the scant half page of material is still the work of foreigners; with no references available, it was difficult to set forth a theory, and the brevity and errors are not my fault." Wu Liande was deeply shaken, and immediately contacted Wang Jimin, who was also greatly moved. To "preserve the national essence and correct foreign views," the two decided to co-author An History of Chinese Medicine. The first part, written by Wang Jimin, sorts out the development of traditional Chinese medicine, while the second part, written by Wu Liande, discusses the introduction of modern medicine into China. This project was vast and difficult; the two extensively collected materials and, with scientific concepts and detailed historical data, comprehensively introduced to the world the history of Chinese medical development. Sociologist Pan Guangdan (潘光旦) commented on this book: "From now on, the old and new medical circles can gain further mutual understanding and cooperation: the former can know that the contributions of the ancients are by no means few, and the latter can also know that purely empirical knowledge is unreliable, and that without scientific methods of sifting and rectification, old learning may inevitably end up being eliminated."
Throughout his life, Wu Liande adhered to the maxim "What is received from others should be used for the world" (得之于人，用之于世), dedicating everything he had learned and acquired selflessly to the people. When he died in 1960, The Times of London said in his obituary that Wu Liande was "a hero and an almost legendary figure in the medical world, to whom the world is more widely indebted than it knows."
Return to TopBy: 中央社会工作部副部长、国家信访局局长 李文章
The petitioning system is an important institutional arrangement for our Party to exercise power for the people and rely on the people. Implementing the petitioning system and doing petitioning work well concerns the vital interests of the people and the overall harmony and stability of society, and the key lies in the implementation of responsibility. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has persisted in taking the implementation of the petitioning work responsibility system as an important lever for strengthening and improving the people’s petitioning work, formulated and issued the “Regulations on Petitioning Work” and the “Measures for Implementing the Petitioning Work Responsibility System,” actively promoted the construction of a petitioning work responsibility system of “having power must have responsibility, power and responsibility are consistent, having responsibility must be assumed, and losing responsibility must be held accountable,” continuously tightened and consolidated the petitioning work responsibilities of all regions and departments, and provided a strong institutional guarantee for promoting the high-quality development of petitioning work on the new journey of the new era.
Implementing the petitioning work responsibility system is an inevitable requirement for establishing and practicing a correct outlook on political performance.
The outlook on political performance is a fundamental issue, concerning establishing the Party for the public good and exercising power for the people. As an important part of the Party’s mass work, petitioning work is an important task for the Party and government to understand public sentiment, gather public wisdom, safeguard public interests, and consolidate public support, reflecting the high unity of the Party’s stand and the people’s stand. Implementing the petitioning work responsibility system is the concrete practice in the petitioning field of the correct outlook on political performance that “achieves political performance for the people, achieves political performance through solid work.” Its essential requirement is to proceed from the political nature and people’s nature of petitioning work, adhere to the overall leadership of the Party and take the people as the center, resolve problems and defuse contradictions on the spot in a timely manner according to law, and effectively transform the political requirement of “establishing the Party for the public good and exercising power for the people” into the concrete action of “resolving difficulties for the people and sharing concerns for the Party.”
Implementing the petitioning work responsibility system is the due meaning of building political loyalty and practicing the Two Upholds (liǎng gè wéihù - “Two Upholds,” upholding Xi Jinping’s core position on the Party Central Committee and in the Party as a whole, and upholding the authority and centralized unified leadership of the Party Central Committee). General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that what plays a decisive role in establishing and practicing a correct outlook on political performance is Party spirit. Whether Party spirit is pure ultimately depends on whether the political stance is high, whether political responsibility is strong, and whether political responsibility is firmly shouldered. The “Regulations on Petitioning Work” clarifies the important duties and missions of petitioning work in serving the overall work of the Party and the state, safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of the masses, defusing prominent petitioning issues, and promoting social harmony and stability, fully indicating that petitioning work is by no means a general operational task, but an important political task related to popular support and testing whether the outlook on political performance is correct. If the responsibilities for petitioning work are not firmly nor finely implemented, if there is prevarication and perfunctory behavior toward the reasonable demands of the masses, it not only damages the vital interests of the masses but also damages the Party’s image and credibility in the eyes of the masses, and even affects the mass foundation of the Party’s long-term governance. This requires that we must raise the political stance, strengthen political responsibility, deeply understand the extreme importance of implementing the petitioning work responsibility system, adhere to the principle of “same responsibility of the Party and government, dual responsibility for one post, territorial management and graded responsibility, whoever is in charge is responsible,” ensure that the various decisions and arrangements of the Party Central Committee on petitioning work are implemented without discount, and with concrete actions and solid results deeply comprehend the decisive significance of the Two Establishments (liǎng gè quèlì - “Two Establishments,” establishing Xi Jinping’s core position on the Party Central Committee and in the Party as a whole, and establishing the guiding position of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era), and resolutely achieve the Two Upholds.
Implementing the petitioning work responsibility system is a core measure for adhering to the original aspiration of serving the people and committing to benefiting the people. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized that Communists must remember that benefiting the people is the greatest political performance, and must take how many good deeds and practical matters they have done for the common people as an important standard for testing political performance. As early as when working in Fujian, General Secretary Xi Jinping clearly pointed out that the primary meaning of petitioning work lies in always regarding oneself as a member of the people and keeping one’s heart close to the people. Petitioning work is connected to the Party committee and government on one side and the masses on the other. It is the most realistic and direct mass work, the “bridge of hearts” between the Party and government and the masses. Resolving difficulties for the people and sharing concerns for the Party are the political responsibilities that petitioning work cannot shirk. Implementing the petitioning work responsibility system, fundamentally speaking, transforms the mission and sentiment of “keeping one’s heart close to the people” into an institutional arrangement with clear powers and responsibilities, standardized operation, and strong supervision, and transforms the purpose consciousness of serving the people into concrete results and practical effects of solving the urgent, difficult, and anxious problems of the masses. History and practice have proven that the more firmly the petitioning work responsibilities are consolidated, the more thoroughly the demands of the masses are resolved; the tighter the chain of responsibility, the more solid the effectiveness of serving the people. This requires that we must always stand firm on the people’s stand, take whether the masses are satisfied, happy, and agreeable as the fundamental standard for testing work, promote problem-solving through responsibility implementation, win the trust of the masses through problem-solving, truly do the work to the hearts of the masses, practice the original aspiration and mission in resolving difficulties for the people, and show responsibility and commitment in sharing concerns for the Party.
Implementing the petitioning work responsibility system is an important way to prevent and defuse contradictions and risks and maintain social harmony and stability. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that security is the prerequisite for development, and development is the guarantee for security; without security and stability, everything else is impossible. Petitioning work is at the forefront of contacting the masses and the first line of defusing contradictions. It is the “early warning device” for perceiving social risks and the “pressure relief valve” for defusing social contradictions, playing an irreplaceable important role in preventing and defusing contradictions and risks and maintaining social harmony and stability. The letters and visits of the masses reflect interest demands, refract governance levels, and test responsibility and commitment. Promoting the implementation of petitioning work responsibilities means transforming the Party’s political advantages, organizational advantages, and advantages in close contact with the masses into governance effectiveness in resolving people’s concerns, defusing contradictions, preventing risks, and maintaining stability, striving to defuse conflicts and disputes at the grassroots and in the bud, preventing small problems from dragging into big problems, preventing general problems from evolving into prominent petitioning issues, achieving “small matters not leaving the village, big matters not leaving the town, contradictions not being handed upward.” This requires that we must coordinate development and security, earnestly fulfill the important duty of petitioning departments to maintain political security and social stability, promote petitioning work to better integrate into the overall social governance, run the responsibility system through the entire process of source defusion, diversified defusion, and orderly defusion of conflicts and disputes, eliminate potential risks and build a security barrier through responsibility implementation, and consolidate a stable foundation for high-quality economic and social development.
Unswervingly implement the petitioning work responsibility system in all aspects and entire process of the legalization of petitioning work.
Promoting the legalization of petitioning work is a major reform task deployed by the Third and Fourth Plenary Sessions of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, an important measure to fully implement the “Regulations on Petitioning Work,” and a common responsibility of all levels and departments. To achieve the goal of “every appeal of the masses is handled, and handled according to law,” the key is to run the responsibility system through the “five legalizations” of prevention, acceptance, handling, supervision and accountability, and maintenance of order, truly achieving clear powers and responsibilities, standardized procedures, and strong accountability, ensuring clear rights and responsibilities, a clear bottom line, handling according to law, good order, and satisfaction of the masses.
