Summary: The article emphasizes that the 15th Five-Year Plan period is critical for consolidating the foundation toward basically realizing socialist modernization. To turn the blueprint from the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee into reality, it stresses upholding and strengthening the Party's overall leadership. It calls for persistently and continuously advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, strengthening the entire Party's sense of mission and will to strive. The piece also highlights consolidating the Party's unity and solidarity, maintaining the purity of the Party's ranks, and enhancing the Party's governance capacity and leadership level.
Summary: The article argues that the upcoming Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee will make strategic arrangements for persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, reflecting the Party Central Committee's historical initiative. It states that such governance is an inevitable requirement for upholding the Party's vanguard nature, a fundamental guarantee for consolidating its ruling position, and essential for realizing the Party's mission and tasks. The piece emphasizes that strict Party management is a valuable experience from over a century of Party history, and that self-revolution is the second answer to escaping the historical cycle of rise and fall. It calls for using Xi Jinping's thought on Party building to guide efforts, ensuring the Party remains a strong leading core for Chinese modernization and the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The author is identified as the former director of the Academic and Editorial Review Committee of the Central Institute of Party History and Literature.
Summary: The article argues that the Long March spirit embodies the powers of loyalty, truth, justice, and unity, drawing on General Secretary Xi Jinping's remarks at the conference commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Long March's victory. It emphasizes that loyalty to the Party and the Central Committee, exemplified by figures like Liu Zhihai and Zhou Guangcai, was decisive for the Red Army's survival and victory. The text highlights how the Zunyi Conference corrected dogmatism and established Mao Zedong's core position, enabling the Party to apply Marxist truth to China's realities. It also stresses that the Long March was a just struggle for national salvation rooted in the people, citing the "half quilt" story and the "alliance at the Yi Sea" as symbols of military-civilian unity. The article concludes by urging readers to uphold the "Two Establishments" and "Two Upholds" and carry forward the Long March spirit on the new journey.
Summary: The article reflects on the enduring significance of the Long March spirit, citing General Secretary Xi Jinping's remarks that "where the spirit is, there is the strength," and describing it as a vital component of the spiritual genealogy of Chinese Communists. It recounts the Red Army's arduous journey—over 600 battles, nearly a hundred rivers, and 25,000 li—to argue that spiritual conviction, not equipment, determined victory. Xi is quoted again on how the Party's resilience through hardship relies on revolutionary spirit and desperate struggle, emphasizing loyalty, truth, justice, and unity as its core powers. The piece urges Communists on the new journey to discard complacency, carry forward this spirit, and prepare for future "snowy mountains" and "grasslands" in advancing the Party's cause.
Summary: The article argues that General Secretary Xi Jinping’s call to build a community of common health for mankind places health at the core of the new form of human civilization, which is people-centered and transcends the Western modernization model centered on capital. It contends that under capitalism, health is subordinated to capital accumulation, leading to structural health inequalities and a global "metabolic rift," whereas China's Healthy China strategy shifts from "treatment-centered" to "health-centered" governance. The piece highlights China's achievements, including universal health insurance covering over 1.3 billion people, the spread of traditional Chinese medicine to 196 countries, and the WHO adoption of its malaria control model. It concludes that placing health at the core of civilizational value is a fundamental reconstruction of civilizational development logic, offering Chinese solutions for global health governance.
Summary: The article emphasizes that the mass line is the Party's lifeline, citing Xi Jinping's call to "seek instruction from the capable, and ask the wise for counsel" by treating the people as teachers. It argues that decision-making must respond to popular sentiment, with officials listening to grassroots voices through channels like door-to-door visits and online suggestions to address concerns in employment, education, medical care, elderly care, and housing. It stresses integrating the mass line with investigation and research, avoiding superficial inspections, and building normalized mechanisms to extract universal governance experience from scattered public opinions. The piece also advocates rallying the people's strength by improving a closed-loop mechanism from public opinion collection to policy optimization, while respecting grassroots pioneering and discarding dogmatic "one-size-fits-all" models.
Summary: The article argues that the Long March spirit embodies the powers of loyalty, truth, justice, and unity, drawing on General Secretary Xi Jinping's remarks at the conference commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Long March's victory. It emphasizes that loyalty to the Party and the Central Committee, exemplified by figures like Liu Zhihai and Zhou Guangcai, was decisive for the Red Army's survival and victory. The text highlights how the Zunyi Conference corrected dogmatism and established Mao Zedong's core position, enabling the Party to apply Marxist truth to China's realities. It also stresses that the Long March was a just struggle for national salvation rooted in the people, citing the "half quilt" story and the "alliance at the Yi Sea" as symbols of military-civilian unity. The article concludes by urging readers to uphold the "Two Establishments" and "Two Upholds" and carry forward the Long March spirit on the new journey.
Summary: Guo Weilu, a professor at the School of Discipline Inspection and Supervision at East China University of Political Science and Law, interprets General Secretary Xi Jinping's emphasis on establishing and practicing a correct view of political achievements as a long-term task essential for advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party. Guo argues that deviations in this view are systemic and can manifest as "digital formalism" or "campaign-style governance," driven by tensions between tenure-based impulses and long-term development. To address these issues, Guo proposes building long-term mechanisms through differentiated assessment and evaluation, standardized responsibility handovers to prevent "new officials ignoring old accounts," and whole-chain supervision and accountability. Ultimately, the goal is to coordinate ideological education with institutional governance to ensure cadres prioritize people's livelihood and strategic planning over short-term, visible achievements.
Summary: The Secretary of the Xiqing District Committee of Tianjin reports that the district is adhering to General Secretary Xi Jinping's instructions to advance the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. Centering on the Tianjin South Railway Station area, Xiqing aims to build a new quality productive forces innovation coordination zone by integrating transportation networks and resource factors. The district seeks to leverage the comparative advantages of Beijing's scientific innovation and Tianjin's advanced manufacturing R&D to establish a division of labor model characterized by "R&D in Beijing, transformation in Xiqing." Furthermore, Xiqing is working to create a first-class innovation ecosystem by improving infrastructure, fostering industrial chain cooperation, and enhancing services to attract and retain scientific and technological talent.
Summary: The article argues that the upcoming Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee will make strategic arrangements for persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, reflecting the Party Central Committee's historical initiative. It states that such governance is an inevitable requirement for upholding the Party's vanguard nature, a fundamental guarantee for consolidating its ruling position, and essential for realizing the Party's mission and tasks. The piece emphasizes that strict Party management is a valuable experience from over a century of Party history, and that self-revolution is the second answer to escaping the historical cycle of rise and fall. It calls for using Xi Jinping's thought on Party building to guide efforts, ensuring the Party remains a strong leading core for Chinese modernization and the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The author is identified as the former director of the Academic and Editorial Review Committee of the Central Institute of Party History and Literature.
Summary: The Shandong Provincial Party Committee and the Provincial Government are working to improve a whole-life-cycle population development support and service system to promote high-quality population development. Following the emphasis of General Secretary Xi Jinping, the province is coordinating policies across marriage, childbearing, parenting, and elderly care to address changing population structures. Key initiatives include optimizing fertility policies, expanding childcare services, improving maternity insurance, and enhancing medical and elderly care integration. The province also aims to strengthen population monitoring and research to provide scientific decision-making support for future economic and social planning.
Summary: The Party Committee of Anhui Branch of China Huadian Corporation Ltd. has advanced the construction of "Clean Huadian Anhui" by implementing six major projects, including "Cultivating Roots and Casting the Soul" and "Enforcing Discipline with Deterrence," to push Party conduct and integrity building and the fight against corruption to greater depths. The Company has maintained stable safety in production and accelerated business development, with its headquarters awarded titles such as National Civilized Unit. Under the "Cultivating Roots and Casting the Soul Project," a mechanism of "first study at Party committee meetings + seminar study at central group meetings + concentrated segmented study at weekly meetings" was established, and Party members were organized for immersive education at sites like the Memorial Hall of the Crossing-the-Yangtze-River Campaign. The "Enforcing Discipline with Deterrence Project" intensified efforts in key areas such as engineering construction and bidding, implementing the "First Lesson of the New Year" warning education mechanism. The "Supervision as Escort Project" established a "Five Co-Operations Joint Inspection" mechanism with sister units and carried out the "Sending Integrity to the Frontline" action at engineering projects.
Summary: The article, authored by the Secretary of the Dehua County Party Committee of Fujian Province, outlines how Dehua County is advancing its thousand-year-old ceramic industry toward a hundred-billion-yuan cluster. It details efforts to preserve cultural heritage, boost innovation through design, technology, and branding, and optimize the business environment with targeted policies and services. The county has over 4,500 ceramic enterprises, and in 2025 the industry cluster reached 76 billion yuan, with over 60% of products exported to more than 190 countries. Key initiatives include AI design tools, intelligent equipment adoption, and the "China White" trademark obtaining EU certification in March 2025. The piece concludes with plans to consolidate the industrial foundation and achieve the hundred-billion-yuan goal by 2027.
Summary: The article, authored by the Party Committee Secretary of Shandong Vocational College of Special Education, outlines the college's educational philosophy that special vocational education is an innovative vehicle for activating human capital, not a social burden. The college focuses on developing students' innate strengths, such as the visual concentration of hearing-impaired students and the tactile sensitivity of visually impaired students, to build core competencies in fields like cultural relic restoration and traditional Chinese medicine rehabilitation. It emphasizes that employment is based on value matching and two-way selection, with graduates being eagerly sought after by employers. The college also works to dissolve identity labels, helping students integrate equally into ordinary life, and treats educational investment as long-term human capital investment. Looking ahead, it plans to deepen its distinctive path by optimizing major clusters, integrating industry and education, empowering with digital technology, and exporting its school-running experience nationwide.
Summary: The article discusses the "15th Five-Year Plan for Accelerating Agricultural and Rural Modernization," which proposes developing resilient agriculture to steadily enhance grain supply capacity by 2030 and consolidate food security. It notes that while China's food security is generally stable, structural contradictions, climate risks, and international market impacts necessitate a focus on resilient agriculture. The piece introduces an in-depth discussion launched by the high-end think tank section of Study Times on this topic.
Summary: The article argues that agricultural industry security is foundational to national security, facing superimposed natural, market, and trade risks, alongside domestic shortcomings in factors, technology, talent, and the industrial chain. It outlines China's existing safeguards, including the food security strategy now written into law, and proposes building agriculture into a modern "major industry" to forge resilience. This requires enhancing resource, science and technology, operational, trade, and institutional capacities, with trade capacity noting the need to reduce dependence on the American market for soybeans and corn. Systematic support is needed through conceptual renewal, factor empowerment, human resource support, and reform and innovation. The author is the President of the China Agricultural Risk Management Research Association.
Summary: The article argues that climate change is an increasingly critical variable affecting all links of China's food security, from output to quality, and calls for integrating climate adaptation into the national food security strategy. It notes that while China has adopted measures such as water conservancy projects, adaptive breeding, and high-standard farmland construction, capacity building still faces problems like insufficient scientific understanding and one-size-fits-all approaches. The author proposes embedding adaptation into planning, implementing measures in specific scenarios, and strengthening technological and institutional support. The piece emphasizes that adaptation requires a systematic, whole-chain effort involving the government, market, farmers, and society. The author is a researcher at the Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
Summary: The article argues that intelligent warfare demands a shift from mechanized-era deterministic thinking to adaptive thinking, which requires reshaping the military view of time and space. It defines adaptive thinking as real-time perception, baseline-based decision-making, and closed-loop action, contrasting it with rigid, procedural models rooted in industrial-era warfare. Citing the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the 2023 Gaza conflict, it illustrates how compressed time windows and multi-domain, three-dimensional battlefields render traditional approaches obsolete. The piece calls for cultivating window awareness in time, cross-domain awareness in space, and flexible awareness in decision-making, while warning that adaptation must be anchored by clear intent and discipline. It concludes that victory will go to those who can make "good enough" judgments under incomplete information, not those with the most data.
Summary: The article explains the function of airborne weather radar as a critical safety device for aircraft, distinguishing it from ground-based radar by its ability to detect precipitation-type severe convective weather in real time along a flight path. It describes the radar's working principle—emitting electromagnetic waves that reflect off water-containing particles—and its four-color warning display (green, yellow, red, purple) indicating escalating hazard levels, with red and purple zones being strictly avoided. The piece clarifies why flights deviate on clear days, citing radar detection blind zones caused by thick cloud clusters that absorb waves, leaving unknown airspace risks. It notes technological iterations have expanded radar capabilities to include turbulence warning, wind shear detection, and intelligent obstacle avoidance. The article concludes that radar's precise detection is essential for safe takeoffs and landings in the unpredictable high-altitude environment.
Summary: The Laomukong Battle took place on April 5, 1935, when the Red Ninth Army Corps, cut off from the main force and trapped north of the Wujiang River, set up a mountain ambush in Jinsha County, Guizhou Province, annihilating pursuing Guizhou Army troops and winning a victory with inferior numbers. Commander Luo Binghui and Political Commissar He Changgong led the corps to exploit the terrain and the enemy's lax vigilance, deciding to abandon the original route and launch a surprise tactical offensive. The battle lasted over half a day, killing over 300 enemy troops and capturing over 1,800, at a cost of over 100 Red Army casualties, with the enemy division commander Wei Jinyong wounded and fleeing. The Central Military Commission sent a telegram commending the action for its enormous supporting role in the Red Army's strategic operations. The victory freed the corps from peril, intimidated Nationalist forces north of the Wujiang River, and created favorable conditions for the main force's advance into Yunnan.
Summary: Wang Anshi's *New Meanings of the Offices of Zhou*, compiled during the Xining Reform, served as the theoretical program for his new laws, interpreting the *Rites of Zhou* to construct a moral and institutional system. The article details how Wang broke from Han-Tang exegesis by glossing character meanings and emphasizing textual wholeness to model governance on the "former kings." His political philosophy integrated the governance of finance, offices, and talent, providing classical legitimacy for policies like the Market Exchange Law and Baojia Law. The text's fate tracked Song political upheavals, being abolished during the Yuanyou restoration but revived under Emperor Huizong, and was later reconstructed from the *Yongle Encyclopedia* in the Qing dynasty. The author concludes that despite criticism, Wang's classical exegesis had independent insights, embodying the ideal of applying classics to practical statecraft.
Summary: The article explores the philosophical concept of "sincerely holding fast to the Mean," an essential principle of the "sixteen-character heart-mind transmission" passed down from the sages Yao, Shun, and Yu. This principle emphasizes grasping the standard of the upright and impartial through a sincere and reverent heart, serving as both a method for individual self-cultivation and a guide for national governance. Rather than a static or unprincipled compromise, the true Mean is described as a dynamic and practical approach that requires adapting to circumstances and timing while upholding righteousness and duty. Ultimately, the text posits that practicing this concept involves overcoming one-sided cognition and private self-interest to achieve a state of harmony and practical wisdom.