Focusing on the legalization of prevention, consolidate the grassroots source governance responsibility of territorial areas. The grassroots are the source of petitions and also the key to solving petitioning issues. Most petitioning problems arise at the grassroots. Implementing source governance responsibility and defusing contradictions at the source has the lowest cost, smallest risk, and best effect. Promoting the legalization of prevention means strictly implementing the territorial management responsibility of Party committees and governments at all levels and functional departments as well as the industry competent responsibility, through institutionalized and mechanized methods, to the greatest extent prevent and reduce the occurrence of contradictions from the source, and defuse conflicts and disputes that may trigger petitioning issues at the grassroots and in the bud. To implement this goal requirement, all regions and departments must adhere to decision-making according to law and handling affairs according to law, strictly implement the social stability risk assessment mechanism for major decisions, strengthen asking the people for needs, asking the people for advice, and asking the people for results, ensure that all work conforms to the law, conforms to regular patterns, and conforms to reality, effectively preventing and reducing the occurrence of policy-related and group-based issues. Must adhere to and develop the Fengqiao Experience (Fēngqiáo jīngyàn - “Fengqiao Experience,” a grassroots conflict resolution model originating in Fengqiao, Zhejiang) in the new era, build a normal and long-term mechanism for investigating and defusing conflicts and disputes, coordinate the role of grassroots comprehensive management centers and petitioning reception centers, timely and properly resolve the urgent, difficult, and anxious issues as well as nascent and tendency problems of the masses, truly discover contradictions early and defuse them small, strictly prevent accumulation transformation, overflow, and escalation.
Focusing on the legalization of acceptance, consolidate the procedural advancement responsibility of petitioning departments. Acceptance is the “first kilometer” of handling petitioning matters, a key link in clarifying the main body of handling responsibility and determining the handling pathway and procedure. Promoting the legalization of acceptance means strictly implementing the procedural advancement responsibility of petitioning departments, achieving a clear distinction of nature and clear jurisdiction, transferring and supervising in place, ensuring that petitioning matters can go through and complete the legalized “roadmap,” and guaranteeing substantive resolution through procedural advancement. To implement this goal requirement, petitioning departments at all levels must comprehensively and accurately register and accept petitioning matters, carefully distinguish the petitioning appeals of the masses, implement the requirements of “three non-acceptances” (sān ge bù yǔ shòulǐ - “three non-acceptances,” matters that should not be accepted: those not within the scope, those not meeting jurisdictional requirements, and those that have been properly handled and revisited without new facts or reasons) and “two no-longer-acceptances” (liǎng ge bù zài shòulǐ - “two no-longer-acceptances,” matters that have been lawfully concluded and no longer accepted without new reasons), achieving precise diversion and precise transfer. Must strictly implement the responsibility of first reception and first handling, whoever first handles must follow up, for difficult and complex petitioning issues and matters where functional departments handle inadequately, tackle firmly and follow up to the end, track and supervise the defusion work, promote the lawful and orderly operation of petitioning matters. Must strictly standardize the issuance of notification documents, let the masses clearly understand through what pathway, according to what legal provisions, and following what procedure their appeals will be processed and resolved, ensuring that the masses have a document in hand and an expectation in mind when petitioning, and consciously petition according to legal procedures and the “roadmap.”
Focusing on the legalization of handling, consolidate the substantive defusion responsibility of functional departments. The effectiveness of petitioning work ultimately depends on the actual results of resolving the lawful and reasonable appeals of the masses. The key to promoting substantive defusion of issues lies in functional departments performing duties according to law. Promoting the legalization of handling means further urging functional departments to handle petitioning matters within their responsibilities strictly according to legal procedures and time limits. To implement this goal requirement, the organs and units that have the authority to handle must adhere to the priority of mediation, actively build a diversified mediation and defusion mechanism, comprehensively use various means such as people’s mediation, administrative mediation, and judicial mediation, guide petitioners to defuse conflicts and disputes through mediation, reconciliation and negotiation. Must adhere to classified handling according to law, strictly follow the six types of classified handling methods specified in the “Regulations on Petitioning Work,” accurately distinguish different situations, introduce into corresponding procedures for handling according to law, and safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the masses. Must adhere to substantive defusion, comprehensively use legal, policy, economic, administrative means and methods such as education, mediation, and guidance, solve the lawful and reasonable interest appeals of the masses, ensure substantive defusion in place through procedural standardization, truly achieve “case closed, matter settled, people reconciled,” withstanding the test of law, history, and the masses.
Focusing on the legalization of supervision and accountability, consolidate the precise effectiveness supervision responsibility of supervisory departments. Effective supervision and precise accountability are important guarantees for promoting the implementation of petitioning work responsibilities. Party committees and governments at all levels, the joint conference on petitioning work, petitioning departments, and functional departments all have supervisory responsibilities. The “Regulations on Petitioning Work” makes comprehensive and systematic institutional arrangements around “who supervises, how to supervise, whose accountability, what to hold accountable.” The “Regulations of the Communist Party of China on Disciplinary Actions” newly adds Article 135, which specifically stipulates disciplinary actions for failing to perform or incorrectly performing petitioning work duties. Promoting the legalization of supervision and accountability means strictly implementing relevant institutional regulations, handling in accordance with regulations, disciplines, and laws the illegal and disciplinary acts and dereliction of duty in the petitioning field. To implement this goal requirement, must give play to the supervisory role of petitioning departments and disciplinary inspection and supervision departments, increase the intensity of evaluation and inspection of the standardization of petitioning work, timely discover and correct prominent issues such as “should accept but not accept, should handle but not handle, should hold accountable but not hold accountable, should investigate but not investigate,” earnestly fulfill the suggestion of proposing improvement of work, improvement of policies, and holding responsible. Must focus on forming joint work force, promote the two-way interpenetration of petitioning supervision with disciplinary inspection and supervision, inspection and patrol, and cadre supervision mechanisms, and timely hand over clues to issues when petitioning work duties are poorly performed and serious problems exist. Must strengthen the application of supervision results, timely notify and expose typical and universal problems found in petitioning work, give play to the warning and deterrent effect, and force work implementation in place through accountability implementation in place.
Focusing on the legalization of maintaining order, consolidate the law enforcement responsibility of political and legal organs. The “Regulations on Petitioning Work” not only stipulates the procedures and requirements for various organs and units to handle petitioning issues in accordance with regulations and laws, but also clarifies the rights and obligations of petitioners to express appeals through legal channels and procedures. Promoting the legalization of maintaining order means adhering to the principle of unity of rights and obligations, strengthening the “two-way standardization” of petitioning work behavior and mass petitioning behavior, handling illegal acts according to law, and effectively maintaining good petitioning order. To implement this goal requirement, must strictly implement measures to further standardize the registration of mass visits, strengthen the legal publicity and education of the masses, do a good job in pathway guidance, legal explanation and reasoning, and hardship assistance according to law, guide the masses to petition lawfully, civilly, and orderly; must standardize petitioning work behavior according to law, guide all regions to focus on resolving the interest appeals of the masses, resolutely correct acts of blocking, intercepting, and stopping the normal visits of the masses, effectively guarantee the petitioning rights of the masses; must severely crack down on illegal acts in petitioning activities, for acts such as causing disturbance, harassing order, persistent and vexatious petitioning, these shall be handled by political and legal organs according to law, establish a clear orientation of petitioning according to law and safeguarding rights according to law, form a good atmosphere in the whole society of handling affairs according to law, encountering problems finding the law, solving problems using the law, and defusing contradictions relying on the law.
Adopt multiple measures simultaneously to promote the implementation of the petitioning work responsibility system.
General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized that the vitality of institutions lies in implementation. To promote the implementation of the petitioning work responsibility system, we must not only make great efforts to establish institutions and set rules, but also make great efforts to implement and enforce. We must make good use of important means such as the joint conference on petitioning work, consolidating the responsibility of leading cadres, and assessment and supervision, to ensure that the advantages of the petitioning system are effectively transformed into governance effectiveness.
Make good use of the joint conference mechanism to promote implementation. The joint conference on petitioning work mechanism is an important lever for strengthening the Party’s leadership over petitioning work. At present, this mechanism has achieved full coverage at the provincial, municipal, county, and township levels. Further improve and perfect the joint conference on petitioning work mechanism, strengthen institutional construction, improve procedural rules, standardize operational procedures, promote the substantive operation of joint conferences at all levels, ensure normal operation and efficient performance. Further strengthen the responsibility of member units to “systematically grasp and grasp systems,” jointly tackle and resolve difficult and complex issues, promote the optimization of policy supply, and batch-resolve mass petitioning issues from the policy level. The joint conference on petitioning work at all levels and its office must earnestly perform their duties of overall coordination, overall advancement, and supervision and implementation, further improve supporting mechanisms such as information assessment, matter assignment, and follow-up supervision, connect the whole chain of source prevention of contradictions, coordinated handling, and defusion and handling, form a closed loop of work, promote the improvement of the petitioning work pattern of unified leadership of the Party committee, government organization and implementation, coordination of the joint conference on petitioning work, overall guidance of the social work department, promotion of the petitioning department, and joint management by all parties.
Strengthen the responsibility of leading cadres to promote implementation. The “Regulations on Petitioning Work” clearly stipulates the principle of “same responsibility of the Party and government, dual responsibility for one post.” Leading cadres at all levels must earnestly fulfill their petitioning work responsibilities, regularly study petitioning work, regularly read and handle mass letters and online petitions, receive mass visits, and take charge of cases to defuse prominent issues strongly reflected by the masses, not only responsible for the specific operational work of their positions but also responsible for the petitioning work tasks that their positions should undertake. Leading cadres receiving visits and going to the grassroots is an important institutional arrangement personally advocated, promoted, and demonstrated by General Secretary Xi Jinping. Leading cadres at all levels must stand firm on the people’s stand, consciously carry forward the fine style of “going down to the grassroots level” (sì xià jīcéng - “four go-downs to the grassroots,” a campaign promoting leading cadres to go to the grassroots for publicity, research, reception, and site handling), take the lead in receiving visits, going to the grassroots, and taking charge of cases, resolutely oppose formalism problems such as false reception and paper reception, go deep into the grassroots frontline to contact the masses, timely discover and solve the concrete difficulties in the production and life of the masses. Petitioning departments at all levels must smooth and standardize channels for the expression of mass appeals and the protection of rights and interests, strengthen the random inspection and inspection of leading cadres receiving visits and taking charge of cases, promote the normalization and institutionalization of leading cadres receiving visits and taking charge of cases, effectively solve problems at the first time and defuse at the first location, strongly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the masses.
Optimize differentiated assessment to promote implementation. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized the importance of perfecting the differentiated assessment and evaluation system to improve the targetedness and scientific nature of assessment. The assessment of petitioning work is a “weather vane” for strengthening and improving petitioning work and raising overall quality and efficiency. In recent years, the National Administration for Letters and Visits (国家信访局) has focused on the theme of legalization of petitioning work to continuously promote differentiated assessment of petitioning work, achieving positive results. Petitioning departments at all levels must deepen reform according to legalization requirements, further optimize the setting of assessment indicators, take the correction of problems such as “should accept but not accept, should handle but not handle, should hold accountable but not hold accountable, should investigate but not investigate” as the main measurement indicators, carry out differentiated and multi-dimensional assessment, promote all regions and departments to further focus their main energy on resolving mass petitioning issues according to law and safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of the masses according to law, continuously raise the level of legalization of petitioning work.
Strengthen supervision and inspection to promote implementation. Supervision and inspection are important means to promote the implementation of petitioning system reform measures and solve prominent petitioning issues. Petitioning departments at all levels must adhere to and improve effective mechanisms and methods formed in recent years such as stationing research, sectional scheduling, and field inspection, strengthen problem orientation, go deep into the grassroots frontline, continuously improve the quality and efficiency of supervision and inspection. Firmly grasp supervision and inspection as the focus of work, take standardizing the handling of petitioning matters and effectively safeguarding the rights and interests of the masses as the focus, strengthen supervision and inspection of key and difficult issues, drive the overall level improvement through breakthroughs in key points. Pay attention to improving the method of supervision, make good use of measures such as listing for supervision, interview notification, keep close watch on problems found during supervision and not let go, grasp firmly to the end, ensure that every matter has a resolution and every incident has a response, truly use supervision and inspection to promote the implementation of petitioning work responsibilities and the implementation of institutions.
Return to TopBy: 季加孚
Ji Jiafu (季加孚) is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (中国工程院), a Boya Chair Professor at Peking University, and director of the Peking University Cancer Research Center (北京大学肿瘤研究中心). He led the founding of a comprehensive gastric cancer diagnosis-and-treatment system centered on surgery and, through a series of original studies, established multiple new international standards for the diagnosis and treatment of gastric cancer. He previously served as president of the International Gastric Cancer Association. He has received the second prize of the State Science and Technology Progress Award (国家科技进步奖), the Guanghua Engineering Science and Technology Award (光华工程科技奖), and the Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation Science and Technology Progress Award (何梁何利基金科学与技术进步奖), among others.
Gastric cancer is a major global public health problem. Statistics from the International Agency for Research on Cancer's GLOBOCAN 2024 database show that in 2024 there were approximately 980,000 new cases of gastric cancer and approximately 642,000 deaths worldwide, both ranking fifth in the incidence spectrum and in the cause-of-death spectrum of malignant tumors. New gastric cancer cases in China account for approximately 34.9% of the global total, and the disease burden ranks first globally. Around 2010, the proportion of Chinese gastric cancer patients with locally advanced or advanced disease exceeded 70%, and the five-year survival rate was around 35%, showing a significant gap compared with high-incidence countries such as Japan and South Korea. Through more than 30 years of systematic tackling of key problems by China's gastric cancer academic community, the long-term survival of gastric cancer patients in China has achieved a stepwise improvement: first, standardized D2 radical gastrectomy has been popularized nationwide, surgical mortality has fallen substantially, and the five-year survival rate of the population receiving standardized surgery has stabilized above 52%; second, the five-year follow-up data of the RESOLVE study led by China confirm that perioperative (that is, the period around surgery, including the three stages of preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative) chemotherapy can raise the five-year overall survival rate of locally advanced gastric cancer to 60% and reduce the risk of death by 21%, optimizing global perioperative chemotherapy standards with original Chinese evidence; third, having entered the era of immunotherapy, China led the completion of the phase III ASTRUM-006 study of perioperative immunotherapy for gastric cancer and innovatively confirmed the chemotherapy-free regimen of “neoadjuvant immunotherapy combined with chemotherapy + postoperative single-agent immunotherapy maintenance,” opening a new path to long-term cure for locally advanced gastric cancer and reshaping the global landscape of perioperative immunotherapy.
The evolution of diagnosis and treatment standards
Looking back at the evolution of gastric cancer diagnosis and treatment standards over more than a century, three shifts in the center of gravity of development can be clearly identified. From the end of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century, Western scholars pioneered radical surgery for gastric cancer, established the TNM staging framework based on anatomy, and laid the foundation of the modern gastric cancer diagnosis-and-treatment system. After the 1960s, Japanese scholars delved into the anatomy of perigastric lymphatic drainage, established the D2 lymph node dissection technical system, and refined pathological staging standards through the continuously revised Rules for the Handling of Gastric Cancer (《胃癌处理规约》); in the same period, they took the lead in carrying out endoscopic mucosal resection of early gastric cancer, laying the standard framework for endoscopic treatment. In the subsequent half century, Japan in effect dominated the formulation of global gastric cancer surgical standards. Entering the second decade of the 21st century, South Korea, relying on its nationwide screening system, accumulated experience in early gastric cancer treatment and high-level evidence on laparoscopic minimally invasive surgery, while China, with its large-scale clinical cohorts, standardized clinical trials, and original-research drug breakthroughs, jointly drove global gastric cancer research into a new landscape.
However, core problems remain in moving gastric cancer diagnosis and treatment from pluralistic co-governance to unified standards. China, Japan, and South Korea still differ in screening starting age, surgical methods and quality control, application of molecular classification, and perioperative treatment pathways: the Western staging framework insufficiently incorporates the tumor biological characteristics of Asian high-incidence populations; the Japanese technical system is highly dependent on domestic physician training and pathological examination systems, limiting its applicability for cross-national dissemination; and China and South Korea are not fully consistent in clinical study endpoint setting, medical resource allocation, and the background prevalence of Helicobacter pylori. Establishing a new type of international standard that bridges differences, accommodates different resource levels, and covers whole-course disease management is the core question that the contemporary gastric cancer academic community must answer.
A deep foundation already exists for establishing new diagnosis and treatment standards
The feasibility of the Chinese gastric cancer academic community's promotion of new international standards is built on multidimensional capabilities accumulated through more than 30 years of systematic work.
At the level of strategic resources, since the 1990s China's research teams have made forward-looking arrangements, taking the lead domestically in establishing a large-scale, standardized, strictly quality-controlled gastric cancer biobank covering the standardized collection and preservation of surgical tissues and paired blood samples, integrating pathological, treatment, and follow-up data, and forming a whole-process information chain from operating room to laboratory to database. Relying on this platform, they have systematically conducted research on gastric cancer molecular classification in the Chinese population, drug resistance mechanisms, and screening of new targets; together with the Biomedical Pioneering Innovation Center of Peking University (北京大学生物医学前沿创新中心), they published in Science a pan-cancer single-cell atlas of tumor-infiltrating T cells, providing a theoretical basis for the development of immunotherapy targets. In parallel, they built a national multicenter clinical big-data collaborative network covering dozens of diagnosis-and-treatment centers, achieving complementarity between real-world evidence and prospective trials and consolidating the foundation for the production of high-quality clinical evidence.
At the level of surgical technique, systematic construction from technology introduction and local standardization to intelligent quality control has been completed. From the 1990s to the early 21st century, through systematic anatomical research and clinical validation, the patterns of perigastric lymphatic drainage in Chinese patients were clarified, and through nationwide surgical demonstrations and standardized training, D2 lymph node dissection was transformed from a specialized technique of a few centers into a standardized procedure in general use nationwide. The monograph Standardized Surgery for Gastric Cancer (《胃癌规范化手术》) was published, which, with membrane anatomy and lymph node distribution patterns as its core, put forward the concept of modular surgery for gastric cancer, decomposing complex operative procedures into operating units that can be learned in a standardized manner and greatly shortening the surgical learning curve. After decades of dissemination, the proportion of radical gastric cancer surgery in China has risen from less than 20% to more than 90%, perioperative surgical mortality has fallen from 3.9% to 0.24%, and the level of homogenization of surgical treatment for gastric cancer has markedly improved. Entering the minimally invasive era, China led the CLASS series of multicenter clinical trials, systematically verifying the oncological safety and long-term efficacy of laparoscopic minimally invasive procedures in Chinese patients with locally advanced gastric cancer, providing high-level evidence for the standardized application of minimally invasive techniques. In the same period, a national quality-control system for gastric cancer surgery was established, converting core indicators such as lymph node dissection, safe margin distance, and operative plane into quantitative evaluation standards, building a surgical quality-control database and a complication registration system, and taking the lead in exploring AI-assisted quality-control technology, providing technical support for the promotion and international output of surgical standards.