Summary: The article explores how Guizhou local gazetteers, from the Ming and Qing dynasties through the Republican period, documented the region's flora and fauna with increasing detail, blending traditional categories with early modern botanical and zoological methods. It highlights records of precious fungi, fragrant substances, medicinal herbs, and mountain products, emphasizing their rarity, gathering methods, and dual uses as food and medicine. The gazetteers also trace ecological change through phenological traces, such as the retreat of tigers as forests were cleared and towns expanded. The author, Deputy Director of the Institute of History at the Guizhou Academy of Social Sciences, concludes that these records reflect ancestral wisdom in identifying, utilizing, and restraining the use of natural resources.
Summary: The article marks the 11th anniversary of China Tobacco Sichuan Industrial Co., Ltd., whose Party group has upgraded its "three major strategic tasks" to clarify "what to become" as well as "what to do." It frames this upgrade as a strategic and cultural mobilization, elevating structural improvement, brand building, and competitive capability into an integrated whole. The piece emphasizes meticulous craftsmanship in product research and development, drawing on Kuanzhai culture and the "Dongpo spirit" to empower innovation. It details the company's technical research system, partnerships with universities, and breakthroughs in processes like solid-state flavor bases and "one rod, dual core" technology. The article concludes that the company's "second entrepreneurship" fuses strategic breadth, cultural depth, and technological rigor to open new horizons.
Summary: The article describes Laiwu Vocational and Technical College's implementation of the "health first" educational philosophy through its "No Sports, No Youth" brand, which restructures curricula, ignites competition, and integrates physical and mental education. The college has built a three-dimensional curriculum system, held over 700 sports events since 2024, and invested 150 million yuan in facilities, while establishing institutional safeguards and a "four-in-one" evaluation system. Students' physical fitness pass and excellence rates have leapt to the forefront of provincial higher vocational colleges, and psychological problem detection rates have declined. The piece highlights student role models like Xiao Liu, who transformed through athletics, and notes the college's recognition as a "Practice Unit for the Comprehensive Quality Cultivation Project of Sunny Sports." The author, the college's Deputy Party Committee Secretary and Dean, concludes by affirming the college's commitment to deepening sports-education integration for student growth.
The period of the 15th Five-Year Plan is a critical phase for consolidating the foundation and fully exerting efforts toward basically realizing socialist modernization. To turn the blueprint drawn up at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Party into reality, it is imperative to uphold and strengthen the Party's overall leadership, persistently and continuously (持之以恒, chi zhi yi heng - "hold, continue, with, constant") advance full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, strengthen the entire Party's sense of mission and will to strive, consolidate the Party's unity and solidarity, maintain the purity of the Party's ranks, and enhance the Party's governance capacity and leadership level.
Return to TopBy: 陈理
The Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Party will conduct a profound analysis of the situation and tasks facing Party building in the current and coming period, and will make strategic arrangements for persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party. This fully reflects the historical initiative of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core to strengthen the Party and strengthen the country. A profound understanding of the importance and urgency of persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is of major and far-reaching significance for unifying thoughts and actions with the Party Central Committee's deployment requirements on persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, for strengthening confidence, maintaining resolve, upholding and applying the valuable experience of full and rigorous self-governance of the Party in the new era with higher standards and more concrete measures, for rectifying and resolving prominent problems facing Party building, for consolidating and developing the sound political situation formed through Party management and governance, and for continuously creating a new situation of Party management and governance, and of rejuvenating and strengthening the Party in the new era.
An inevitable requirement for upholding the Party's vanguard nature and ensuring that the Party always stays at the forefront of the times
Advanced nature and purity are the essential attributes of a Marxist political party. Maintaining the political character of a Marxist political party and upholding the Party's advanced nature and purity are the consistent pursuit of our Party. Emphasizing self-strengthening and always remaining full of vigor and vitality are important aspects of our Party's excellent qualities that are incomparable to other political parties and political forces. Persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is an inherent requirement for ensuring that our Party never changes its nature, never changes its character, and never changes its flavor, and forever maintains the political character of a Marxist political party. Marx and Engels systematically elaborated on the advanced character of Marxist political parties: "In the various stages of development which the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole"; because the proletarian party is guided by scientific theory, "they are distinguished from the rest of the proletariat by the fact that they understand the conditions, the course, and the general results of the proletarian movement"; the proletarian party shoulders the historical mission of uniting and leading the people to overthrow the old world and build a new world, and "the Communists are the most resolute and always push forward the part of the working-class parties of each country." At the same time, Marx and Engels also profoundly elucidated the question of the proletarian party maintaining its advanced nature and purity through a spirit of revolutionary criticism, emphasizing that "the Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims" and that "the communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations." These important expositions scientifically answer the fundamental question of what a Marxist political party "is and what it wants to do," profoundly reveal the internal basis for a Marxist political party to forever maintain its advanced nature and purity and uphold its people's standpoint, and are the fundamental reason why a Marxist political party can win the people's support and endorsement, and can endure the test of wind and rain while remaining endless and vigorous (生生不息, sheng sheng bu xi - "birth, birth, not, cease") and continuously growing stronger. However, the vanguard nature of a Marxist political party will not naturally remain fresh, and its advanced nature and purity cannot remain unchanging and static (一成不变, yi cheng bu bian - "one, become, not, change"). Especially under conditions of long-term governance, factors that weaken the Party's advanced nature and harm the Party's purity exist at all times, and dangers that violate the original aspiration and founding mission and shake the Party's foundation are ubiquitous (无处不在, wu chu bu zai - "no, place, not, exist"). The practice of the world socialist movement and the lessons of Marxist political parties have repeatedly told us that only by always strengthening self-building and adhering to strict Party management and governance with a spirit of self-revolution can we maintain the vanguard nature of a Marxist political party and ensure that the Party always becomes the strong leading core of the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics.
Strict Party management and governance is the valuable experience our Party has gained through more than a hundred years of tempering and maintaining the Party's advanced nature and purity. Our Party is a proletarian party established in accordance with Marxist party-building theory, and from its very inception it clearly wrote Marxism on the Party's banner. Our Party's more than one hundred years of struggle history is a history of maintaining the Party's advanced nature and purity through strict Party management and governance, continuously tempering its political character through self-revolution, and leading the development of the Party's and the people's cause. The Party's First Congress Program and the first Party Constitution formulated at the Second Congress already clearly put forward the Party's organizational principles, membership conditions, and disciplinary requirements. Subsequently, our Party further proposed the goal of building a "Bolshevized Chinese Communist Party that is nationwide in scope, mass-based in nature, and completely consolidated ideologically, politically, and organizationally," and through inner-Party centralized education such as the Yan'an Rectification Movement, established the ideological line of seeking truth from facts and eliminated the erroneous tendencies of dogmatizing Marxism and sanctifying the instructions of the Comintern and the experience of the Soviet Union. In the early period after the founding of New China, our Party maintained high vigilance against the erosion of the bourgeoisie's sugar-coated bullets and carried out Party consolidation and rectification campaigns. After the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee, our Party initiated and advanced the great new project of Party building, ensuring that the Party never changes its nature, never changes its character, and never changes its flavor. The Party's more than one hundred years of struggle fully prove that whenever strict Party management and governance is upheld, the Party's and the people's cause thrives; whenever Party management and governance is lax, soft, and loose, there will be lax discipline and slack work style, and the Party's and the people's cause will suffer losses.
Upholding full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is the valuable experience of the Party and the country's cause in the new era in achieving historic achievements and undergoing historic changes. Since the 18th National Congress of the Party, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, based on the new historical orientation of the new era, targeting prominent problems such as ineffective Party management and lax Party governance in a certain period, incorporated full and rigorous self-governance of the Party into the strategic layout of the Four-Pronged Comprehensive Strategy (四个全面), advanced Party building with unprecedented resolve and intensity, started with the formulation and implementation of the Eight-Point Regulation (八项规定) as the opening move, persistently rectified work style and enforced discipline, corrected the Four Malfeasances (四风) with the spirit of hammering nails, carried out an unprecedented anti-corruption struggle with the mission and responsibility of "offending thousands of people, not failing 1.4 billion," curbed some unhealthy tendencies that had long gone unchecked, rectified some chronic and stubborn diseases that had persisted for years, eliminated serious hidden dangers within the Party, the state, and the military, fundamentally reversed the lax, soft, and loose situation in Party management and governance, achieved historic and pioneering achievements in full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, produced all-round and deep-reaching influence, made the Party stronger through revolutionary tempering, won the historical initiative of ensuring that the Party never changes its nature, never changes its character, and never changes its flavor, won the historical initiative of the Party uniting and leading all the people to strive together for the great cause of building a strong country and national rejuvenation, and won the firm support and heartfelt endorsement of the people. Xi Jinping's thought on Party building summarizes and generalizes the practical experience of full and rigorous self-governance of the Party in the new era, and with a series of new concepts, new ideas, and new strategies for Party management and governance and for rejuvenating and strengthening the Party, enriches and develops Marxist party-building theory, providing fundamental guidance and action guidelines for deeply advancing the great new project of Party building in the new era. It is necessary to uphold and apply the valuable experience of full and rigorous self-governance of the Party in the new era with higher standards and more concrete measures, continuously realize the Party's self-purification, self-improvement, self-renovation, and self-enhancement, continuously strengthen the Party's political leadership, ideological guidance, mass organization, and social appeal, and ensure that the Party always becomes a vigorous Marxist ruling party that stays at the forefront of the times, is sincerely endorsed by the people, and can withstand various storms and tests.
The fundamental guarantee for consolidating the Party's ruling position and ensuring that the Party always becomes the strong leading core of the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics
Consolidating the Party's long-term ruling position and ensuring that the Party always becomes the strong leading core of the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics is the fundamental guarantee for comprehensively advancing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation through Chinese modernization. From its very inception, our Party established the original aspiration and founding mission of seeking happiness for the Chinese people and seeking rejuvenation for the Chinese nation, and generations of Communists have strived unremittingly for it. Our Party's more than one hundred years of struggle history is a history of practicing the Party's original aspiration and founding mission, and a history of the Party and the people being heart-to-heart, breathing together, and sharing a common destiny. The fundamental reason why our Party was able to stand out among various political forces in repeated contests after modern times, to be reborn from desperate situations time and again amidst bloody storms, to continuously advance from victory to victory in overcoming difficulties, and to write the most magnificent epic in the several-thousand-year history of the Chinese nation, lies in the fact that our Party has always maintained flesh-and-blood ties with the masses, shared weal and woe and life and death with the masses, adhered to doing everything for the people and relying on the people in everything, thereby winning the heartfelt endorsement and firm support of the broadest masses of the people. The people are the greatest source of confidence for our Party's governance and also the deepest source of strength for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out, "If the Party is ineffective in management and lax in governance, and the prominent inner-Party problems strongly reflected by the masses are not resolved, then our Party will sooner or later lose its governing qualification and will inevitably be eliminated by history. This is by no means alarmist talk." If our Party forgets its sense of purpose, deviates from the people's standpoint, it will inevitably become divorced from the masses, become water without a source (无源之水, wu yuan zhi shui - "no, source, of, water") and a tree without roots (无本之木, wu ben zhi mu - "no, root, of, wood"), and ultimately will inevitably endanger the Party's governing foundation.
People-centeredness is the most distinctive political character of Marxism, and the people's standpoint is the fundamental political standpoint of a proletarian party, profoundly answering the fundamental question of for whom and relying on whom the proletarian movement is carried out. The greatest political advantage of a Marxist political party is close ties with the masses, and the greatest danger after a Marxist political party comes to power is becoming divorced from the masses. The practice of the world socialist movement and the lessons of the rise and fall of some Marxist political parties profoundly enlighten us that the greatest threat facing a Marxist political party in long-term governance often comes from within, and the fundamental cause lies in abandoning the basic principles of scientific socialism, forgetting the original aspiration and founding mission, becoming divorced from the masses, and degenerating and corrupting. If a political party weakens its spirit of self-revolution and loses its capacity for self-purification, the inevitable result is that it becomes divorced from the masses, loses the people's support and endorsement, and ultimately finds it difficult to escape the historical cycle of order and disorder, rise and fall.
Popular support is the greatest politics, and the people's support and endorsement are the most solid foundation of our Party's governance. For a major party like ours with a hundred years of history, whether it can always stay true to the Party's original aspiration and founding mission and always maintain flesh-and-blood ties with the masses is a major issue that needs to be continuously and deeply answered well. Xi Jinping's thought on Party building profoundly summarizes the historical laws of regime changes and the rise and fall of political parties in ancient and modern times, at home and abroad, creatively proposes that our Party has found self-revolution as the second answer to escaping the historical cycle of order and disorder, rise and fall, and scientifically answers the major contemporary questions of what kind of long-term governing Marxist party to build and how to build a long-term governing Marxist party. To consolidate the Party's long-term ruling position, it is necessary to always maintain the sobriety and resolve that full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is always on the way, persistently advance full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, educate and guide the broad masses of Party members and cadres to stay true to the Party's original aspiration and founding mission, firmly establish the mass viewpoint, stand firm on the people's standpoint, consciously practice the people-centered development philosophy, take realizing, safeguarding, and developing the fundamental interests of the broadest masses of the people as the starting point and foothold of all work, adhere to development for the people, development relying on the people, and development achievements shared by the people, effectively solve the urgent, difficult, and anxious problems of the masses, continuously enhance the masses' sense of gain, happiness, and security, further strengthen the flesh-and-blood ties between the Party and the masses, continuously consolidate the mass foundation of the Party's governance, and ensure that the Party always becomes the strong leading core in the historical process of upholding and developing socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era.
The fundamental guarantee for realizing the Party's mission and tasks and comprehensively advancing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation through Chinese modernization
In comprehensively building a modern socialist country and comprehensively advancing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, the key lies in the Party. Reviewing the Party's more than one hundred years of struggle history, it can be clearly seen that Party building and the Party's mission and tasks have always been closely linked. The Party's mission and tasks determine the fundamental direction of Party building, and the effectiveness of the Party's self-revolution is directly related to the rise and fall and success or failure of the great cause of building a strong country and national rejuvenation. For more than one hundred years, our Party has always closely focused on the needs of the development of the situation and tasks in different periods, unremittingly advanced Party building, and provided a strong guarantee for uniting and leading the people to create a series of great achievements.
Persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is an important guarantee for completing the Party's mission and tasks and comprehensively advancing the great cause of building a strong country and national rejuvenation through Chinese modernization. To run China's affairs well, the key lies in the Party, and the key lies in the Party managing the Party and practicing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party. Focusing on the Party's central tasks and advancing Party building as a great project is a great innovation of our Party, a great magic weapon for building the Party and the country and rejuvenating the Party and the country, and an important experience for the continuous development and progress of the Party's and the people's cause. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out, "To whatever stage the Party's and the people's cause develops, Party building must be advanced to that stage. This is the basic law that must be grasped in strengthening Party building." Only by closely focusing on the Party's central tasks, continuously strengthening the Party's self-building, persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party with higher standards and more concrete measures, and effectively implementing the Party Central Committee's major decisions and deployments, can we unite the strength of the whole Party and the people of all ethnic groups in the country and complete the mission and tasks of comprehensively advancing the great cause of building a strong country and national rejuvenation through Chinese modernization.
Persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is an inevitable requirement for completing the arduous and heavy tasks of reform, development, and stability. The period of the 15th Five-Year Plan is a critical period for consolidating the foundation and comprehensively exerting efforts for basically realizing socialist modernization. Our country is at a critical stage of accelerating the pace of transformation and upgrading and striving to advance high-quality development. The more complex international situation and the more arduous and heavy domestic tasks of reform, development, and stability during the period of the 15th Five-Year Plan put forward new and higher requirements for persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, deeply advancing the great new project of Party building in the new era, and further enhancing the Party's creativity, cohesion, and combat effectiveness. To forge iron, one must be strong oneself. Chinese modernization is an unprecedented pioneering cause, and on the road forward it is inevitable that we will encounter various predictable and unpredictable risks, challenges, and even stormy waves. For the Party to unite and lead the people to complete the goals and tasks of economic and social development during the period of the 15th Five-Year Plan, solidly promote high-quality development, solve the prominent problems of unbalanced and inadequate development in our country, effectively respond to the impact of profound and complex changes in the external environment, strengthen the leading role of scientific and technological innovation, develop new quality productive forces in light of local conditions, strengthen the domestic major circulation and smooth the domestic and international dual circulation, promote solid steps in common prosperity for all the people, lay a more solid foundation for basically realizing socialist modernization, win historical initiative amidst international vicissitudes, upholding and strengthening the Party's overall leadership and the centralized, unified leadership of the Party Central Committee is of paramount importance, and persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party and building the Party to be stronger and more powerful is equally important. It is necessary to follow the Party Central Committee's strategic deployment on persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, more consciously use Xi Jinping's thought on Party building to plan and advance Party building, and provide a strong guarantee for economic and social development during the period of the 15th Five-Year Plan with new achievements in full and rigorous self-governance of the Party.
(The author is the former director of the Academic and Editorial Review Committee of the Central Institute of Party History and Literature)
Return to TopBy: 刘光明
The Long March was a great feat that shook the world and shone brightly in the annals of history. It stands as a towering monument in the historical process of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, leaving our Party a precious spiritual treasure. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized at the conference commemorating the 90th anniversary of the victory of the Long March of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army of China: "The Red Army's Long March created an extraordinary miracle in the human world and forged the great Long March spirit." The great Long March spirit fully demonstrates the power of loyalty, the power of truth, the power of justice, and the power of unity. As an important component of the spiritual pedigree of Chinese Communists, it transcends time and space, remaining fresh after a long time (历久弥新, li jiu mi xin - "long time, endure, new"), and will forever be a precious asset and powerful driving force inspiring us to overcome difficulties and advance courageously. The great Long March spirit contains a spiritual power that penetrates time and space and thrives endlessly, inspiring us to cross vast distances and many mountains (万水千山, wan shui qian shan - "ten thousand, waters, thousand, mountains"), overcome countless difficulties and perils (千难万险, qian nan wan xian - "thousand, difficulties, ten thousand, dangers"), and strive to walk the new Long March road well.
The great Long March spirit fully demonstrates the power of loyalty
The Long March was a red ribbon paved with faith and measured with loyalty. Across vast distances and many mountains, Red Army officers and soldiers questioned their ideals with their footsteps, fulfilled their vows with their lives, and engraved their absolute loyalty to the Party and the people into every inch of the land beneath their feet. Amid trials of life and death and desperate situations, Communist Party members and Red Army officers and soldiers upheld their original aspirations with pure loyalty and forged ahead through hardships (砥砺前行, di li qian xing - "grind, whet; front, walk"), making loyalty the most vivid foundation of the Long March spirit and building an unbreakable spiritual cornerstone for the victory of the Chinese revolution.
The power of unwavering loyalty to the Party and close adherence to the Central Committee. Wherever the Party flag points, the hearts of the military follow. During the Long March, no matter how perilous the situation or how uncertain the road ahead, Red Army officers and soldiers held fast to one truth: follow the Party, and victory is certain. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "The correct leadership of the Party and the establishment of Comrade Mao Zedong's core position were of decisive significance to the victory of the Red Army's Long March." After the Zunyi Conference, Party cadres and Red Army officers and soldiers more firmly upheld the authority of the Party Central Committee at the critical turning point of life and death. The revolutionary ranks gained a backbone, the pursuit of victory gained a compass, and the Party and the Red Army gained new life. When crossing the Dangling Snow Mountain, the frozen soldier Liu Zhihai still raised his arm high, clutching in his hand his Party membership certificate and a silver dollar, using his last strength to pay his final Party membership dues to the organization. On the vast grasslands, the young soldier Zhou Guangcai carried a "half belt" in his bosom, insisting on walking out of the wilderness and bringing it all the way to Yan'an. Such loyalty is the clarity after setbacks, the steadfastness after passing through the fog.
The power of unwavering commitment to national salvation and sacrificing one's life for righteousness. The most fervent footnote to loyalty is shouldering the survival of the nation. During the Long March, to rescue the family and country from peril, Party cadres and Red Army officers and soldiers always regarded the fundamental interests of the entire Chinese people and the Chinese nation as above all else, finding life in the face of death (向死而生, xiang si er sheng - "towards, death, and, live") amid hail of bullets, surviving against all odds at the limits of survival, and being reborn from fire after being tempered through many trials and tribulations (千锤百炼, qian chui bai lian - "thousand, hammer, hundred, refine"). On the 25,000-li journey of the First Front Red Army, on average one Red Army soldier sacrificed his life every 300 meters. In the bloody battle at the Xiang River, the 34th Red Army Division served as the rearguard, holding their positions to the death even after running out of ammunition and reinforcements. Division Commander Chen Shuxiang, after being captured, tore open his intestines to show his resolve, fulfilling the sonorous vow of "shedding the last drop of blood for the Soviet New China." Countless revolutionary martyrs paid every sacrifice for the safety of the family and country, bearing witness to the blazing radiance of loyalty.
The power of holding fast to faith and preferring death to surrender. "A stone may be broken, but its hardness cannot be taken away; cinnabar may be ground, but its redness cannot be taken away." The essence of loyalty is firmness of faith, and perseverance in desperate situations best tests the true nature of loyalty. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "Revolutionary ideals and revolutionary convictions can burst forth with boundless power to overcome stubborn enemies and shake mountains. A contingent with lofty ideals and firm convictions is invincible." The Long March was an extremely rare journey of suffering in human history. The snow-capped mountains with high altitude and low oxygen, the uninhabited grasslands, and the scarce and insufficient supplies tested every Communist Party member and Red Army officer and soldier at every moment. Even in rags, they still held the morning sun in their hearts; even in desperate straits, they still yearned for the dawn, because in their hearts they always firmly believed in Marxism and firmly upheld the conviction that revolution would triumph, never bowing to hardship, never wavering in the face of life or death.
On the new Long March road, risks and challenges are intertwined, and difficulties and obstacles are numerous. We must integrate absolute loyalty into our blood and translate it into action. We must deeply comprehend the decisive significance of the Two Establishments (两个确立), resolutely achieve the Two Upholds (两个维护), always maintain a high degree of consistency with the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core in thought, politics, and action, resolutely implement the major decisions and arrangements of the Party Central Committee, and unswervingly be loyal to the core, support the core, uphold the core, and defend the core. We must establish a mindset of thinking about problems, making decisions, and handling affairs from the fundamental interests of the country and the nation, and write a magnificent epic of national rejuvenation with rock-solid sincerity.
The great Long March spirit fully demonstrates the power of truth
The Long March was not only a strategic shift across mountains and rivers, but also a clearing the clouds to see the sun (拨云见日, bo yun jian ri - "push, clouds, see, sun") in thought. The arduous great expedition was both a march of Party cadres and Red Army officers and soldiers crossing numerous dangers and breaking through layers of blockades, and a path of seeking in which our Party dispelled the fog of thought and explored revolutionary truth. Under extremely harsh natural conditions and a struggle situation with a vast disparity in strength between enemy and ourselves, the scientific truth of Marxism pointed the way forward for the Party and the Red Army and gathered immense strength, allowing the revolutionary spark in desperate straits to radiate brilliance.
The power of discarding dogmatism and seeking truth from facts. At the beginning of the Long March, the errors of the "Left" line caused enormous losses to the Party and the Red Army. In the bloody battle at the Xiang River, the Central Red Army was sharply reduced from more than 80,000 to more than 30,000. The grief of "the blood of the fierce Xiang River crossing flows like a torrent, where will the Three Armies go today" forced the Party and the Red Army to reflect on "which way to go and how to fight." After the Zunyi Conference, in an extremely perilous and rapidly changing struggle environment, the Party and the Red Army discarded subjective assumptions and rigid thinking, always making decisions based on objective reality, flexibly adjusting strategic policies and innovating combat methods and tactics. Under the guidance of scientific truth, they accurately identified changes, responded scientifically to changes, and proactively sought change, blazing a revolutionary path toward new life and victory with the great creative spirit of rebirth from fire.
The power of basing oneself on reality and independent innovation. For a period of time, because the instructions of the Communist International were dogmatized and the experience of the Soviet Union was sanctified, China's independent thinking was severely suppressed, and the revolutionary cause of the Party and the people suffered major setbacks. Mao Zedong incisively summarized: "Don't rely on the teacher; read books yourself, write yourself, think about problems yourself. This is a truth." The Zunyi Conference, based on the reality of the Chinese revolution, soberly examined the objective reality of the vast disparity in strength between the enemy and ourselves, thoroughly corrected the error of "Left" dogmatism, resolutely abandoned the rigid pre-set march plan, and re-established correct military and strategic policies. Chinese Communists began to shift from merely reciting "textbooks" to relying on their own wisdom and strength to write the "true scripture" of revolution, guiding the great historical cause toward victory.
The power of reversing a critical situation and opening up a new situation. Before the Long March, the revolutionary base areas suffered heavy blows, the strength of the Red Army was greatly weakened, and the Chinese revolution fell into a darkest hour with an uncertain future. When truth was independently discerned, developed, and applied by the Chinese people according to national conditions, the Chinese revolution regained vitality. After the Zunyi Conference, Chinese Communists with Comrade Mao Zedong as the main representative treated science with a scientific attitude and pursued truth with the spirit of truth, insisted on making strategic decisions from reality, bravely shouldered responsibility and decisively broke the deadlock at the critical moment of life and death, led the Red Army to overcome countless difficulties and perils, smashed the enemy's encirclement, pursuit, blocking, and interception, declared the complete failure of the Kuomintang reactionaries' plot to eliminate the Chinese Communist Party and the Red Army, victoriously realized the strategic shift of going north to resist Japan, and successfully opened up a new situation for the Chinese revolution.
At present, changes of the world, changes of the times, and changes of history are unfolding in ways unprecedented. China's development faces new strategic opportunities, new strategic tasks, new strategic stages, new strategic requirements, and a new strategic environment. To seek development in a more unstable and uncertain world, we must use the light of truth to guide the road ahead, deeply study and comprehend Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, make judgments and decisions from the overall situation, the long term, and the general trend, and at the same time have strategy, wisdom, and methods, be good at capturing and creating opportunities from the immediate crises and immediate difficulties, and strive to cultivate new opportunities amid crises and open up new prospects amid changes.
The great Long March spirit fully demonstrates the power of justice
Those who follow righteousness prosper; those who go against the general trend perish. But the road to pursuing justice is often not a smooth path. Only through great struggle can we uphold what is right and eliminate what is evil, and hold up a sky of justice in the hearts of the people. Every step of the 25,000-li journey answered the question "what is justice": it is the unyielding backbone raised at the moment of national crisis, the powerful hands extended in the suffering of the people, and the correct course anchored in the turning point of history. The Long March proved with blood and faith that justice possesses a powerful force that can penetrate all darkness and overcome all difficulties.
The power of resisting national oppression and striving for national salvation. National independence is the fundamental right of a nation's survival and development, with indisputable justice. In modern China, the mountains and rivers were shattered and the people suffered immensely; imperialist powers bullied and oppressed, reactionary forces were dictatorial and separatist, and national peril became the heaviest proposition of that era. Even in the desperate situation where their own survival hung by a thread, the Party and the Red Army still wrote "go north to resist Japan" on their banners and made saving the nation from peril their mission. The Long March thus became a just expedition to save the nation from peril and resist unjust oppression. During the Long March, through arduous practical exploration, our Party successfully linked solving the survival crisis with saving the nation from peril, linked the general direction of the Long March with establishing forward positions for resisting Japan, and realized the transformation from the domestic revolutionary war to the anti-Japanese national war. The victory of the Long March fully confirms that a just cause fears no difficulties and obstacles. The just pursuit of fighting for national independence and struggling for national survival was the fundamental driving force for the Red Army's rise from desperate straits and repeated miracles.
The power of taking root in the soil of the people and pursuing the liberation of the people. Public sentiment is the greatest politics; justice is the strongest force. The Long March was a great expedition that awakened the masses. Facing the confrontation between the forces of justice and evil, and the choice between two futures of light and darkness, our Party always took root among the people, connecting with the masses, mobilizing the masses, arming the masses, uniting the masses, and relying on the masses, giving the justice of the Long March its most solid mass foundation. In Shazhou Village, Rucheng County, Hunan, three female Red Army soldiers cut half of their only quilt and left it for Xu Jiexiu. The "half quilt" warmed the bodies and hearts of the common people and demonstrated the original aspiration of Chinese Communists. Whoever keeps the people in their hearts is the righteous army in the eyes of the people. The root of the Long March's victory is deeply planted in the bloodline of the people.
The power of discerning the tide of history and following the general trend of the times. History rises and falls like the tide; what changes are the peaks and troughs of the waves, but what remains unchanged is the mainstream of justice. This is precisely "strength or weakness lies in force for a time, but victory or defeat over a thousand years lies in reason." Faced with various mists of theory in the grim situation, the Party saw clearly that the most urgent proposition for the Chinese nation was national salvation, and the most irreversible trend was united resistance against Japan. At the critical juncture of a matter of life and death (生死存亡, sheng si cun wang - "life, death, exist, perish"), the Party and the Red Army firmly chose to stand on the correct side of history, on the side of fairness and justice, and on the side of human progress, ultimately victoriously realizing the strategic shift and finding a new foothold for the survival and development of the forces of the Chinese revolution and a new starting point for the victorious advance of the cause of the Chinese revolution.