At the level of perioperative treatment evidence, the RESOLVE study is of milestone significance. The study included 27 centers nationwide and, with a randomized controlled design, confirmed that perioperative chemotherapy can significantly reduce the risk of tumor recurrence, prolong patients' disease-free survival and overall survival, and has a controllable safety profile. The final study results and the five-year follow-up data were both published in The Lancet Oncology, and the study's conclusions are solid and reliable. The results were incorporated into the CSCO (Chinese Society of Clinical Oncology) guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of gastric cancer as a Level I recommendation, and also promoted updates to internationally authoritative guidelines such as the NCCN (National Comprehensive Cancer Network) and ESMO (European Society for Medical Oncology). This marks China's completion, in the field of perioperative treatment of locally advanced gastric cancer, of the identity transformation from evidence follower to original producer.
At the level of drug treatment innovation, China's research teams have deeply led the gastric cancer clinical development of cadonilimab, the world's first PD-1/CTLA-4 bispecific antibody approved for marketing. This drug, independently developed by a Chinese pharmaceutical enterprise, relies on the synergistic mechanism of dual immune checkpoint blockade and has shown outstanding efficacy in combination chemotherapy for advanced gastric cancer. The phase III clinical study COMPASSION-15, led to completion by Chinese teams, confirmed that this regimen can significantly reduce the risk of death in the overall population, and the benefit is not limited by PD-L1 expression level, filling the gap of insufficient immunotherapy benefit in the PD-L1-low-expression population. The research results were published in Nature Medicine in 2024, and in September of the same year the drug was approved for the first-line treatment indication of advanced gastric cancer, becoming the world's first PD-1/CTLA-4 bispecific antibody approved for a gastric cancer indication. The entire chain of this drug, from target design to clinical trials, was completed in China, marking that China's gastric cancer drug research and development has entered the stage of original innovation and leadership from generic imitation and following. At the same time, Chinese teams have advanced in parallel exploratory research moving immunotherapy forward into the perioperative period, accumulating evidence for embedding immunotherapy into the whole-course management of gastric cancer, and a transformation cycle of “original-research drug—Chinese evidence—international standard” has initially taken shape.
At the level of academic governance, in 2017 the Chinese scholar Ji Jiafu was elected president of the International Gastric Cancer Association (IGCA), the first Chinese national to head the association; in the same year, the 12th International Gastric Cancer Congress was held in Beijing, attracting more than 3,800 scholars from 48 countries, marking that Chinese scholars began to deeply lead the global academic agenda. The team's series of research results have been successively published in top international journals such as Science, The Lancet, Nature Medicine, JAMA, The Lancet Oncology, and the Journal of Clinical Oncology, and have received important awards including the second prize of the State Science and Technology Progress Award and the Chinese Medical Association Science and Technology Award (中华医学科技奖). The dual reserve of academic influence and governance capacity has consolidated the foundation for promoting the establishment of new international standards for gastric cancer diagnosis and treatment.
What are the new diagnosis and treatment standards?
The construction of new international standards does not negate the existing system; rather, it is a systematic integration and upgrade based on the anatomical staging framework, surgical and pathological norms, and comprehensive treatment evidence. Its core connotation can be defined from five dimensions.
First, the risk stratification of prevention and early-screening standards. Based on the epidemiological characteristics and resource accessibility of different regions, a tiered screening strategy should be established: in resource-abundant regions, promote serum pepsinogen combined with H. pylori antibody as primary screening, linked to careful examination by high-definition endoscopy and magnifying endoscopy, continuously raising the detection rate of early cancer; in resource-limited regions, provide basic screening programs centered on H. pylori testing to ensure coverage of basic early diagnosis. Incorporate H. pylori eradication into the core measures of primary prevention, push the gateway of diagnosis and treatment forward, and achieve an upgrade that gives equal weight to primary and secondary prevention.
Second, the integration of staging and classification standards. Going beyond the single anatomical dimension of traditional TNM staging, progressively integrate multimodal information such as radiomics, circulating tumor DNA liquid biopsy, and AI-assisted pathological evaluation to construct a composite staging system that fuses clinical staging with tumor biological behavior. Establish molecular classification standards adapted to Asian populations, and incorporate standardized testing of core biomarkers including microsatellite instability (MSI), HER2 amplification status, PD-L1 combined positive score (CPS), and Claudin 18.2 expression into routine diagnosis, so that treatment decisions are truly based on tumor biological characteristics.
Third, the parameterization of surgical quality-control standards. Convert core technical indicators of D2 radical gastrectomy—lymph node dissection, margin distance, operative plane, and others—into quantitative parameters that an AI quality-control platform can objectively evaluate, reducing subjective bias. Formulate standard procedures and an indication framework for function-preserving operations, giving consideration to both radicality and postoperative quality of life. At the same time, integrate the concept of enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) into perioperative management, forming a whole-course surgical management norm comprising preoperative prehabilitation, precise intraoperative operation, early postoperative rehabilitation, and long-term functional recovery.
Fourth, the stratified and integrated comprehensive treatment decision-making. Establish a whole-course treatment framework based on precise staging and molecular classification, with surgery as the core and perioperative treatment as the support. Clarify the preferred regimens and sequential timing of chemotherapy, radiotherapy, immunotherapy, and targeted therapy under different stages and different molecular subtypes. In light of differences among global regions, provide stratified recommendations that define the standard regimen, the minimum acceptable regimen, and the optimal exploratory regimen, so that treatment standards are adapted to health systems at different development levels.
Fifth, the completion of whole-course rehabilitation and survivorship management. Incorporate nutritional assessment and intervention, psychosocial support, and long-term follow-up into the core standards of diagnosis and treatment, breaking the traditional model of “emphasizing treatment and neglecting follow-up.” Establish long-term follow-up pathways after cure, covering recurrence monitoring, nutritional assessment, quality-of-life measurement, and second-primary-cancer screening, realizing the extension from tumor control to holistic patient health management.
Vigorously promote the international implementation of the new diagnosis and treatment standards
Upgrading from a Chinese solution to internationally applicable new standards requires a set of scientific, rigorous, implementable, and disseminable implementation pathways.
Build the discourse power of the new standards through the production of high-quality multicenter evidence. The authority of standards is rooted in solid evidence-based evidence. It is necessary to take the initiative in leading international multicenter randomized controlled trials, focusing on frontier fields with insufficient evidence such as perioperative immunotherapy combination regimens and precise treatment based on molecular classification, and, with rigorous design, produce confirmatory evidence that can rewrite global guidelines. Continue to participate deeply in and gradually lead the formulation of international guidelines such as NCCN and ESMO, incorporating China's original research results and clinical practice experience into the international recommendation framework. The quality and universality of evidence are the core cornerstone of the discourse power of standards.
Build a replicable implementation system through a full-chain technical closed loop. The disseminability of new standards depends on the replicability of the implementation system. Construct a complete technical closed loop of “standard protocol—standardized training—remote surgical guidance—AI quality-control feedback,” rely on network and computer vision technologies to break through geographical barriers, and achieve homogenization of surgical technique training and objectification of quality assessment globally. For low- and middle-income countries with high gastric cancer incidence, provide holistic solutions including surgical instrument configuration plans, standardized training courses, remote consultation platforms, and young-talent cultivation programs, promoting the systematic landing of the standards.
Build a global governance network for gastric cancer prevention and treatment. Leverage the network effects of platforms such as the International Gastric Cancer Association, initiate transnational collaborative alliances for prevention and treatment, and promote the institutionalization of multicenter research collaboration, data sharing, and technical exchange. Promote the gradual convergence of regional standards: starting from an East Asian consensus, gradually realize the mutual recognition and upgrading of the core gastric cancer diagnosis-and-treatment standards of China, Japan, and South Korea, and ultimately form an international norm for gastric cancer prevention and treatment adopted by international institutions.
Guarantee the sustained vitality of the new standards through globalized talent cultivation. The continuous operation of standards depends on the supply of qualified talent. Establish a global-facing training academy and digital platforms for standardized gastric cancer diagnosis and treatment, and systematically cultivate backbone clinical teams. Through models such as joint cultivation, overseas study, and distance education, supply professional talent to high-incidence countries, enabling the new standards to transform from written text into the “common technical language” of the global gastric cancer diagnosis and treatment field.
The core goal of establishing new international standards for gastric cancer diagnosis and treatment is to enable standardized diagnosis-and-treatment services to cover a broader patient population and to effectively improve the survival rate and quality of life of patients worldwide, especially in regions with high gastric cancer incidence. Over more than a century, every shift in the discourse power of gastric cancer diagnosis-and-treatment standards has corresponded to the deepening of human understanding of the disease and the expansion of treatment boundaries. After more than 30 years of systematic advancement from technology popularization and evidence accumulation to original innovation, China's gastric cancer academic community has realized a transformative leap from running behind to running neck and neck, and, in several key fields, taking the lead. This process is both the inherent requirement of Chinese medical science and technology achieving self-reliance and self-strengthening (科技自立自强) and of making contributions to the cause of human health, and a vivid practice of implementing the people-centered development philosophy (以人民为中心的发展思想).