Where justice stands, the hearts of the people turn to it; where justice points, nothing is invincible. On the new Long March road, we must always adhere to the right path and practice justice firmly, dare to struggle and be good at struggle, continuously strengthen our ambition, backbone, and confidence in defending the cause of the Party and the people, better coordinate development and security, be ready at all times to withstand major tests of high winds and rough waves or even terrifying billows, overcome difficulties, confront risks, and meet challenges with the spirit of historical initiative, and ensure that the great ship of China's rejuvenation cleaves through the waves and sails steadily and far.
The great Long March spirit fully demonstrates the power of unity
Snowy mountains and grasslands, a journey of ten thousand li; storms as heavy as rocks, unity of purpose forms a strong defense (众志成城, zhong zhi cheng cheng - "mass, will, become, city"). General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "The victory of the Long March realized unprecedented unity of the whole Party and unprecedented unity of the Red Army on the basis of pursuing truth and upholding truth. Without this great unity in thought and politics, the victory of the Chinese revolution would have been impossible." Unity enabled this ragged contingent to cross rivers, surmount perilous peaks, and break through encirclements, and also made the Long March spirit shine ever more brilliantly through the tempering of the years.
The power of considering the overall situation and safeguarding the overall situation. During the Long March, in the face of Zhang Guotao's serious error of splitting the Party and the Red Army and setting up a separate "Central Committee," revolutionary officers and soldiers waged a resolute struggle against it. Zhu De stated his position unequivocally: "You can split me in two, but you can never sever my relationship with Mao Zedong." Xu Xiangqian, commander-in-chief of the Fourth Front Red Army, seriously pointed out: "How can there be any logic in Red Army fighting Red Army!" At the same time, the Party Central Committee strictly separated Zhang Guotao's error from the broad masses of commanders and fighters of the Fourth Front Red Army, both holding the principled bottom line and considering the overall revolutionary situation, ultimately enabling the officers and soldiers of the Fourth Front Red Army to see right from wrong, return to the northward route, and realize the victorious rendezvous of the three main forces of the Red Army.
The power of clinging to each other in life and death and sharing weal and woe. When crossing the grasslands, Wang Yuqing skillfully made a fishhook from a sewing needle on his military cap, caught a few small fish, boiled them into fish soup, and shared it with the comrades around him. After regaining a little strength, everyone supported each other and continued to march forward. Nine soldiers of the cooking squad of a certain company of the Third Red Army Corps carried a bronze pot on the ten-thousand-li march. They would rather overload themselves than fail to protect the unit's food and warmth. However, extreme exhaustion and hunger made them fall on the journey, and only this bronze pot reached the destination. Sharing weal and woe was not a slogan; it was the choice of "giving the hope of life to comrades and keeping the danger of death for oneself." This internal unity, stemming from shared ideals and connected bloodlines, forged the Red Army into "a piece of hard steel" that overcame physical limits and trials of life and death far beyond the ordinary.
The power of the military and the people being of one heart and helping each other. The Red Army always strictly observed discipline toward the masses, never taking a single needle or thread from the people, sincerely helping the people of all ethnic groups along the way, and winning the hearts of the people with pure original aspiration. The "alliance at the Yi Sea" broke down ethnic barriers, as the Red Army forged a life-and-death pact with Yi compatriots, opening a passage for the main force to pass through smoothly. Along the way, the common people voluntarily delivered grain and water to the Red Army, treated the wounded, and passed on intelligence. Countless masses supported the Red Army's campaigns without hesitation. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "From the reluctance of 'Sending the Red Army Off in Ten Songs' and the guardianship of the night crossing at Yudu, to the warmth of the 'half quilt' and the oath of the 'alliance at the Yi Sea,' all vividly interpret the deep bond between the military and the people like fish and water." History clearly confirms that the victory of the Long March was a victory of the united struggle of the military and the people. The heartfelt support and vigorous backing of the masses were the source of strength for the Party and the Red Army to persist in struggle under extremely difficult circumstances.
The new journey is an expedition full of glory and dreams, a new Long March of the Party and the people. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: "Reviewing the past and looking to the future, we must vigorously carry forward the great Long March spirit and work together with one heart to walk the new Long March road well." We must always uphold the Party's overall leadership and the centralized, unified leadership of the Party Central Committee, continuously strengthen the Party's political leadership, ideological guidance, mass organization, and social appeal, and gather the united and advancing strength of the whole Party in unison. We must consolidate and develop the rock-solid unity between the military, the government, and the people, draw the "concentric circle" of building a strong country and a strong military on the new journey, and gather the overwhelming force like pushing mountains and overturning seas (排山倒海, pai shan dao hai - "push, mountain, overturn, sea") of historical might.
(The author is a researcher at the Research Center for Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era of the National Defense University)
Return to TopBy: 本报评论员 兰文飞
The Long March of the Red Army created an extraordinary miracle in the human world and forged the great Long March spirit. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out, "Where the spirit is, there is the strength. The great Long March spirit fully demonstrates the power of loyalty, the power of truth, the power of justice, and the power of unity. As an important component of the spiritual genealogy of Chinese Communists, it transcends time and space, constantly new through the ages (历久弥新, li jiu mi xin - "pass, long time, stay, new"), and will forever be a precious treasure and powerful driving force inspiring us to overcome difficulties and forge ahead courageously." This important exposition profoundly elucidates the relationship between spiritual strength and the victory of the Party and the people's cause, providing fundamental guidance for us to vigorously carry forward the great Long March spirit on the new journey of the new era and to walk the new Long March road with united efforts.
As one of the most important events of the 20th century capable of influencing the future of the world, the Long March of the Red Army is a human epic filled with ideals and the spirit of dedication, written with willpower and courage. Such a Long March — unprecedented in Chinese history and extremely rare in the history of world warfare and even in the history of human civilization — with its extraordinary duration, immense scale, vast distance, perilous environment, and brutal fighting, remains a focus of world attention to this day, and people who come to trace the Long March route in admiration are in an endless stream. In this process, people repeatedly ask: what kind of spirit enabled the Red Army — a ragged, poorly equipped force — to advance forging ahead without hesitation (一往无前, yi wang wu qian - "one, go, no, front") in desperate situations, to create a magnificent and awe-inspiring (气吞山河, qi tun shan he - "breath, swallow, mountain, river") miracle in the human world, and to achieve a great victory leaving a lasting mark in history (彪炳史册, biao bing shi ce - "brilliant, shine, history, book")? This spirit is the great Long March spirit forged by Communists and Red Army officers and soldiers with their lives and blood, and it is also the most precious spiritual treasure the Long March has left us.
Without spirit, a person cannot stand; without spirit, a nation cannot be strong. Struggling against difficulties is both a contest of material strength and a confrontation of spirit. Only when a nation stands firm and steady in spirit can it remain standing firm and unshakeable (屹立不倒, yi li bu dao - "stand, erect, not, fall") and ride the crest of the tide in the torrent of history. During the Long March, Red Army officers and soldiers fought more than 600 battles against the enemy, crossed nearly a hundred rivers, climbed over more than 40 high mountains and perilous peaks, traversed vast grasslands, conquered the limits of human survival with tenacious will, repelled more than a million extremely vicious and evil (穷凶极恶, qiong xiong ji e - "extreme, fierce, utmost, evil") pursuers and obstructing enemies, swept across more than 10 provinces, and advanced 25,000 li, rising again and again after setbacks and being tempered into steel through hardship (淬火成钢, cui huo cheng gang - "quench, fire, become, steel") through suffering. These figures eloquently demonstrate that what determined the victory of the Long March was not the quality of equipment or the favorability of conditions; the miracle of the Long March was forged by powerful spirit and firm conviction. Revolutionary ideals and revolutionary beliefs can unleash inexhaustible strength to overcome formidable enemies and shake mountains; a force with lofty ideals and firm convictions is invincible. The great Long March spirit has been deeply integrated into the blood and soul of the Chinese nation, becoming a rich nourishment for socialist core values and a powerful spiritual driving force that inspires and encourages the Chinese people to continuously tackle difficulties and overcome obstacles.
With faith in the heart, there is strength underfoot. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out, "The reason our Party has remained in the prime of one's life (风华正茂, feng hua zheng mao - "wind, flower, correct, lush") through a hundred years and endless and continuous (生生不息, sheng sheng bu xi - "birth, birth, not, cease") through much hardship is precisely that it relies on that powerful spirit of revolution plus desperate struggle." Facing the extraordinary difficulties and twists and turns during the Long March, the Party and the Red Army faced death in a hail of bullets, sought survival in extreme conditions, and were reborn from the ashes through tempered through many trials and tribulations (千锤百炼, qian chui bai lian - "thousand, hammer, hundred, refine"). They would rather go hungry and cold than take a single needle or thread from the masses, and would crawl to northern Shaanxi even after amputating a wounded leg, demonstrating the lofty revolutionary spirit of indomitable perseverance, forging ahead without hesitation, heroic fighting, and facing death unflinchingly, composing moving hymns of heroism one after another. The great Long March spirit demonstrates the power of loyalty — only with absolute loyalty to the Party can one adhere to the correct political direction; it demonstrates the power of truth — only by combining the basic principles of Marxism with China's specific realities can one win by surprise; it demonstrates the power of justice — only by always maintaining flesh-and-blood ties with the masses can the people become a strong backing; it demonstrates the power of unity — when officers and soldiers share hardships, they can coalesce into an invincible torrent of steel. To bear in mind and carry forward the great Long March spirit ultimately means transforming it into the power of action. On the new journey, there are still many "snowy mountains" and "grasslands" for us to cross, and many "Loushan Passes" and "Lazikou" to conquer. For today's Communists, it is necessary to resolutely discard all thoughts of seeking comfort and ease and refusing to continue arduous struggle, and all thoughts of being complacent and refusing to continue pioneering progress, and to inherit and carry forward the great Long March spirit in the great practice of the new era.
"The history of the Long March has never faded into the distance; the road of the Long March is constantly extending." The new era and the new journey constitute an expedition filled with glory and dreams, and also a new Long March for the Party and the people. Every generation has its own Long March road, and every generation must walk its own Long March road well. The road toward ideals has never been smooth. Facing the complex and ever-changing domestic and international situation, we must be prepared at all times to withstand major tests of high winds and rough waves, or even violent storms, overcome difficulties, confront risks, and meet challenges with the spirit of historical initiative, integrate the great Long March spirit into our blood and soul, transform it into concrete actions in work and entrepreneurship, and promote the continuous advance of the Party and the people's cause from victory to new victory.
Return to TopBy: 刘晟
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out at the National Conference on Health and Wellness that health for all is the common vision of all humanity, and that we should actively promote the building of a community of common health for mankind, jointly respond to major challenges in the health and wellness field, and continuously improve the health and well-being of people of all countries. This important assertion places global health governance within the grand perspective of the evolution of human civilization, manifests a civilizational pursuit that takes the well-being of life as its value yardstick, and also provides fundamental guidance for understanding the core position of health in the new form of human civilization. The new form of human civilization is a major theoretical innovation of 21st-century Marxism and the civilizational crystallization of the path of Chinese modernization. This new form is people-centered, takes the comprehensive development of the human person as its goal, and transcends the Western modernization model centered on capital. Within this theoretical framework, health occupies a special position—it is both the precondition for the comprehensive development of the human person and the convergence point of the coordinated development of the five forms of civilization. Placing health at the core of civilizational value is the key to understanding the intrinsic connection between the community of common health for mankind and the new form of human civilization.
Health is the end, not the means
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that "the most important indicator of modernization is still the people's health, which is the foundation of the people's happy life." The Marxist view of civilization holds that the free and comprehensive development of the human person is the highest value of civilization, and health is the precondition for realizing this development. In Das Kapital, Marx profoundly criticized the devastation that the capitalist mode of production wreaks on workers' health, pointing out that capital "encroaches upon the time for growth, development, and maintenance of health." The profundity of this critique lies in the fact that, proceeding from the internal logic of political economy, it reveals the structural contradiction between capital accumulation and the health of laborers.
Within the perspective of Marxist political economy, there is a fundamental difference in the positioning of health under different modes of production. Under the capitalist system, safeguarding health is a means of development, and the reproduction of labor power is subordinate to the need for capital accumulation; under the socialist system, safeguarding health is not only a means of development but also an end of development, and the reproduction of labor power ultimately serves human liberation. This difference determines the different logics of health governance in the two civilizational forms and also provides the fundamental value coordinates for building the community of common health for mankind. The level of modernization of a society cannot be measured solely by economic growth rates; the people's health level and the degree of health equity are more fundamental yardsticks.
Health governance that transcends the logic of capital
Developed countries have achieved undeniable historic accomplishments in the field of public health. Since the 19th century, clean water sources, vaccination, the popularization of antibiotics, and the establishment of medical security systems have greatly increased average life expectancy in these countries and significantly reduced infant mortality rates. Universal health insurance, primary-level medical care, and public health surveillance systems have become fairly mature in most developed countries. These are all common achievements of human civilization.
However, the reach and sustainability of these achievements are facing structural challenges. OECD data show that among its member countries, the proportion of the lowest-income group reporting long-term chronic illness (44%) is 16 percentage points higher than that of the highest-income group (28%). Income inequality itself systematically affects population health—this is not a deficiency of governance technology but an inevitable manifestation of the logic of capital accumulation in the health field. Under capitalist conditions, health security is always limited by the need for capital accumulation: when workers' health can maintain the value of labor power, it receives attention; when safeguarding health requires restricting capital accumulation, it is shelved.
In analyzing capitalist agriculture, Marx put forward the concept of "metabolic exchange," pointing out that humans obtain food, water, and air from nature through labor and return the excreta of production and consumption to nature, and that the smooth operation of this cycle is the precondition for health. However, the capitalist mode of production transports large quantities of nutrients from rural areas to cities for consumption but fails to return them to the land, causing a rupture in the cycle of metabolic exchange between humans and nature. Foster summarized this rupture as the "metabolic rift." This rift is not only the root cause of soil fertility depletion but also the structural root of the health crisis: polluted water sources, deteriorated air, and degraded soil ultimately return to human beings in the form of health damage. Developed countries have made notable progress in domestic environmental governance, and urban air quality has improved substantially. But this improvement has been achieved to a certain extent by transferring polluting industries to developing countries. The ecological restoration and supply of means of subsistence in the central regions are supported through the sustained occupation of land, resources, and labor in the peripheral regions, and what was originally a local metabolic contradiction has been reorganized into ecological inequality on a global scale. This structural problem is rooted in the unequal division of labor of the capitalist world system, not in the policy choices of any particular country.
In the fields of labor conditions and mental health, developed countries likewise present a situation in which progress and limitations coexist. On the one hand, labor legislation, occupational safety standards, and mental health services have reached a relatively high level in most developed countries; on the other hand, the "overwork" that Marx criticized continues in new forms. These facts show that the health achievements of developed countries are real, but their universality and sustainability are structurally constrained by the logic of capital.