Return to TopBy: 谢鹏
With the accelerated development of AI large models, multimodal reasoning, and intelligent agent applications, computing power is transitioning from a supporting resource to a strategic infrastructure as important as water and electricity. In March of this year, China’s daily token invocation volume surpassed 140 trillion, more than 1,000 times that of two years ago. However, the room for traditional electronic computing hardware to improve performance by shrinking transistor dimensions is narrowing, and pressures in bandwidth, latency, and power consumption are becoming increasingly prominent. Against this backdrop, photonic technology, using light as the information carrier, leverages its advantages of high speed, parallelism, and low loss to break through the physical constraints of traditional computing hardware, promising to provide a completely new physical path for building next-generation computing infrastructure.
The future of computing infrastructure is inseparable from “light.” Light possesses inherent properties such as ultra-high speed, ultra-large bandwidth, low power consumption, and low latency; what is particularly worth emphasizing is that light has a natural advantage in parallel transmission and processing—it can carry information across different dimensions such as wavelength, space, and time, analogous to multiple lanes allowing vehicles to travel in parallel, enabling an order-of-magnitude increase in the number of vehicles passing per unit time. Photonic technology is the means of converting these parallel and high-speed advantages of light into practical devices, systems, and engineering solutions. Its application value is rapidly extending from traditional optical communication to core areas such as data interconnection, optical switching, and even optical computing, and it is becoming an important development direction for next-generation computing infrastructure.
Transforming these physical advantages into actual computing power depends on continuous breakthroughs in core hardware carriers. This carrier is the “optical chip” (光芯片), which integrates multiple optical functional units onto a single chip—it is the key hardware fulcrum for photonic technology to move toward integration and large-scale deployment. Since the beginning of the 21st century, optical chips have undergone a leap from discrete devices to large-scale integration, with application potential gradually unfolding, laying a solid foundation for large-scale optoelectronic integrated computing. The United States and various European Union countries have all included the photonic integration industry in their national development strategic plans. Industrial giants led by Intel and academic institutions led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States have been continuously deepening their work in this field. In 2026, Nvidia accelerated its layout in the optical chip industry by investing in photonic technology companies such as Lumentum and Coherent, planning to introduce photonic technology into next-generation GPU chips and computing systems. An international consensus has now formed: optical chips are expected to extend Moore’s Law and are a key technology for breaking through high-performance computing bottlenecks, with forward-looking, radiative, and driving effects. “Light” is becoming one of the core solutions to the challenge of new-quality computing power (新质算力).
Leveraging the superiority of photonics to open new space for computing power
In existing computing systems, photonic technology has already 崭露头角 (zhǎn lù tóu jiǎo - "reveal one's ability," to show promise) in the information interconnection segment. Optical modules in data centers have adopted a hybrid architecture of “transmitting with light, processing with electricity,” and their superiority has been repeatedly demonstrated in industry. If we go a step further and extend photonic technology from communication interconnection to data handling and computing, it can open up new space for building a new generation of optoelectronic integrated computing infrastructure. In an article titled “Photonics, Photon Technology, and Photon Industry” published in 1979, Qian Xuesen pointed out: “One area where photon technology definitely needs to advance is the photon computer. In principle, it is estimated that the computing capability of a photon computer can be a hundred, a thousand, or even ten thousand times that of an electronic computer.” In an article titled “Progress in Optical Computing Technology” published in the journal Chinese Laser in 1987, Academician Wang Zhijiang of the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, pointed out: “Optical computing technology uses light waves as information carriers, and the speed of information propagation is the speed of light; optical computing technology can fully exploit the intrinsic parallelism of light. Various parts of an optical computing system, such as input/output, data storage, and data processing, can all have a parallel structure.” The reason why photonic technology can bring about an improvement in computing performance lies in its ability to unleash the enormous potential of light in parallel transmission and processing. “Parallelism” is precisely the concentrated manifestation of the superiority of photonics—it can handle and transport large volumes of data simultaneously, thereby increasing system throughput. Although the relevant scientific principles and technical routes have long been clear, this field has not achieved rapid breakthroughs over the past few decades. The main reason is that, at that time, the rapid development of electronic computing was already sufficient to meet the application needs of society. Because there was no huge gap in computing power demand from the industrial side, market and social capital naturally lacked the incentive to invest heavily in exploring new paths.
Optoelectronic synergy breaks through the “three walls” of computing power
As AI applications continue to deepen, computing power demand is rising by orders of magnitude. Electronic computing systems have long faced bottlenecks in I/O, memory access, and power consumption. Optoelectronic synergy can alleviate these constraints at different levels.
In terms of the “I/O wall” (input/output bandwidth bottleneck), the scale of GPU computing clusters is constantly expanding, and traditional electrical interconnections are struggling with bandwidth, transmission distance, and signal crosstalk. Light, with its advantages of high parallelism, low loss, and low crosstalk, can significantly improve the density and efficiency of data entering and exiting processors, helping to alleviate the “I/O wall” and break through the input/output bandwidth bottleneck.
In terms of the “memory access wall” (memory access latency bottleneck), the parameters and training data of large models are skyrocketing simultaneously, and the time processors wait for memory to fetch data is getting longer. The contradiction of “fast computing but underfed” is becoming increasingly prominent. After introducing optical technology, it is possible to combine large-scale optical switching and optical memory access architectures, allowing data to be transported at high speed between processors and storage systems, reducing access latency and energy consumption, and providing support for breaking through the “memory access wall.”
In terms of the “power consumption wall” (energy consumption and heat dissipation limit), inside computing nodes, intensive computing tasks bring enormous heat dissipation pressure, and the power consumption ceiling has become a major constraint on releasing more computing power. By deploying high-speed optical interconnects and highly parallel optical computing, constructing an optoelectronic hybrid integrated network can significantly reduce unit computing power consumption, and it is expected to break through the constraints that the “power consumption wall” imposes on computing power expansion.
Objectively speaking, introducing photonic technology into computing infrastructure does not mean replacing “all-electronic” with “all-optical”; rather, it means leveraging the respective advantages of light and electricity at different levels. For a considerable period, electronic technology will still play a fundamental role in logic control, precise computation, storage management, and software ecosystems, while photonic technology is more suited to undertaking tasks such as high-speed interconnection, data handling, and some highly parallel operations. A feasible path is to first let light play a role in inter-chip, inter-board, and inter-cabinet interconnection, then embed optical switching and optical memory access capabilities inside data centers, and further explore programmable optical computing units. This approach neither overturns the existing CPU, GPU, and data center ecosystem nor fails to match technological upgrading with industrial affordability. The rapid development of AI provides a broad stage for photonic technology. By introducing optical I/O, optical memory access, and optical computing, it can respond to the real pressures of AI on bandwidth, latency, and energy consumption, and also provides a new option for intelligent computing centers to shift from “stacking scale” to “improving efficiency.”
Improving the optoelectronic computing industry ecosystem
The key to moving the above technical path from the laboratory to large-scale deployment lies in truly integrating it into existing computing systems and solving the practical challenges of engineering and system integration. Introducing optical chips into computing infrastructure to empower a leap in computing power—the difficulty lies not in the high performance of individual device targets, but in whether the entire system can operate stably and reliably over a long period. Optical chips are sensitive to temperature drift and packaging processes. While fully releasing the natural advantages of optics, it is also necessary to maintain performance consistency and pass the tests of yield and cost. For future optoelectronic computing services to support large-scale AI applications, it is also necessary to establish a software ecosystem that effectively interfaces with existing algorithm frameworks, scheduling systems, and network protocols.
To this end, we should deepen the synergy between innovation chains and industrial chains, build a complete ecosystem around core devices, advanced packaging, and system integration, and promote the transformation of the computing power system from scale expansion to efficient supply. In the next step, we can focus on key links such as photonic integrated chips, core optoelectronic devices, advanced packaging, design tools, and testing instruments to improve the innovation ecosystem. We should promote stable collaboration among universities, research institutes, leading enterprises, and specialized and sophisticated “little giant” enterprises, carry out system verification in real scenarios such as intelligent computing centers, scientific computing, and industrial vision, and gradually improve the evaluation system and technical standards for optoelectronic hybrid computing power.
Looking back at history, the profound insights of predecessors such as Qian Xuesen and Wang Zhijiang into the potential of photonic technology were once regarded as distant scientific blueprints. Today, as AI drives continuous growth in computing power demand, this blueprint is entering a new stage of engineering verification and industrial cultivation. Discussing the value of “light” does not mean negating electronic computing, but rather searching for a better physical combination and system architecture in the face of new computing power demands. Looking to the future, promoting photonic technology into next-generation computing infrastructure requires both sustained breakthroughs in basic research and the support of industrial chain collaboration, application scenario traction, and standard systems. Steadily advancing along the direction of optoelectronic synergy is expected to provide new important support for building an efficient and sustainable computing power system.
(The author is a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences)
Return to TopBy: 闻效仪
Governance in the labor sphere is an important component of national governance, involving multiple aspects such as labor relations coordination, protection of workers' rights and interests, employment market regulation, worker skills development, labor dispute mediation and arbitration, and trade union grassroots governance. The workforce is the basic object of labor governance and also the principal force driving the modernization of labor governance. Changes in the scale, structure, employment methods, interest demands, and ideological concepts of the worker group inevitably require corresponding adjustments in the concepts, institutions, and methods of labor governance. The Ninth National Survey on the Status of the Workforce (第九次全国职工队伍状况调查) shows that the total number of workers nationwide exceeds 400 million, with an average age of 38.3 years. This large-scale workforce is currently undergoing continuous iteration and upgrading, accelerating transformation and reshaping. The original governance models and institutional systems in the labor sphere can no longer adapt to the new characteristics of the workforce, the new forms of employment, and the new demands of development. Proactively adapting to the new changes in the workforce and further improving the labor governance system is an inevitable requirement and a key measure for advancing the modernization of labor relations governance in the new era.
Changes in the workforce are driving the accelerated transformation of labor governance. Digital technology is reshaping industrial organization and employment forms. The manufacturing industry is accelerating its transformation and upgrading, emerging and future industries are continuously developing, and modern service industries, leveraging platforms, data, and algorithms, are breaking through traditional geographical and organizational boundaries, forming a networked ecosystem connecting consumers, business entities, and workers. New occupations and new positions are constantly emerging. Flexible employment and new forms of employment have become important channels for absorbing employment, increasing income, and meeting diversified employment needs. Currently, the scale of flexible employment personnel in China exceeds 200 million people, and workers in new forms of employment number approximately 84 million, accounting for about 21% of the total workforce. This means that the objects of labor governance have expanded from relatively stable, clearly bounded unit-based workers to diverse groups of workers who move across platforms, regions, and organizations.
The quality and developmental demands of the workforce have significantly improved. The Ninth National Survey on the Status of the Workforce shows that the average years of education for Chinese workers has reached 13.8 years, workers with high school education or above account for 85.0%, and workers with a bachelor's degree or above account for 35.5%. At the same time, the total number of skilled workers in China exceeds 220 million, of which high-skilled talents number over 72 million. The workforce is increasingly characterized by knowledge, skills, and digitalization. Workers no longer focus solely on employment opportunities and wage income, but place greater emphasis on career development, skill improvement, and value realization. Therefore, labor governance needs to expand from protecting basic labor rights and interests to promoting the comprehensive development of workers.
Workers are further transforming into the main body of labor governance. As workers' education levels rise, their awareness of rights, rule of law, and participation also continuously improve, and their agency in labor governance is increasingly strengthened. They are not only able to participate in enterprise decision-making and the formulation of labor rules through institutional channels such as workers' congresses, collective consultation, and open factory affairs, but can also rely on trade unions, industry organizations, and grassroots consultation platforms to express interests and demands, supervise the implementation of rules, and participate in conflict mediation. Particularly in the field of new forms of employment, workers such as couriers, online delivery riders, and ride-hailing drivers, leveraging their advantages of wide mobility, extensive contact with the masses, and quick problem detection, are becoming an important force in grassroots social governance. The construction of labor governance in the new era must fully respect the principal status of workers, deeply integrating rights protection, organizational cohesion, and governance participation.
The institutional adaptability of labor governance still needs to be strengthened. The diversification of employment forms poses challenges to traditional governance boundaries. New models such as platform employment, crowdsourced employment, and cooperative employment have broken the fixed paradigm of traditional labor relations, presenting new characteristics of blurred organizational boundaries, multiple governance entities, and extended chains of responsibility. However, most of China's existing labor institutional systems are built upon the foundation of fixed positions and stable labor relations. Moreover, the mechanisms for rights protection, trade union organization, and labor dispute handling, traditionally premised on the recognition of labor relations and supported by fixed units and stable workplaces, find it difficult to fully cover highly mobile and dispersed workers. How to reasonably delineate responsibility boundaries based on different labor forms, working time characteristics, and degrees of economic dependence has become a key issue in improving the labor governance system for the new era.
Technological innovation increases the risk of skill mismatch and divergence in development opportunities. The deep application of artificial intelligence technology across various industries can both create new jobs and improve labor productivity, but may also replace some repetitive, routine traditional positions, placing some workers under realistic pressure for job transformation and skill renewal. Differences among workers in educational foundation, digital capabilities, and training resources may further widen gaps in employment quality, income levels, and career development. This requires labor governance to break away from a passive model of after-the-fact remediation and build a long-term mechanism for skills upgrading, job transition, and developmental support that runs through workers' entire careers.
The risks to labor rights protection have become more complex and networked. Factors such as platform algorithms, pricing rules, labor quotas, outsourcing chains, and online evaluations interact with each other, causing labor disputes to extend from traditional issues like wage calculations and labor contracts to entirely new areas such as algorithm fairness, data rights, occupational injury, and labor intensity. At the same time, young workers' awareness of rights, equality, and online expression has significantly strengthened, making individual labor disputes highly prone to ferment through the internet and evolve into group public opinion risks. Faced with this reality, labor governance urgently needs to achieve governance upgrading – shifting from post-event handling to source prevention, from departmental solo efforts to multi-party collaborative co-governance, and from passively responding to individual cases to actively preventing and resolving systemic risks.
Improve the modernized labor governance system. Perfect the stratified and categorized protection system for workers' rights and interests. Targeting the differentiated characteristics of platform employment and flexible employment, refine the list of rights protection for new-type workers, and clarify unified baseline standards around key areas such as labor remuneration, rest and leave, occupational safety, injury protection, and dispute relief. Precisely define the rights and responsibilities boundaries of platform enterprises and cooperative employment entities, standardize employment benchmarks for new forms of employment, establish and perfect a whole-chain mechanism encompassing algorithm transparency, worker supervision, risk assessment, appeals, and error correction, achieving two-way coordination and positive interaction between digital technology development and worker rights protection.
Perfect the employment services, skills upgrading, and social security systems. Centering on the impact of artificial intelligence and industrial transformation on job structure, improve the lifelong vocational skills training system, with a focus on strengthening training for scarce skills, digital skills, and job-transfer skills, and push training resources to tilt toward ordinary workers and key employment groups. Standardize the construction of the human resources market and casual labor market, providing one-stop services including job matching, skills training, social insurance, and legal aid. Continuously expand the coverage of occupational injury protection, optimize policies for flexible employment personnel to participate in employee pension insurance and medical insurance, continuously expand the coverage of social security, and enhance the universality of social security.
Push the governance of labor disputes forward to an earlier stage. Strengthen the government's digital governance capability, integrate information resources such as labor inspection, mediation and arbitration, trade union services, and online public opinion, and establish mechanisms for monitoring, identifying, warning, and coordinating the handling of labor relations risks. Strengthen preemptive guidance on enterprise labor employment and algorithm management, resolving prominent issues such as wage arrears, excessive overtime, and illegal layoffs at the source. Perfect multi-level consultation and coordination mechanisms, give play to the role of trade unions in connecting with workers, organizing consultations, and participating in supervision, promote the implementation of the Fengqiao experience (枫桥经验) of the new era in the labor sphere, and perfect a dispute resolution system with mutual衔接 of mediation, arbitration, litigation, and legal aid, comprehensively improving the standardization and professionalization level of labor governance.
Build a labor governance community with broad worker participation. Establish and perfect the democratic management system of enterprises and public institutions with the workers' congress as the basic form, broaden the institutionalized channels for workers in new forms of employment to participate in platform rule consultation and grassroots public governance. Promote the formation of a governance pattern of shared responsibility, coordinated interests, and co-governance of risks among government, enterprises, industry associations, communities, and workers, realizing a transformation from one-way "managing workers" to "relying on workers for joint governance," continuously enhancing the inclusiveness, resilience, and effectiveness of labor governance in the new era.
(The author is Vice President of China University of Labor Relations (中国劳动关系学院).)
Return to TopBy: 秦国伟
Traditional villages are the living fossils of the Chinese nation’s agrarian civilization, bearing millennia of historical and cultural memory and local wisdom, and are non-renewable precious cultural heritage. The General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council’s Opinions on Strengthening the Protection and Inheritance of Historical and Cultural Heritage in Urban and Rural Construction (关于在城乡建设中加强历史文化保护传承的意见) clearly states that a scientific classification, strong protection, effective management urban and rural historical and cultural protection and inheritance system must be established. Currently, the protection of traditional villages has transcended the scope of single-building renovation, becoming a systematic governance project covering the division of rights and responsibilities, mass self-governance, interest coordination, and long-term maintenance. Improving the protection governance mechanism and solving grass-roots maintenance difficulties has important practical significance for building a co-construction, co-governance, and co-sharing rural governance pattern and advancing the construction of harmonious and beautiful villages.