China has achieved achievements in the health field that are drawing worldwide attention (举世瞩目, ju shi zhu mu - "lift, world, gaze, look")—average life expectancy has risen substantially, universal health insurance covers more than 1.3 billion people, and the battle against poverty has significantly improved the health conditions of the poor population. But the problems of unbalanced and inadequate development still exist. The distribution of medical resources between urban and rural areas and between regions is uneven, the accessibility of health services for the floating population needs to be improved, and the matching of ecological environment improvement with health needs still needs to be strengthened. On the surface, these problems resemble the health inequality faced by developed countries, but their roots and solutions are of a fundamentally different nature. The health inequality of developed countries is rooted in the logic of capital accumulation and is institutional; the health problems China faces are a reflection of the level of productive forces and the degree of institutional perfection in the primary stage of socialism. The former is difficult to fundamentally cure within the capitalist framework, while the latter is being continuously resolved through health-centered practice. This candor of self-examination is precisely the inherent requirement of the concept of the community of common health for mankind—it is not an evasion of one's own problems, but rather, in the process of solving problems, it provides experience that can be drawn upon for global health governance.
China's health-centered practice
Through the Healthy China strategy, global health cooperation, the international dissemination of traditional Chinese medicine, and the construction of a social psychological service system, China has provided Chinese solutions for building the community of common health for mankind. The "Healthy China 2030" Planning Outline issued in 2016 elevated Healthy China to a national strategy, the core of which is shifting from "treatment-centered" to "health-centered" and promoting the integration of health into all policies. This means that health is no longer merely the responsibility of the health department but a common goal of all policy fields, including agriculture, education, housing, environment, employment, and transportation.
In the field of mental health, China has incorporated mental health into the health service system, launching pilot programs for the construction of a social psychological service system in 2018. Taking Xihu District of Hangzhou City as an example, the district launched its pilot program in 2019 and completed and put into operation a district-level social psychological service center in 2024, with psychological counseling rooms or social work studios established with full coverage in every village (community), forming a mental health service system with dual leadership by the political-legal and health departments, collaboration among multiple departments, and full coverage of towns, streets, villages, and communities. The civilizational significance of this practice lies in the fact that it redefines mental health from a "personal problem" into a "social problem" and from a "treatment problem" into a "governance problem," providing transferable Chinese experience for global mental health reform.
In global health governance, China adheres to the principles of not imposing political conditions, not being oriented toward commercial interests, and taking the actual health needs of recipient countries as the starting point. As of 2025, China has provided more than 2.3 billion doses of vaccines to more than 120 countries and international organizations and has dispatched medical expert teams to 34 countries. The "1-3-7" prevention and control model created by Chinese health experts based on cooperation on the China-Myanmar border has been incorporated by the World Health Organization into the Global Technical Strategy for Malaria 2016-2030. In the field of traditional medicine, traditional Chinese medicine has spread to 196 countries and regions around the world, China has signed traditional Chinese medicine cooperation agreements with nearly 50 foreign governments, and has built with high quality 30 overseas centers of traditional Chinese medicine and 31 national characteristic service export bases (traditional Chinese medicine).
Enriching the value connotation of the new form of human civilization
There is a profound value isomorphism between the community of common health for mankind and the new form of human civilization. Both are people-centered, transcend the logic of capital, pursue fairness and justice, and point toward the free and comprehensive development of the human person. Through the Healthy China strategy, China has demonstrated the feasibility of the new form of human civilization at the level of domestic governance: integrating health into all policies and using institutional arrangements to safeguard health equity. The construction of the social psychological service system further shows that the new form of human civilization concerns itself not only with physical health but also with psychological wholeness—the "comprehensive development of the human person" it pursues is a comprehensive development of the unity of body and mind. Through global health cooperation, China has demonstrated the openness of the new form of human civilization at the international level: not practicing health hegemony, not attaching political conditions, being oriented toward the needs of recipient countries, and taking capacity building as the goal.
Building the community of common health for mankind is a long-term and arduous undertaking. In the face of the political economy dilemma of global health governance, inequality in the structure of knowledge, the erosion of health by commercial determinants, and the health threats of climate change, the joint efforts of the international community are needed to promote structural reform rather than merely technical adjustment. Only by touching upon the unequal world economic structure and the pattern of knowledge power can health truly become the core value of the new form of human civilization, and can everyone enjoy this basic right to health—not only physical health, but also psychological health, and further including the ecological right to enjoy clean air, safe water sources, and a stable climate.
Placing health at the core of civilizational value is not a patch on the Western model of modernization but a fundamental reconstruction of the logic of civilizational development. It transforms health from a "cost of development" into an "end of development," placing human life and well-being at the core of civilizational value. Within the perspective of 21st-century Marxism, the mutual corroboration and mutual interpretation of the community of common health for mankind and the new form of human civilization will provide important theoretical resources and practical guidance for the sustainable development of human society.
Return to TopBy: 魏顺庆
The mass line is the lifeline of our Party and its fundamental line of work, and it is also the living source that nourishes development concepts, charts development thinking, and guides development practice. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "In front of the people, we are forever primary school students; we must consciously take the people as our teachers, seek instruction from the capable, and ask the wise for counsel." The people are the creators of history, the most profound and most powerful force driving reform and development, and also the most solid and most reliable source of wisdom for grassroots governance. Over a century of struggle, magnificent and grand (波澜壮阔, bo lan zhuang kuo - "wave, surge; magnificent, vast"), the reason our Party has been able to traverse storms and continuously advance from one victory to new victories lies fundamentally in its unwavering adherence to the value pursuit of putting the people first, listening to the people's voices, drawing on the people's wisdom, and rallying the people's strength.
Respond to the people's expectations, and calibrate the course of decision-making by the direction of popular sentiment. In planning affairs, formulating measures, and setting policies, the foremost task is to observe the people's conditions, understand the people's opinions, and connect with the people's hearts. One should approach the masses in the posture of "sitting body to body and chatting heart to heart," setting aside airs and bending down, listening to demands in their original flavor, and perceiving what the masses think, hope for, and worry about at the bottom of their hearts, taking the people's aspirations as the compass for decision-making, so that development thinking fits objective reality more closely and accords with the people's yearning for a better life. However tall a tree grows, its roots lie in fertile soil. The grassroots are the fertile soil of practice, and the simple yet vivid governance wisdom contained among the masses is often scattered in the social conditions and public opinion of fields, paths, streets, and neighborhoods. Those seemingly plain and fragmentary pieces of folk wisdom, rooted in the scene of governance, originating from frontline practice, and fitting the needs of the masses, are precious assets for making up development shortcomings, clearing governance bottlenecks, and improving people's well-being. The masses' offering advice and suggestions (建言献策, jian yan xian ce - "build, speech; offer, strategy") carries their yearning for a better life and is full of trust in the Party committee and government and earnest expectations for local development. Perceiving the people's hearts depends on unimpeded channels. One should comprehensively employ diverse carriers such as sincere talks on people's conditions, door-to-door visits, grassroots forums, online suggestions, and public opinion questionnaires, and, with deep feeling for the masses, measure the land with one's steps and listen to the people's voices with sincerity, precisely capturing the masses' urgent concerns and pressing needs in such fields as employment, education, medical care, elderly care, and housing. The quality of mass work is judged not by the quantity of opinions collected, nor by the scale of publicity momentum, but by whether decision-making and handling of affairs always anchors on the original aspiration of serving the people, keeps the masses' concerns in mind and translates them into action, effectively converting the masses' "troubling matters" into the "focal points" of work, converting the masses' voices into policy orientation, and enabling every decision to take root in the fertile soil of the grassroots, fit the trend of development, and follow the direction of popular sentiment.
Gather the people's wisdom, and temper sound governance measures through grassroots practice. "One who knows a leaking roof dwells beneath it; one who knows errors in governance dwells in the wilds." Among the masses are contained inexhaustible wisdom and creativity, and many effective governance experiences all originate from grassroots practice and exploration. Grassroots masses on the frontline of production and life perceive the pain points of people's livelihoods, difficulties of governance, and bottlenecks of development most keenly and most truly, and the paths and methods explored in practice also possess the greatest vitality and practical value. Only by going deep into the grassroots can one grasp the true situation; only by approaching the masses can one gather the people's wisdom. Practice has repeatedly proven that investigation and research are the foundation of planning affairs and the way to accomplish things, and they are dialectically unified with and mutually reinforcing the Party's mass line. Many governance difficulties that are hard to resolve after much thought in the office, and development bottlenecks that are difficult to break through, can, once one goes down to the grassroots and gets close to the masses, have the fog dispelled and good remedies found. Detached from the masses and negligent in investigation, decisions easily become suspended in midair and divorced from reality; simply pooling scattered demands without systematic analysis and judgment, governance will end up neglecting one thing to focus on another (顾此而失彼, gu ci er shi bi - "look at this, instead lose that") and treating symptoms without curing the root cause. To promote high-quality development of the cause, one must uphold the integration of the mass line with investigation and research, discern contradictions and analyze problems in the course of in-depth grassroots investigation, and firmly grasp the initiative in scientific decision-making. To gather the people's wisdom, the key is to build a normalized, standardized, and systematic mechanism for extracting the people's wisdom. Resolutely rectify formalistic investigation that is making a superficial inspection (走马观花, zou ma guan hua - "ride, horse, observe, flower") and stopping after only a superficial attempt (浅尝辄止, qian shang che zhi - "shallow, taste, then, stop"), and discard simplistic working models of random collection and crude handling. Always uphold and apply the systems concept, coordinate and connect the entire chain of public opinion collection, field investigation, problem analysis, and experience refinement, break free from the limitations and constraints of fragmentation and superficiality, grasp universal laws and extract useful experience from the masses' scattered suggestions and the grassroots' vivid practice. For diversified public opinions, carry out classified sorting, screening, and analysis, strip away individualized and one-sided demands, and refine governance experience that is universal, innovative, replicable, and promotable.
Rally the people's strength, and activate governance momentum by seeking counsel from the people. Whether in the past or the present, being good at seeking strategies and counsel from the masses and relying on the masses to find paths to solve problems has always been our Party's magic weapon for overcoming great difficulties and challenges (攻坚克难, gong jian ke nan - "attack, fortification; overcome, difficulty"). Especially at present, facing the many difficulties of reform entering the deep-water zone, only by actively going down to seek counsel and relying on the masses can one find the breakthrough points and focal points of work. Seeking counsel from the people is not simply copying the masses' demands or passively responding to individual cases, but rather, based on the overall situation, sublimating and purifying grassroots wisdom and absorbing it systematically. Entering the new era, seeking advice from the public (开门问策, kai men wen ce - "open, door, ask, strategy") and broadly gathering the people's wisdom have already become a distinctive feature of scientific policy-making and good governance. From extensively soliciting public opinion in the process of compiling major national plans and reform plans, and elevating absorbed grassroots innovative experience into institutional arrangements; to localities building platforms such as consultative deliberation and online suggestions to gather the people's wisdom and collect the people's strategies, a large number of vivid ideas from the grassroots have flowed into the overall development picture, constructing a benign governance pattern of upper-lower linkage and two-way empowerment. The way of governance lies in coordination and connectivity. One should improve the closed-loop mechanism of "public opinion collection—screening and analysis—policy empowerment—implementation and optimization—iterative improvement," so that macro-level arrangements fit grassroots reality and the people's wisdom is integrated into the overall development picture. Fully respect the people's spirit of pioneering, break down dogmatic thinking and path dependence, discard the simplistic "one-size-fits-all" governance model, actively absorb the masses' reasonable suggestions, and let vivid grassroots practice become the living source for policy iteration and governance optimization. Carry forward and apply well our Party's fine tradition of organizing the masses and mobilizing the masses, unite people's hearts with a shared vision, benefit people's livelihoods with development achievements, and purify social customs with the demonstration of role models. Be good at using the masses' methods to resolve the masses' problems, and rally the mighty force of cadres and the masses united in heart and striving forward together.
Return to TopBy: 刘光明
The Long March was a great feat that shook the world and shone brightly in the annals of history. It stands as a towering monument in the historical process of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, leaving our Party a precious spiritual treasure. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized at the conference commemorating the 90th anniversary of the victory of the Long March of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army of China: "The Red Army's Long March created an extraordinary miracle in the human world and forged the great Long March spirit." The great Long March spirit fully demonstrates the power of loyalty, the power of truth, the power of justice, and the power of unity. As an important component of the spiritual pedigree of Chinese Communists, it transcends time and space, remaining fresh after a long time (历久弥新, li jiu mi xin - "long time, endure, new"), and will forever be a precious asset and powerful driving force inspiring us to overcome difficulties and advance courageously. The great Long March spirit contains a spiritual power that penetrates time and space and thrives endlessly, inspiring us to cross vast distances and many mountains (万水千山, wan shui qian shan - "ten thousand, waters, thousand, mountains"), overcome countless difficulties and perils (千难万险, qian nan wan xian - "thousand, difficulties, ten thousand, dangers"), and strive to walk the new Long March road well.
The great Long March spirit fully demonstrates the power of loyalty
The Long March was a red ribbon paved with faith and measured with loyalty. Across vast distances and many mountains, Red Army officers and soldiers questioned their ideals with their footsteps, fulfilled their vows with their lives, and engraved their absolute loyalty to the Party and the people into every inch of the land beneath their feet. Amid trials of life and death and desperate situations, Communist Party members and Red Army officers and soldiers upheld their original aspirations with pure loyalty and forged ahead through hardships (砥砺前行, di li qian xing - "grind, whet; front, walk"), making loyalty the most vivid foundation of the Long March spirit and building an unbreakable spiritual cornerstone for the victory of the Chinese revolution.
The power of unwavering loyalty to the Party and close adherence to the Central Committee. Wherever the Party flag points, the hearts of the military follow. During the Long March, no matter how perilous the situation or how uncertain the road ahead, Red Army officers and soldiers held fast to one truth: follow the Party, and victory is certain. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "The correct leadership of the Party and the establishment of Comrade Mao Zedong's core position were of decisive significance to the victory of the Red Army's Long March." After the Zunyi Conference, Party cadres and Red Army officers and soldiers more firmly upheld the authority of the Party Central Committee at the critical turning point of life and death. The revolutionary ranks gained a backbone, the pursuit of victory gained a compass, and the Party and the Red Army gained new life. When crossing the Dangling Snow Mountain, the frozen soldier Liu Zhihai still raised his arm high, clutching in his hand his Party membership certificate and a silver dollar, using his last strength to pay his final Party membership dues to the organization. On the vast grasslands, the young soldier Zhou Guangcai carried a "half belt" in his bosom, insisting on walking out of the wilderness and bringing it all the way to Yan'an. Such loyalty is the clarity after setbacks, the steadfastness after passing through the fog.