The revitalization and inheritance of traditional villages is not only a strategic measure to safeguard the roots of Chinese civilization, but also an inherent requirement for perfecting the grass-roots governance system and promoting comprehensive rural revitalization. First, local heritage contains rich traditional governance resources. Historical carriers such as ancient ancestral halls, family precepts and clan rules, and local covenants embody the local ethics of 守望相助 (shǒu wàng xiāng zhù - “keep watch and help each other,” mutual assistance), 崇德向善 (chóng dé xiàng shàn - “honor virtue and aspire to goodness”), and being honest and trustworthy. These cultural genes flowing in the blood are irreplaceable precious resources for carrying out moral governance and education. Activating these “soft constraints” in grass-roots governance can effectively make up for the shortcomings of modern rural moral construction, reshape the spiritual core of the countryside in a way that 润物无声 (rùn wù wú shēng - “moisten things without sound,” influencing subtly), and consolidate the moral foundation of social governance. Second, the protection of traditional villages carries many grass-roots governance tasks. From landscape control, house renovation to spatial remediation, dispute mediation, and daily maintenance, every link of traditional village protection involves complex ownership division, interest adjustment, and mass negotiation. This tests the effectiveness of rural governance. Incorporating village protection into the scope of grass-roots governance can promote the improvement of the governance system, drive the downward shift of governance focus and the sinking of resources, and achieve mutual promotion and progress between protection work and governance capacity. Third, revitalization and inheritance can effectively consolidate grass-roots co-governance forces. Nostalgia is the deepest emotional tie connecting wanderers to their homeland. Using nostalgia culture as an emotional bond can widely absorb multiple subjects such as local elites, villagers, and social organizations to jointly participate in village-level public affairs. By excavating the historical value and cultural connotations of villages, scattered individual interest appeals can be gathered into collective action consensus, and cultural identity can be transformed into governance cohesion.
In recent years, China’s traditional village protection and governance work has advanced steadily, achieving notable phased results. First, the institutional framework has been gradually established. As of the end of 2024, 8,155 villages nationwide have been included in the list of Chinese traditional villages and put under listed protection. Various localities generally delineate protection control lines, introduce local protection regulations and management measures, incorporate village landscape control into the rural grid governance system, rely on digital means to carry out dynamic monitoring, and regular inspection and law enforcement effectively curb destructive behaviors such as large-scale demolition and construction, demolition of genuine structures and construction of fake ones. Most national-level traditional villages achieve dedicated personnel monitoring of protected areas and rapid investigation and handling of violations, continuously strengthening the bottom line of protection. Second, public spaces are being continuously revitalized. All localities adhere to the concept of “development within protection, protection within development,” and actively explore paths to revitalize idle assets. A large number of idle ancient dwellings and clan ancestral halls are skillfully transformed into village history museums, villagers’ discussion points, moral lecture halls, and mediation stations. These venues not only retain the original style of the buildings but are also endowed with functions of new era civilization practice, successfully converting historical buildings into physical positions for grass-roots governance, achieving “old spaces serving new villagers.” Third, channels for mass participation continue to broaden. All localities generally establish mechanisms such as villagers’ councils and protection councils, widely absorb public opinions in aspects such as renovation plan formulation and project implementation supervision, gradually change the passive mode of government “unilateral investment and unilateral management,” guide villagers to actively participate in the entire process of village protection, straighten out the division of duties among parties, and promote complementary rights and responsibilities and joint efforts among governance subjects.
At the same time, the protection of traditional villages still faces many challenges. Some areas have problems such as poor cross-department coordination, imperfect incentive mechanisms, insufficient matching between protection investment and returns, and weakened long-term maintenance efforts. There is an urgent need to improve the governance system in this field to empower long-term protection of cultural lineage.
Establish a coordinated governance system of overall planning to break the obstacles of multi-head management. First, improve the full-area grid-based landscape control mechanism. Incorporate traditional village protection into the “one map” management of territorial spatial planning, rely on grass-roots comprehensive governance centers and digital platforms, integrate multiple forces such as housing and construction, culture and tourism, and law enforcement. Establish a management mechanism of “inspection, supervision, and handling,” refining protection responsibilities down to each grid and assigning them to specific responsible persons. For construction activities around villages, the landscape review system must be strictly implemented, and unauthorized construction and illegal building must be resolutely stopped to ensure the coordination and unity of the village landscape. Second, establish a full life-cycle management system. Each link from planning formulation, project approval to construction renovation, acceptance and evaluation must have clear standards and regulatory measures. Establish village health archives, conduct regular “physical examinations,” promptly discover and eliminate safety hazards, and prevent “constructive destruction” caused by management absence. Third, clarify the rights and responsibilities system of multiple subjects. Fully implement the “protection responsibility letter” system, with county-level governments signing agreements with owners and users to specify specific obligations for renovation, maintenance, and supervision. Explore the establishment of “village house chiefs” or “cultural protection commissioners” responsible for daily inspection and information reporting, building a responsibility network that “reaches the edge horizontally and reaches the bottom vertically.”
Adhere to the path of protective revitalization, coordinating landscape control and livelihood improvement. First, implement small-scale and incremental renovation and improvement. Adhere to the principle of 修旧如旧 (xiū jiù rú jiù - “repair the old as old,” “minimum intervention”), promote the “micro-renovation, fine improvement” model, carry out “embroidery-style” renovation using traditional techniques and local materials, do not arbitrarily demolish traditional buildings, do not change the pattern of streets and alleys, do not destroy the original texture, resolutely avoid large-scale demolition and construction and over-commercialized destructive development, and achieve revitalization and inheritance on the basis of preserving the authenticity of the village. Second, improve village infrastructure supporting facilities. Focus on villagers’ living needs, comprehensively advance the construction of supporting facilities such as water supply and drainage, fire safety and security, weak electricity undergrounding, and sanitation facilities, lay pipeline networks in concealed and scenic ways, balancing landscape protection and livelihood security, both making up for the shortcomings of modern living functions and not destroying the overall layout of traditional villages, allowing villagers to retain nostalgia while enjoying the convenience of modern life. Third, adhere to the priority orientation of public use. Clarify the public attribute boundaries of the revitalization and utilization of historical buildings, give priority to ensuring public functions such as village-level deliberation, cultural inheritance, elderly care, and childcare, strictly control the scale and types of commercial development in core protection areas, establish a regulatory mechanism for social capital access, avoid over-commercialization crowding out public spaces, and let the results of protection benefit all villagers more.
Improve the multi-subject collaborative governance pattern, activating the endogenous momentum of grass-roots governance. First, improve the democratic discussion and consultation mechanism. Give full play to the role of villagers’ councils and villagers’ representative assemblies, ensuring the full participation of villagers in the decision-making, management, and supervision of village protection affairs. When involving major matters such as renovation plans and interest distribution, the Four Discussions and Two Openness (四议两公开) procedure must be implemented to fully respect the will of the villagers, transforming “I am asked to protect” into “I want to protect,” and arousing the villagers’ sense of ownership in guarding their homes. Second, excavate and revitalize local covenant resources. Deeply excavate and organize the modern value of family precepts, clan rules, and local covenants, transform them into behavioral norms easily accepted by villagers, through carrying out civilization-type selection activities, exert the moral restraint role of traditional local customs and folkways, guide villagers to cherish cultural heritage and maintain the public environment, forming a good atmosphere of “cultivating people through culture, moistening the heart through virtue.” Third, leverage the driving role of local elite groups. Play the role of new local elites to gather governance synergy, establish organizations such as local elite councils, guide economic talents, retired cadres, cultural scholars and other local elites to return to their hometowns, rely on their advantages to encourage participation in landscape supervision, dispute mediation, and public welfare undertakings, through demonstration and leadership drive social resources to flow to the countryside, injecting vitality into the revitalization and inheritance of traditional villages.
Return to TopBy: 刘厚莲
The traditional demographic dividend originates from the advantages of the population age structure. During the window period when the working-age population accounts for a high proportion and the overall social dependency burden is relatively low, economic growth is driven by the scale of a sufficient and cheap labor force. The comprehensive demographic dividend breaks through the boundary of the traditional demographic dividend, which is based solely on the population age structure. It takes comprehensively improving the overall quality of the population as an important lever, simultaneously builds a matching policy and institutional support system, relies on the continuous appreciation of human capital to form long-term growth momentum, and brings a lasting empowering effect for the economy to move toward a higher-quality development stage. General Secretary Xi Jinping clearly pointed out at the first meeting of the 20th Central Committee for Financial and Economic Affairs: "The demographic dividend is not only related to the size and structure of the population, but also to the quality of the population, economic policies, and supporting measures. The scale of our country's current population and labor force is sufficiently large, the current magnitude of population decline is limited, the education level of the entire population continues to improve, and the comprehensive demographic dividend still has obvious advantages." Facing the new situation, tapping into the advantages of the overall quality of the population and actively shaping the comprehensive demographic dividend is an inevitable choice to cope with population structure pressure, cultivate new quality productive forces, and consolidate the long-term foundation for national rejuvenation.
Shaping the comprehensive demographic dividend is a strategic choice based on the new situation of our country's population development and conforming to the new requirements of high-quality development, carrying far-reaching and significant practical importance. First, changes in the population age structure are a foundational and long-term variable affecting our country's economic development. Currently, our country's population has entered a stage of declining growth, with the working-age population continuously shrinking and the social dependency burden steadily increasing. The extensive growth model relying on the quantity advantage of low-cost labor has become unsustainable. Shaping the comprehensive demographic dividend focuses on comprehensively improving the overall quality and production efficiency of laborers through improving education quality, ensuring全民健康 (quánmín jiànkāng - "health for the entire people"), and optimizing labor allocation. It can compensate for the reduction in population quantity through the improvement of human capital quality and cope with the decline in labor force scale. Second, it is an important support for empowering the development of new quality productive forces and activating new momentum for industrial upgrading. New quality productive forces take technological innovation as the main engine and high-quality laborers as important support, urgently requiring knowledge-based, skilled, and innovative talents. Shaping the comprehensive demographic dividend focuses on the all-round improvement of the overall quality of the population, continuously raises the education level, vocational skill ability, and physical and mental health literacy of the entire people, actively connects with the development needs of new-quality industries such as high-end manufacturing, modern services, and strategic emerging industries, continuously supplies specialized and modern high-quality human resources, and can provide strong momentum for our country to cultivate new quality productive forces and reshape new advantages in global industrial competition. Third, it is an inherent requirement for making up for shortcomings in livelihood security and achieving the joint construction and shared enjoyment of development results. The process of shaping the comprehensive demographic dividend is also a process of "investing in people" to improve people's livelihoods. The improvement of human capital and the enhancement of people's well-being are 相辅相成 (xiāng fǔ xiāng chéng - "mutually reinforcing and complementary," complementing each other), and 辩证统一 (biàn zhèng tǒng yī - "dialectical unity," unified as opposites). Shaping the comprehensive demographic dividend inevitably requires supporting a balanced, inclusive, high-quality, and efficient public service system, and continuously optimizing supply in fields such as education, health, employment, and elderly care. By expanding high-quality educational resources, optimizing public health services, smoothing multiple employment channels, improving the social security system, actively responding to the people's aspirations for a better life, and effectively solving the people's urgent, difficult, worried, and anxious problems (急难愁盼, jí nán chóu pàn - "urgent, difficult, worried, and anxious," pressing concerns) in education, medical care, employment, etc., the goal of development for the people and the shared enjoyment of development results by all the people can be truly achieved.
At the same time, it is also necessary to recognize the multiple challenges faced in shaping the comprehensive demographic dividend. First, shortcomings in the overall quality of the population constrain the foundation of human capital supply. Shaping the comprehensive demographic dividend relies on the upgrading of human capital quality to achieve development, highly dependent on the systematic improvement of the skills and health literacy of the entire people. Currently, industrial iteration and social development continue to accelerate, but the existing public service system has insufficient adaptability and cannot fully support the national accumulation of human capital. Older laborers and workers in traditional industries have slow skill updates and generally insufficient digital literacy, making it difficult for them to adapt to the pace of industrial intelligent and digital transformation, and unable to provide suitable labor supply for the development of new quality productive forces. Health and medical services still have a tendency to emphasize treatment over prevention, with uneven resource distribution. Problems such as sub-health and the younger onset of chronic diseases are becoming more common, shortening the effective working hours of laborers, reducing production efficiency, and weakening the supply foundation for shaping the comprehensive demographic dividend at the source. Second, institutional barriers in factor allocation hinder the release of resource efficiency. Shaping the comprehensive demographic dividend requires not only high-quality human capital reserves but also efficient market-oriented allocation mechanisms for factors to release the potential of human resources. Currently, the segmentation of human resources markets between urban and rural areas, regions, and industries has not been completely broken. Differences in public services caused by the household registration barrier hinder the free flow and optimal allocation of labor, resulting in regional mismatch and idle resources of human capital. The connection between talent cultivation and industrial development needs is not tight enough, with prominent gaps in high-skilled talent in emerging industries and obstacles to the transfer of surplus labor in traditional industries. The mismatch between people and positions reduces the efficiency of human capital utilization. In addition, the rights protection, skill training, and social security continuation mechanisms for flexible employment groups are imperfect, making it difficult to fully activate existing human capital, thus constraining the overall effectiveness of shaping the comprehensive demographic dividend. Third, the relative lag in the supporting guarantee system weakens institutional support capacity. The long-term cultivation of the comprehensive demographic dividend requires a complete and coordinated policy guarantee system as support. Currently, various policies that help empower human capital quality are relatively scattered, with insufficient linkage and coordination among industrial, fiscal, tax, and employment policies. There is a lack of a full-chain institutional design covering the cultivation, utilization, and incentivization of human capital, making it difficult to form a policy synergy for cultivating and shaping the comprehensive demographic dividend. The tiered support mechanisms for youth, older laborers, and the elderly are not well-developed, and the human capital potential of various groups has not been fully tapped. At the same time, the construction of a multi-pillar elderly security system is not yet complete, with basic old-age insurance occupying the dominant position and supplementary pensions developing slowly, making it difficult to adapt to the needs of full-life-cycle human capital development. Facing the above challenges, it is necessary to adhere to the orientation of "investing in people" and make efforts from three aspects: improving the quality of supply, enhancing the efficiency of factors, and optimizing institutions.
Consolidate the foundation of human capital supply and strengthen the quality foundation. First, continue to promote the improvement of education quality and efficiency. Promote the transformation of education from scale expansion to connotative development, promote the balanced expansion of high-quality educational resources and their tilt toward rural areas and the central and western regions, and narrow the regional gap in human capital development. Optimize the disciplinary and professional layout of higher education, precisely connect with the development needs of new quality productive forces to directionally cultivate specialized talents, and simultaneously build a comprehensive, ubiquitous, and accessible lifelong education system to meet the quality improvement needs of laborers of all ages. Second, improve全民健康 (quánmín jiànkāng - "health for the entire people") guarantee. Deeply practice the concept of "big health and big hygiene" (大卫生、大健康, dà wèishēng, dà jiànkāng - "comprehensive health and hygiene"), promote the expansion and sinking of high-quality medical resources and their balanced distribution, improve mechanisms for early screening, early treatment, and proactive health management of chronic diseases, actively create an employment environment conducive to the physical and mental health of laborers, extend effective working years, and solidify the foundation of health human capital. Third, comprehensively improve the professional skills of laborers. Improve the lifelong vocational skill training system that runs through the career of laborers, increase training investment in emerging fields such as artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, and modern services, improve skill-oriented salary incentives and career promotion mechanisms, strengthen the job adaptability of laborers, and continuously increase the talent reserve for shaping the comprehensive demographic dividend.
Unblock market-oriented channels for factor flow and activate endogenous momentum. First, build a unified and standardized human resources market. Accelerate the full linking of basic public services with the permanent resident population, break down institutional barriers to the flow of human resources between urban and rural areas, regions, and industries, improve the integrated employment information service network, enhance the precision of matching labor supply and demand, and effectively solve problems such as regional mismatch and idle resources of human capital. Second, rely on new quality productive forces to cultivate high-quality employment positions. Vigorously develop strategic emerging industries, expand high-quality productive service industries, expand knowledge-intensive high-quality employment positions, promote the deep integration of advanced manufacturing and modern service industries, push the industrial chain to climb toward high-value-added links, and build a virtuous cycle in which industrial upgrading and human capital appreciation promote each other. Third, standardize the development of flexible employment and broaden employment space. Adapt to the development trend of new employment forms, improve the supporting mechanisms for rights protection, social security continuation, and skill improvement for flexible employment groups, standardize the construction of the gig market, build a one-stop employment service platform, enhance the resilience and inclusiveness of the employment market, fully activate various stocks of human capital, and continuously empower the shaping of the comprehensive demographic dividend.
Improve the coordinated policy guarantee system and consolidate institutional support. First, build a full-chain human capital cultivation coordination mechanism. Focus on the long-term improvement and appreciation of human capital, comprehensively optimize the layout of basic education, vocational education, and lifelong education, dynamically adjust the cultivation system to connect with the development needs of new quality productive forces, establish tiered improvement mechanisms for youth, older laborers, and the elderly, make up for the shortcomings in various groups' literacy, open up the complete chain of human capital cultivation, accumulation, and transformation, and consolidate the foundation of the comprehensive demographic dividend. Second, cultivate a multi-level characteristic silver economy. Deploy industrial clusters for the silver economy such as elderly care, rehabilitation aids, age-appropriate renovation, and elderly cultural tourism, continuously improve the institutional guarantees and social environment for 老有所为 (lǎo yǒu suǒ wéi - "the elderly have something to do," enabling seniors to remain active and contribute), support the elderly in participating in labor, employment, volunteer services, and knowledge inheritance, fully tap the value of elderly human capital, and transform the pressure of aging into new momentum for shaping the comprehensive demographic dividend. Third, improve the multi-pillar modern old-age security system. Solidly promote the national pooling of basic old-age insurance, improve the determination of benefits and dynamic adjustment mechanisms, continuously expand the coverage of enterprise annuities, optimize supporting policies for personal pensions, build a multi-level, multi-pillar old-age security pattern, improve the full-life-cycle human capital development guarantee system, and solidify the institutional guarantee for shaping the comprehensive demographic dividend and continuously empowering high-quality development.
(The author is a researcher at the China Population and Development Research Center (中国人口与发展研究中心))
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