The power of unwavering commitment to national salvation and sacrificing one's life for righteousness. The most fervent footnote to loyalty is shouldering the survival of the nation. During the Long March, to rescue the family and country from peril, Party cadres and Red Army officers and soldiers always regarded the fundamental interests of the entire Chinese people and the Chinese nation as above all else, finding life in the face of death (向死而生, xiang si er sheng - "towards, death, and, live") amid hail of bullets, surviving against all odds at the limits of survival, and being reborn from fire after being tempered through many trials and tribulations (千锤百炼, qian chui bai lian - "thousand, hammer, hundred, refine"). On the 25,000-li journey of the First Front Red Army, on average one Red Army soldier sacrificed his life every 300 meters. In the bloody battle at the Xiang River, the 34th Red Army Division served as the rearguard, holding their positions to the death even after running out of ammunition and reinforcements. Division Commander Chen Shuxiang, after being captured, tore open his intestines to show his resolve, fulfilling the sonorous vow of "shedding the last drop of blood for the Soviet New China." Countless revolutionary martyrs paid every sacrifice for the safety of the family and country, bearing witness to the blazing radiance of loyalty.
The power of holding fast to faith and preferring death to surrender. "A stone may be broken, but its hardness cannot be taken away; cinnabar may be ground, but its redness cannot be taken away." The essence of loyalty is firmness of faith, and perseverance in desperate situations best tests the true nature of loyalty. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "Revolutionary ideals and revolutionary convictions can burst forth with boundless power to overcome stubborn enemies and shake mountains. A contingent with lofty ideals and firm convictions is invincible." The Long March was an extremely rare journey of suffering in human history. The snow-capped mountains with high altitude and low oxygen, the uninhabited grasslands, and the scarce and insufficient supplies tested every Communist Party member and Red Army officer and soldier at every moment. Even in rags, they still held the morning sun in their hearts; even in desperate straits, they still yearned for the dawn, because in their hearts they always firmly believed in Marxism and firmly upheld the conviction that revolution would triumph, never bowing to hardship, never wavering in the face of life or death.
On the new Long March road, risks and challenges are intertwined, and difficulties and obstacles are numerous. We must integrate absolute loyalty into our blood and translate it into action. We must deeply comprehend the decisive significance of the Two Establishments (两个确立), resolutely achieve the Two Upholds (两个维护), always maintain a high degree of consistency with the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core in thought, politics, and action, resolutely implement the major decisions and arrangements of the Party Central Committee, and unswervingly be loyal to the core, support the core, uphold the core, and defend the core. We must establish a mindset of thinking about problems, making decisions, and handling affairs from the fundamental interests of the country and the nation, and write a magnificent epic of national rejuvenation with rock-solid sincerity.
The great Long March spirit fully demonstrates the power of truth
The Long March was not only a strategic shift across mountains and rivers, but also a clearing the clouds to see the sun (拨云见日, bo yun jian ri - "push, clouds, see, sun") in thought. The arduous great expedition was both a march of Party cadres and Red Army officers and soldiers crossing numerous dangers and breaking through layers of blockades, and a path of seeking in which our Party dispelled the fog of thought and explored revolutionary truth. Under extremely harsh natural conditions and a struggle situation with a vast disparity in strength between enemy and ourselves, the scientific truth of Marxism pointed the way forward for the Party and the Red Army and gathered immense strength, allowing the revolutionary spark in desperate straits to radiate brilliance.
The power of discarding dogmatism and seeking truth from facts. At the beginning of the Long March, the errors of the "Left" line caused enormous losses to the Party and the Red Army. In the bloody battle at the Xiang River, the Central Red Army was sharply reduced from more than 80,000 to more than 30,000. The grief of "the blood of the fierce Xiang River crossing flows like a torrent, where will the Three Armies go today" forced the Party and the Red Army to reflect on "which way to go and how to fight." After the Zunyi Conference, in an extremely perilous and rapidly changing struggle environment, the Party and the Red Army discarded subjective assumptions and rigid thinking, always making decisions based on objective reality, flexibly adjusting strategic policies and innovating combat methods and tactics. Under the guidance of scientific truth, they accurately identified changes, responded scientifically to changes, and proactively sought change, blazing a revolutionary path toward new life and victory with the great creative spirit of rebirth from fire.
The power of basing oneself on reality and independent innovation. For a period of time, because the instructions of the Communist International were dogmatized and the experience of the Soviet Union was sanctified, China's independent thinking was severely suppressed, and the revolutionary cause of the Party and the people suffered major setbacks. Mao Zedong incisively summarized: "Don't rely on the teacher; read books yourself, write yourself, think about problems yourself. This is a truth." The Zunyi Conference, based on the reality of the Chinese revolution, soberly examined the objective reality of the vast disparity in strength between the enemy and ourselves, thoroughly corrected the error of "Left" dogmatism, resolutely abandoned the rigid pre-set march plan, and re-established correct military and strategic policies. Chinese Communists began to shift from merely reciting "textbooks" to relying on their own wisdom and strength to write the "true scripture" of revolution, guiding the great historical cause toward victory.
The power of reversing a critical situation and opening up a new situation. Before the Long March, the revolutionary base areas suffered heavy blows, the strength of the Red Army was greatly weakened, and the Chinese revolution fell into a darkest hour with an uncertain future. When truth was independently discerned, developed, and applied by the Chinese people according to national conditions, the Chinese revolution regained vitality. After the Zunyi Conference, Chinese Communists with Comrade Mao Zedong as the main representative treated science with a scientific attitude and pursued truth with the spirit of truth, insisted on making strategic decisions from reality, bravely shouldered responsibility and decisively broke the deadlock at the critical moment of life and death, led the Red Army to overcome countless difficulties and perils, smashed the enemy's encirclement, pursuit, blocking, and interception, declared the complete failure of the Kuomintang reactionaries' plot to eliminate the Chinese Communist Party and the Red Army, victoriously realized the strategic shift of going north to resist Japan, and successfully opened up a new situation for the Chinese revolution.
At present, changes of the world, changes of the times, and changes of history are unfolding in ways unprecedented. China's development faces new strategic opportunities, new strategic tasks, new strategic stages, new strategic requirements, and a new strategic environment. To seek development in a more unstable and uncertain world, we must use the light of truth to guide the road ahead, deeply study and comprehend Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, make judgments and decisions from the overall situation, the long term, and the general trend, and at the same time have strategy, wisdom, and methods, be good at capturing and creating opportunities from the immediate crises and immediate difficulties, and strive to cultivate new opportunities amid crises and open up new prospects amid changes.
The great Long March spirit fully demonstrates the power of justice
Those who follow righteousness prosper; those who go against the general trend perish. But the road to pursuing justice is often not a smooth path. Only through great struggle can we uphold what is right and eliminate what is evil, and hold up a sky of justice in the hearts of the people. Every step of the 25,000-li journey answered the question "what is justice": it is the unyielding backbone raised at the moment of national crisis, the powerful hands extended in the suffering of the people, and the correct course anchored in the turning point of history. The Long March proved with blood and faith that justice possesses a powerful force that can penetrate all darkness and overcome all difficulties.
The power of resisting national oppression and striving for national salvation. National independence is the fundamental right of a nation's survival and development, with indisputable justice. In modern China, the mountains and rivers were shattered and the people suffered immensely; imperialist powers bullied and oppressed, reactionary forces were dictatorial and separatist, and national peril became the heaviest proposition of that era. Even in the desperate situation where their own survival hung by a thread, the Party and the Red Army still wrote "go north to resist Japan" on their banners and made saving the nation from peril their mission. The Long March thus became a just expedition to save the nation from peril and resist unjust oppression. During the Long March, through arduous practical exploration, our Party successfully linked solving the survival crisis with saving the nation from peril, linked the general direction of the Long March with establishing forward positions for resisting Japan, and realized the transformation from the domestic revolutionary war to the anti-Japanese national war. The victory of the Long March fully confirms that a just cause fears no difficulties and obstacles. The just pursuit of fighting for national independence and struggling for national survival was the fundamental driving force for the Red Army's rise from desperate straits and repeated miracles.
The power of taking root in the soil of the people and pursuing the liberation of the people. Public sentiment is the greatest politics; justice is the strongest force. The Long March was a great expedition that awakened the masses. Facing the confrontation between the forces of justice and evil, and the choice between two futures of light and darkness, our Party always took root among the people, connecting with the masses, mobilizing the masses, arming the masses, uniting the masses, and relying on the masses, giving the justice of the Long March its most solid mass foundation. In Shazhou Village, Rucheng County, Hunan, three female Red Army soldiers cut half of their only quilt and left it for Xu Jiexiu. The "half quilt" warmed the bodies and hearts of the common people and demonstrated the original aspiration of Chinese Communists. Whoever keeps the people in their hearts is the righteous army in the eyes of the people. The root of the Long March's victory is deeply planted in the bloodline of the people.
The power of discerning the tide of history and following the general trend of the times. History rises and falls like the tide; what changes are the peaks and troughs of the waves, but what remains unchanged is the mainstream of justice. This is precisely "strength or weakness lies in force for a time, but victory or defeat over a thousand years lies in reason." Faced with various mists of theory in the grim situation, the Party saw clearly that the most urgent proposition for the Chinese nation was national salvation, and the most irreversible trend was united resistance against Japan. At the critical juncture of a matter of life and death (生死存亡, sheng si cun wang - "life, death, exist, perish"), the Party and the Red Army firmly chose to stand on the correct side of history, on the side of fairness and justice, and on the side of human progress, ultimately victoriously realizing the strategic shift and finding a new foothold for the survival and development of the forces of the Chinese revolution and a new starting point for the victorious advance of the cause of the Chinese revolution.
Where justice stands, the hearts of the people turn to it; where justice points, nothing is invincible. On the new Long March road, we must always adhere to the right path and practice justice firmly, dare to struggle and be good at struggle, continuously strengthen our ambition, backbone, and confidence in defending the cause of the Party and the people, better coordinate development and security, be ready at all times to withstand major tests of high winds and rough waves or even terrifying billows, overcome difficulties, confront risks, and meet challenges with the spirit of historical initiative, and ensure that the great ship of China's rejuvenation cleaves through the waves and sails steadily and far.
The great Long March spirit fully demonstrates the power of unity
Snowy mountains and grasslands, a journey of ten thousand li; storms as heavy as rocks, unity of purpose forms a strong defense (众志成城, zhong zhi cheng cheng - "mass, will, become, city"). General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "The victory of the Long March realized unprecedented unity of the whole Party and unprecedented unity of the Red Army on the basis of pursuing truth and upholding truth. Without this great unity in thought and politics, the victory of the Chinese revolution would have been impossible." Unity enabled this ragged contingent to cross rivers, surmount perilous peaks, and break through encirclements, and also made the Long March spirit shine ever more brilliantly through the tempering of the years.
The power of considering the overall situation and safeguarding the overall situation. During the Long March, in the face of Zhang Guotao's serious error of splitting the Party and the Red Army and setting up a separate "Central Committee," revolutionary officers and soldiers waged a resolute struggle against it. Zhu De stated his position unequivocally: "You can split me in two, but you can never sever my relationship with Mao Zedong." Xu Xiangqian, commander-in-chief of the Fourth Front Red Army, seriously pointed out: "How can there be any logic in Red Army fighting Red Army!" At the same time, the Party Central Committee strictly separated Zhang Guotao's error from the broad masses of commanders and fighters of the Fourth Front Red Army, both holding the principled bottom line and considering the overall revolutionary situation, ultimately enabling the officers and soldiers of the Fourth Front Red Army to see right from wrong, return to the northward route, and realize the victorious rendezvous of the three main forces of the Red Army.
The power of clinging to each other in life and death and sharing weal and woe. When crossing the grasslands, Wang Yuqing skillfully made a fishhook from a sewing needle on his military cap, caught a few small fish, boiled them into fish soup, and shared it with the comrades around him. After regaining a little strength, everyone supported each other and continued to march forward. Nine soldiers of the cooking squad of a certain company of the Third Red Army Corps carried a bronze pot on the ten-thousand-li march. They would rather overload themselves than fail to protect the unit's food and warmth. However, extreme exhaustion and hunger made them fall on the journey, and only this bronze pot reached the destination. Sharing weal and woe was not a slogan; it was the choice of "giving the hope of life to comrades and keeping the danger of death for oneself." This internal unity, stemming from shared ideals and connected bloodlines, forged the Red Army into "a piece of hard steel" that overcame physical limits and trials of life and death far beyond the ordinary.
The power of the military and the people being of one heart and helping each other. The Red Army always strictly observed discipline toward the masses, never taking a single needle or thread from the people, sincerely helping the people of all ethnic groups along the way, and winning the hearts of the people with pure original aspiration. The "alliance at the Yi Sea" broke down ethnic barriers, as the Red Army forged a life-and-death pact with Yi compatriots, opening a passage for the main force to pass through smoothly. Along the way, the common people voluntarily delivered grain and water to the Red Army, treated the wounded, and passed on intelligence. Countless masses supported the Red Army's campaigns without hesitation. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "From the reluctance of 'Sending the Red Army Off in Ten Songs' and the guardianship of the night crossing at Yudu, to the warmth of the 'half quilt' and the oath of the 'alliance at the Yi Sea,' all vividly interpret the deep bond between the military and the people like fish and water." History clearly confirms that the victory of the Long March was a victory of the united struggle of the military and the people. The heartfelt support and vigorous backing of the masses were the source of strength for the Party and the Red Army to persist in struggle under extremely difficult circumstances.
The new journey is an expedition full of glory and dreams, a new Long March of the Party and the people. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: "Reviewing the past and looking to the future, we must vigorously carry forward the great Long March spirit and work together with one heart to walk the new Long March road well." We must always uphold the Party's overall leadership and the centralized, unified leadership of the Party Central Committee, continuously strengthen the Party's political leadership, ideological guidance, mass organization, and social appeal, and gather the united and advancing strength of the whole Party in unison. We must consolidate and develop the rock-solid unity between the military, the government, and the people, draw the "concentric circle" of building a strong country and a strong military on the new journey, and gather the overwhelming force like pushing mountains and overturning seas (排山倒海, pai shan dao hai - "push, mountain, overturn, sea") of historical might.
(The author is a researcher at the Research Center for Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era of the National Defense University)
Return to TopQuestion: Hu Guoxiong
Member of the Standing Committee of the Yongzhou Municipal Party Committee of Hunan Province and Executive Vice Mayor
General Secretary Xi Jinping has emphasized that establishing and practicing a correct view of political achievements is a long-term task that requires sustained, long-term effort. May I ask why it is said that establishing and practicing a correct view of political achievements is a long-term task?
Interpretation:
Guo Weilu
Professor at the School of Discipline Inspection and Supervision, East China University of Political Science and Law
Carrying out study and education on establishing and practicing a correct view of political achievements is an important measure for persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party. General Secretary Xi Jinping has emphasized that "establishing and practicing a correct view of political achievements is a long-term task that requires sustained, long-term effort, continuously consolidating and expanding the achievements of study and education, and continuously promoting Party organizations at all levels and the broad masses of Party members and cadres to build the Party for the public, create benefits for the people, make scientific decisions, and work in a down-to-earth manner, striving to create real achievements that can stand the test of practice, the people, and history." This important exposition is not only full affirmation of the work and results of study and education on establishing and practicing a correct view of political achievements, but also a profound grasp of the laws governing the construction of the view of political achievements. Study and education have time nodes, but Party spirit tempering has no rest marks. How to elevate the effective experiences and practices formed during the study and education process into institutional norms, how to transform establishing and practicing a correct view of political achievements from a temporary measure into a normal practice, and how to shape a correct view of political achievements with scientific and effective institutions and calibrate the course of the view of political achievements with institutional rigidity — these are major issues that must be properly answered in advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party in the new era.
Establishing and practicing a correct view of political achievements is a lifelong issue that runs through the entire process of leading cadres performing their duties
The issue of the view of political achievements is a fundamental issue, concerning building the Party for the public and governing for the people. Party member leading cadres, at different stages of growth, at different positions and ranks, and in different development environments, always have a dynamically changing understanding and grasp of political achievements. From decision-making and deployment to implementation and implementation, from planning at the start to handover upon leaving office, every link in the operation of power is a touchstone for testing the view of political achievements. Once there is a problem with the "master switch" of ideological understanding, deviations may appear at every node in the performance of duties. At the same time, deviations in the view of political achievements have systematic and structural characteristics; they are products of historical and institutional factors, deeply embedded in historical and cultural traditions and the soil of economic and social development, and deeply embedded in the structural contradictions of national governance. Establishing and practicing a correct view of political achievements must first begin with analyzing the root causes and crux of deviations in the view of political achievements.
From the historical dimension, deviations in the view of political achievements have profound path-dependence characteristics. A misplaced view of political achievements is a manifestation of arbitrary exercise of power. Phenomena such as "new officials ignoring old accounts" are not unique to today, but are chronic ills left over from traditional bureaucratic politics, with the path dependence of historical inertia. Our Party faces different situations and tasks in different historical periods, and the specific requirements for cadre political achievement assessment also differ. The view of political achievements in each historical stage is a response to the central tasks of a specific era, but it also carries the historical inertia of the previous stage. Deviations or even misplacements in the view of political achievements caused by various factors cannot be completely eliminated through one round of study and education. It is necessary to regularly carry out education on the view of political achievements, with emphasis on education and training for principal Party and government officials at the local level, newly promoted cadres, young cadres, and cadres in key positions.
From the systemic dimension, deviations in the view of political achievements have notable stubborn concealment and systemic transmissibility. On the one hand, the ideological understanding, capability levels, and growth stages of the cadre group vary, and deviations in the view of political achievements show distinct individual differences; each cadre also evolves dynamically with changes in position and environment. On the other hand, as the times change, the problem of deviations in the view of political achievements also takes on new characteristics. After overt problems are rectified, new variants such as "digital formalism" and "campaign-style governance" rebound and resurface, with strong concealment and strong recurrence. From the perspective of systemic transmissibility, if individual deviations in the view of political achievements are not promptly rectified, they can easily transmit from individual behavior to the group, spreading and polluting the political ecosystem. These characteristics interweave and reinforce each other, determining that the rectification of deviations in the view of political achievements cannot be accomplished in one fell swoop.
From the structural dimension, the deep logic of deviations in the view of political achievements lies in the multiplicity of time scales for observing political achievements. The issue of the view of political achievements involves multiple time dimensions such as planning, tenure, people's livelihood, and history. Planning time is the strategic axis, tenure time is the responsibility window, people's livelihood time is the testing ground, and historical time is the final review seat. An erroneous view of political achievements often occurs when tenure time squeezes out other time dimensions. When cadres' tenure anxiety overrides the strategic resolve of planning, when short-term demands for visible achievements overwhelm long-term benefits for people's livelihood, deviations in the view of political achievements inevitably arise. This multiplicity of time structure objectively exists in the national governance system and can only be corrected through systematic adjustment at the institutional level.
Focal points for preventing and rectifying deviations in the view of political achievements
The causes of deviations in the view of political achievements are complex, involving not only deviations in individual ideological understanding, but also institutional factors such as assessment and evaluation, power operation, and supervision and accountability, as well as mutual influence with the political ecosystem. To resolve deviations in the view of political achievements, one cannot stop at general appeals and superficial rectification, but must make coordinated efforts from the levels of value orientation, tenure behavior, institutional implementation, and ecological restoration, establishing the correct view of political achievements and correcting the erroneous one, striving to suit the remedy to the case and address both symptoms and root causes. Establishing and practicing a correct view of political achievements should precisely identify the deep-level contradictions that need to be resolved behind deviations in the view of political achievements, especially starting from the following four levels.
Dissolve the tension between "being superior-oriented" and "serving the people." Some cadres are "superior-oriented rather than reality-oriented," valuing superiors' satisfaction over grassroots reality, causing work tasks to be alienated into apportioned targets and layer-by-layer escalation. From the institutional root, the "GDP-only" tendency in the assessment and evaluation system objectively tends to induce cadres to pursue short-term visible achievements. When the setting of assessment indicators overemphasizes quantifiable "visible achievements" for superiors while neglecting "latent achievements" perceptible to the masses, it easily leads cadres' behavioral choices to tilt toward being "superior-oriented." In essence, this is a failure to unify responsibility to superiors with responsibility to subordinates, departing from creating benefits for the people, which is the greatest political achievement.
Resolve the contradiction between tenure impulse and long-term development. The view of political achievements driven by tenure impulse subjectively reflects the weakening of cadres' awareness of purpose, and objectively reflects shortcomings in mechanisms such as assessment and evaluation, power supervision, and accountability. Daily management and supervision are ineffective, and there is a time-lag effect in supervision and accountability; by the time problems are exposed, the individuals involved have often already been promoted or transferred, which enables some cadres to dare to overdraw the future and eat next year's grain during their tenure.
Bridge the gap between institutional supply and institutional implementation. The vitality of institutions lies in implementation. Since the 18th National Congress of the Party, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has attached great importance to strengthening the construction of intra-Party laws and regulations, providing institutional safeguards and work guidance for establishing and practicing a correct view of political achievements. The key to establishing and practicing a correct view of political achievements lies in coordinated efforts in both institutional supply and institutional implementation, solving the problem of "institutions hanging in the air."
Coordinate the relationship between individual correction and ecological restoration. Deviations in the view of political achievements are concretely reflected in individual cadres, but as a phenomenon, they are a problem of the political ecosystem. If individual deviant behavior is not promptly rectified, it will produce a demonstration effect, transmitting from individual behavior to the group. Therefore, the rectification and remediation of misplaced and deviant views of political achievements must not only solve the problems of individual cadres, but also pay more attention to the systematic restoration of the political ecosystem, achieving the effect of investigating one case, warning a broader audience, and governing an entire domain.
Building a long-term mechanism for establishing and practicing a correct view of political achievements
"Governance values constancy; writing values substance; one does not merely seek novelty." The way of governance lies in upholding constant principles, adhering to an unchanging original aspiration, and implementing long-term measures. Building a long-term mechanism for establishing and practicing a correct view of political achievements is both a contemporary inheritance of this ancient political wisdom and an inherent requirement of full and rigorous self-governance of the Party in the new era. It is necessary to establish sound institutional rules with a focus on being practical and effective, to make sustained efforts along institutional axes such as normalized education and guidance, differentiated assessment and evaluation, standardized responsibility handover, and whole-chain supervision and accountability, to shape a correct view of political achievements with scientific institutions, to stimulate enthusiasm for undertaking work and starting businesses with institutional stability, and to provide strong safeguards for establishing and practicing a correct view of political achievements with institutional authority.
Improve the differentiated assessment and evaluation mechanism and make good use of the assessment baton. Assessment and evaluation is the baton for the view of political achievements. The core of building a long-term mechanism lies in establishing a scientific, precise, and differentiated assessment and evaluation system. First, optimize the structure of assessment indicators. Adapt to the requirements of high-quality development and incorporate the implementation of the new development philosophy into the content requirements of cadre political achievement assessment. Increase the weight of "latent achievements" and "long-term effects" in assessment, and incorporate improvement of people's livelihood, ecological benefits, and social harmony into the assessment indicator system. Emphasize the combination of qualitative and quantitative, and the combination of assessing people and assessing work, with differentiated weights for assessment indicators set by level and category. Second, improve assessment methods and approaches. Adhere to the combination of periodic assessment and daily assessment, and carry out normalized data collection, dynamic monitoring, and real-time early warning for key work, major projects, and practical matters concerning people's livelihood. Build an assessment method of "common + individual + dynamic," optimize bottom-line assessment indicators, refine distinctive customized indicators, innovate dynamic assessment indicators, and reasonably set assessment weights. Third, strengthen the application of assessment results. Rigidly link assessment results with cadre training and education, selection and appointment, evaluation and commendation, and rank promotion, establish the clear orientation of "judging heroes by practical work and selecting cadres by actual achievements," so that cadres with firm political standing, public recognition, and outstanding achievements are given important positions, while cadres who waver in their stance, are divorced from the masses, or engage in fraud are punished.
Establish a handover mechanism of the "handing over trees and handing over seals" type to break the "new officials ignoring old accounts" problem. When General Secretary Xi Jinping inspected Cuiyun Corridor in Jiange County, Sichuan Province, he profoundly pointed out that "the reason this largest artificial ancient cypress forest in the world has been able to last so long and be protected so well is thanks to the systems of 'officials and people jointly prohibited from felling' and 'handing over trees and handing over seals' promulgated and implemented since the Ming Dynasty." This historical wisdom has profound implications: the key to solving the chronic problem of "new officials ignoring old accounts" lies in establishing an institutionalized mechanism for responsibility handover between predecessors and successors. First, explore the establishment of a handover system for changes in principal leaders of leading bodies, detailing the handover content such as basic circumstances, the operation of major indicators, and urgent matters, guiding cadres to perform their duties correctly and in accordance with regulations. Second, explore the implementation of a system for handing over problem ledgers when leading cadres are adjusted, incorporating the resolution of historical contradictions, the continuation of key projects, and the implementation of practical matters concerning people's livelihood into the core indicators of leading cadre assessment, clearly defining the undertaking of historical responsibility and the continued handling of leftover problems, and institutionally eliminating problems such as gaps at transitions between terms and leftover messes. Deepen the rectification and remediation of "new officials ignoring old accounts," make the resolution of old accounts an important part of cadre assessment and evaluation, and solve historical leftover problems with historical responsibility.
Improve the whole-chain supervision and accountability mechanism to form normalized deterrence. Supervision and accountability are important safeguards for the long-term mechanism. Strengthen daily supervision, integrate supervision into daily work and regular practice, and through normalized, close-range supervision, promptly discover and correct budding and tendency problems exposed by Party members and cadres in policy implementation and project advancement. Comprehensively use multiple methods such as inspection tours, audit supervision, statistical supervision, petition reporting, and public evaluation to precisely identify problems and enhance the targeting and penetration of investigation and rectification. Improve the accountability mechanism, complete and establish institutional rules, and make institutions hard. Adhere to the principle of seeking truth from facts, ensure precise and serious accountability with a complete chain of mutually corroborating evidence, and give play to the warning role. Promote the overall coordination and connection of supervision methods, strengthen the articulation and coordination between intra-Party supervision and extra-Party supervision, the organic articulation of all aspects of the intra-Party supervision system, and the overall coordination and connection of supervision methods of discipline inspection and supervision organs, and precisely detect new trends and new manifestations. Focus on fields with concentrated power, dense funds, and abundant resources, use technology to empower smart supervision, and carry out dynamic analysis and risk early warning.
Promote the construction of the long-term mechanism with systematic thinking and overall planning. Adhere to the simultaneous and coordinated efforts of ideological Party building and institutional Party governance. What plays a decisive role in establishing and practicing a correct view of political achievements is Party spirit. Only with firm Party spirit and the abandonment of selfish thoughts can we ensure that the view of political achievements does not deviate. At the same time, it is necessary to further improve and perfect the cadre system and solve institutional problems; only scientific and complete laws and regulations can consolidate the foundation and nourish the roots. Full and rigorous self-governance of the Party relies on both education and institutions; the two, one soft and one hard, must make coordinated and simultaneous efforts. Adhere to the combination of immediate rectification and long-term establishment. Keep a close watch on deviations in the view of political achievements that require long-term rectification, track their effectiveness, and regularly carry out "look-back" reviews of study and education. Elevate the effective practices formed during this study and education process into institutional norms, promote the integrated efforts of education and guidance, investigation and rectification, assessment and incentives, and supervision and restraint, and form a governance system that covers all fields of cadre team building, runs through the entire chain of power operation, advances all aspects of normalized rectification, and grasps all links of precise policy implementation. Adhere to the unity of long-term planning and stage-by-stage advancement. The construction of the view of political achievements requires planning and arrangement from a long time horizon, anchoring the direction with planning time as the strategic axis, compacting responsibility with tenure time as the responsibility window, calibrating coordinates with people's livelihood time as the testing ground, and delineating the bottom line with historical time as the final review seat. Incorporate the construction of the view of political achievements into the long-term plan for cadre team building, and at the same time, determine stage-by-stage key tasks according to the prominent problems at different stages, achieving the organic unity of strategic resolve and tactical flexibility.
Return to TopBy: 吴丽祥
Continuously advancing the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region to new heights, and making the region a pilot zone and demonstration zone for Chinese modernization, is a major national strategy personally planned, personally deployed, and personally promoted by General Secretary Xi Jinping. Xiqing District of Tianjin adheres to General Secretary Xi Jinping's important expositions on the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the spirit of his important speech during his inspection of Tianjin as the fundamental guideline. Centering on the Tianjin South Railway Station area as the axis, it continuously does a good job on the "coordination" article, amplifies the "integration" effect, promotes the interconnection of transportation hubs, the mutual complementarity of functional layouts, and the docking and flow of resource factors, and makes every effort to build a new quality productive forces innovation coordination zone in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. It effectively transforms strategic advantages into development results, and shoulders Xiqing's responsibility and demonstrates Xiqing's achievements in implementing the major national strategy and serving the overall development of the city.
Weave a dense hub network and open up channels for the flow of innovation factors. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region should "take transportation integration as a pioneering field, and accelerate the construction of a fast, convenient, efficient, safe, high-capacity, and low-cost interconnected comprehensive transportation network." High-speed rail is the "main artery" of urban development and a key support for regional connectivity. We regard the "station" as the greatest strategic resource, adhere to the principle of "driving industry with the station, revitalizing the city with industry, and gathering people with the city," continuously promote the quality improvement and renovation of the South Railway Station building, actively promote the connection of the Tianjin-Xiong'an and Tianjin-Cangzhou intercity railways, accelerate the construction of supporting road projects in the South Railway Station area, improve transportation connections with key areas such as the "117 Project," set up dedicated lanes for ride-hailing vehicles, and form a "Five-Sphere Integrated Plan" modern three-dimensional transportation connection network of high-speed rail, subway, expressway, bus, and social vehicles, realizing that "half an hour covers Beijing and Hebei, four hours connects the Yangtze River Delta" and "working in Beijing, living in Tianjin" moves from vision to reality. The high-speed rail hub is not only a transportation node, but also a core fulcrum for leveraging urban upgrading and gathering development resources. Relying on the rail transit hub to build a number of collaborative innovation nodes, forming a "commuting network—pilot testing platform—institutional coordination" trinity hub-type ecosystem, and smoothing the entire chain channel of "R&D—pilot testing—industrialization," so that innovation factors can flow without distinction between different cities, is the core fulcrum for breaking down cross-regional collaborative ecosystem barriers. In the practice of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei innovation coordination and industrial system integration, we give full play to the accessibility advantages of Tianjin South Railway Station's direct connection to Beijing and Tianjin and the agglomeration of surrounding resources, deepen and expand the "high-speed rail + characteristic themed industrial park" radiation cooperation model, effectively transform the Beijing-Tianjin commuting radius into an industrial innovation radius, and promote the upgrade from "track coordination" to "industrial coordination."
Highlight functional complementarity and integrate into the overall layout of coordinated development. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region should "be based on each side's comparative advantages, based on the requirements of the modern industrial division of labor, based on the principle of regional advantage complementarity, and based on the concept of win-win cooperation," and clearly pointed out that "the scientific and technological innovation advantages of Beijing and the advanced manufacturing R&D advantages of Tianjin should be combined." Collaborative innovation and industrial cooperation are not simply "spreading out stalls," but opening up a larger pattern to achieve functional complementarity, differentiated development, and complementing each other (相辅相成, xiang fu xiang cheng - "mutually, assist; mutually, complement"). The core competitiveness of a modern metropolitan area is not a single city acting in isolation without help from others (单打独斗, dan da du dou - "single, strike; single, fight"), but a systematic overall effectiveness formed based on functional complementarity. As a science and technology innovation center, Beijing focuses on tackling original innovation and frontier technology incubation, while Tianjin, as an advanced manufacturing R&D base, focuses on undertaking the engineering and industrialization of achievements. Beijing-Tianjin industrial cooperation is not a scattered market behavior of enterprises in the two cities, but a regional industrial division of labor model with Chinese characteristics formed under the traction of national strategy and based on the unique resource endowments of the two cities. The Party Central Committee has made systematic plans for building Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei collaborative innovation and industrial cooperation, pointing out the way forward for Xiqing District to better build a new quality productive forces innovation coordination zone in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. We resolutely break the mindset of a narrow, self-interested scope of interest (一亩三分地, yi mu san fen di - "one, mu; three, fen; land"), adhere to the principles of advantage complementarity and regional integration, actively integrate into the "six chains and five clusters" industrial layout of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, adapt to regional science and technology innovation cooperation needs in a way that has social status or background that matches well (门当户对, men dang hu dui - "gate, match; door, pair"), undertake innovation spillovers in a differentiated manner, focus on the pilot testing and industrialization links that Beijing most lacks, give full play to our district's advantages in small-scale pilot testing, pilot testing, and engineering transformation, focus on undertaking achievement transformation projects in fields such as intelligent connected vehicles, biomedicine, and integrated circuits, form a division of labor and cooperation of "R&D in Beijing, transformation in Xiqing," and achieve a development breakthrough of "breaking the game in organizing the game, coordinating in seeking common ground." From practice, transforming endowment differences into development characteristics, each person making the most of their own strengths (各扬所长, ge yang suo chang - "each, raise; what, excellence") on the industrial chain, connecting with each other, and achieving mutual success, can not only support our own high-quality development, but is also the key support for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei innovation coordination and industrial cooperation to release greater effectiveness.
Stimulate the effectiveness of integration and create an innovation ecosystem that attracts people from afar by being pleasant to those nearby (近悦远来, jin yue yuan lai - "near, pleased; far, come"). General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "It is necessary to strengthen collaborative innovation and industrial cooperation, and play a demonstrative and leading role in achieving high-level self-reliance and strength in science and technology." Collaborative innovation and industrial cooperation mean that innovation resources and industrial chains accelerate their flow and optimize their layout on a larger scale. Whether these resource factors can be well undertaken depends on whether the city's innovation ecosystem and innovation system are complete. The innovation ecosystem is an ecosystem composed of and interacting among innovation subjects, innovation factors, innovation environment, and so on. A first-class innovation ecosystem requires not only large enterprises, scientific research institutions, and other "tree layer" entities to lead the direction, but also small and medium-sized enterprises, incubators, and other "shrub layer" entities to enrich the ecosystem, and more importantly, policy, market, infrastructure, and other "soil layer" elements to provide nutrients. We regard the free flow of innovation factors such as capital, technology, and data as the top priority for building a first-class innovation ecosystem, establish a "cross-provincial handling" mechanism for government services, deepen integrated reforms such as "efficiently completing one thing," build a trinity science and technology financial system of "seed fund + growth-stage fund + credit capital," explore the establishment of industry-specific data spaces and public data open platforms, so that various resource factors can achieve precise cross-industry and cross-regional drip irrigation like "living water." A good innovation ecosystem cannot be separated from the role of leading enterprises as an anchor. Relying on the traction of leading chain-owner enterprises, we deepen cross-regional industrial supporting cooperation, do a solid job of attracting investment through business, "magnetically attract" the agglomeration of upstream and downstream enterprises in the industrial chain, and realize the chain effect of "strengthening one leading enterprise, activating a piece of carrier, and driving one chain." A good innovation ecosystem must not only provide "convenience," but also provide "value-added." We actively build a full-chain science and technology innovation platform, deepen cooperation with central academies, central research institutes, and universities in Beijing in all fields, and expand scenario resources to the three regions. Building a good innovation ecosystem, in the final analysis, is to make all kinds of innovative talents and innovation subjects willing to come to Xiqing, integrate into Xiqing, and take root in Xiqing. The fundamental focus is on attracting, cultivating, and retaining talent. We effectively coordinate the urban design and spatial structure of the area around the South Railway Station, increase the supply of high-quality headquarters office space, science and technology R&D space, and residential apartments, build new communities with a balance of work and residence, strengthen cooperation with Beijing and Hebei in education, medical care, elderly care, and health care, superimpose "soft environments" such as mutual recognition of professional titles and flexible talent introduction, do a solid job of full-process services for talent onboarding, housing, schooling, and household registration, vigorously create a social environment that respects talent and eagerly seeks talented individuals (求贤若渴, qiu xian ruo ke - "seek, worthy; like, thirsty"), so that scientific and technological talents coming to Tianjin have platforms to work on, space for development, quality of life, and a sense of belonging in their hearts.
(The author is the Secretary of the Xiqing District Committee of Tianjin)
Return to TopBy: 陈理
The Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Party will conduct a profound analysis of the situation and tasks facing Party building in the current and coming period, and will make strategic arrangements for persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party. This fully reflects the historical initiative of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core to strengthen the Party and strengthen the country. A profound understanding of the importance and urgency of persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is of major and far-reaching significance for unifying thoughts and actions with the Party Central Committee's deployment requirements on persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, for strengthening confidence, maintaining resolve, upholding and applying the valuable experience of full and rigorous self-governance of the Party in the new era with higher standards and more concrete measures, for rectifying and resolving prominent problems facing Party building, for consolidating and developing the sound political situation formed through Party management and governance, and for continuously creating a new situation of Party management and governance, and of rejuvenating and strengthening the Party in the new era.
An inevitable requirement for upholding the Party's vanguard nature and ensuring that the Party always stays at the forefront of the times
Advanced nature and purity are the essential attributes of a Marxist political party. Maintaining the political character of a Marxist political party and upholding the Party's advanced nature and purity are the consistent pursuit of our Party. Emphasizing self-strengthening and always remaining full of vigor and vitality are important aspects of our Party's excellent qualities that are incomparable to other political parties and political forces. Persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is an inherent requirement for ensuring that our Party never changes its nature, never changes its character, and never changes its flavor, and forever maintains the political character of a Marxist political party. Marx and Engels systematically elaborated on the advanced character of Marxist political parties: "In the various stages of development which the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole"; because the proletarian party is guided by scientific theory, "they are distinguished from the rest of the proletariat by the fact that they understand the conditions, the course, and the general results of the proletarian movement"; the proletarian party shoulders the historical mission of uniting and leading the people to overthrow the old world and build a new world, and "the Communists are the most resolute and always push forward the part of the working-class parties of each country." At the same time, Marx and Engels also profoundly elucidated the question of the proletarian party maintaining its advanced nature and purity through a spirit of revolutionary criticism, emphasizing that "the Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims" and that "the communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations." These important expositions scientifically answer the fundamental question of what a Marxist political party "is and what it wants to do," profoundly reveal the internal basis for a Marxist political party to forever maintain its advanced nature and purity and uphold its people's standpoint, and are the fundamental reason why a Marxist political party can win the people's support and endorsement, and can endure the test of wind and rain while remaining endless and vigorous (生生不息, sheng sheng bu xi - "birth, birth, not, cease") and continuously growing stronger. However, the vanguard nature of a Marxist political party will not naturally remain fresh, and its advanced nature and purity cannot remain unchanging and static (一成不变, yi cheng bu bian - "one, become, not, change"). Especially under conditions of long-term governance, factors that weaken the Party's advanced nature and harm the Party's purity exist at all times, and dangers that violate the original aspiration and founding mission and shake the Party's foundation are ubiquitous (无处不在, wu chu bu zai - "no, place, not, exist"). The practice of the world socialist movement and the lessons of Marxist political parties have repeatedly told us that only by always strengthening self-building and adhering to strict Party management and governance with a spirit of self-revolution can we maintain the vanguard nature of a Marxist political party and ensure that the Party always becomes the strong leading core of the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics.
Strict Party management and governance is the valuable experience our Party has gained through more than a hundred years of tempering and maintaining the Party's advanced nature and purity. Our Party is a proletarian party established in accordance with Marxist party-building theory, and from its very inception it clearly wrote Marxism on the Party's banner. Our Party's more than one hundred years of struggle history is a history of maintaining the Party's advanced nature and purity through strict Party management and governance, continuously tempering its political character through self-revolution, and leading the development of the Party's and the people's cause. The Party's First Congress Program and the first Party Constitution formulated at the Second Congress already clearly put forward the Party's organizational principles, membership conditions, and disciplinary requirements. Subsequently, our Party further proposed the goal of building a "Bolshevized Chinese Communist Party that is nationwide in scope, mass-based in nature, and completely consolidated ideologically, politically, and organizationally," and through inner-Party centralized education such as the Yan'an Rectification Movement, established the ideological line of seeking truth from facts and eliminated the erroneous tendencies of dogmatizing Marxism and sanctifying the instructions of the Comintern and the experience of the Soviet Union. In the early period after the founding of New China, our Party maintained high vigilance against the erosion of the bourgeoisie's sugar-coated bullets and carried out Party consolidation and rectification campaigns. After the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee, our Party initiated and advanced the great new project of Party building, ensuring that the Party never changes its nature, never changes its character, and never changes its flavor. The Party's more than one hundred years of struggle fully prove that whenever strict Party management and governance is upheld, the Party's and the people's cause thrives; whenever Party management and governance is lax, soft, and loose, there will be lax discipline and slack work style, and the Party's and the people's cause will suffer losses.
Upholding full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is the valuable experience of the Party and the country's cause in the new era in achieving historic achievements and undergoing historic changes. Since the 18th National Congress of the Party, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, based on the new historical orientation of the new era, targeting prominent problems such as ineffective Party management and lax Party governance in a certain period, incorporated full and rigorous self-governance of the Party into the strategic layout of the Four-Pronged Comprehensive Strategy (四个全面), advanced Party building with unprecedented resolve and intensity, started with the formulation and implementation of the Eight-Point Regulation (八项规定) as the opening move, persistently rectified work style and enforced discipline, corrected the Four Malfeasances (四风) with the spirit of hammering nails, carried out an unprecedented anti-corruption struggle with the mission and responsibility of "offending thousands of people, not failing 1.4 billion," curbed some unhealthy tendencies that had long gone unchecked, rectified some chronic and stubborn diseases that had persisted for years, eliminated serious hidden dangers within the Party, the state, and the military, fundamentally reversed the lax, soft, and loose situation in Party management and governance, achieved historic and pioneering achievements in full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, produced all-round and deep-reaching influence, made the Party stronger through revolutionary tempering, won the historical initiative of ensuring that the Party never changes its nature, never changes its character, and never changes its flavor, won the historical initiative of the Party uniting and leading all the people to strive together for the great cause of building a strong country and national rejuvenation, and won the firm support and heartfelt endorsement of the people. Xi Jinping's thought on Party building summarizes and generalizes the practical experience of full and rigorous self-governance of the Party in the new era, and with a series of new concepts, new ideas, and new strategies for Party management and governance and for rejuvenating and strengthening the Party, enriches and develops Marxist party-building theory, providing fundamental guidance and action guidelines for deeply advancing the great new project of Party building in the new era. It is necessary to uphold and apply the valuable experience of full and rigorous self-governance of the Party in the new era with higher standards and more concrete measures, continuously realize the Party's self-purification, self-improvement, self-renovation, and self-enhancement, continuously strengthen the Party's political leadership, ideological guidance, mass organization, and social appeal, and ensure that the Party always becomes a vigorous Marxist ruling party that stays at the forefront of the times, is sincerely endorsed by the people, and can withstand various storms and tests.
The fundamental guarantee for consolidating the Party's ruling position and ensuring that the Party always becomes the strong leading core of the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics
Consolidating the Party's long-term ruling position and ensuring that the Party always becomes the strong leading core of the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics is the fundamental guarantee for comprehensively advancing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation through Chinese modernization. From its very inception, our Party established the original aspiration and founding mission of seeking happiness for the Chinese people and seeking rejuvenation for the Chinese nation, and generations of Communists have strived unremittingly for it. Our Party's more than one hundred years of struggle history is a history of practicing the Party's original aspiration and founding mission, and a history of the Party and the people being heart-to-heart, breathing together, and sharing a common destiny. The fundamental reason why our Party was able to stand out among various political forces in repeated contests after modern times, to be reborn from desperate situations time and again amidst bloody storms, to continuously advance from victory to victory in overcoming difficulties, and to write the most magnificent epic in the several-thousand-year history of the Chinese nation, lies in the fact that our Party has always maintained flesh-and-blood ties with the masses, shared weal and woe and life and death with the masses, adhered to doing everything for the people and relying on the people in everything, thereby winning the heartfelt endorsement and firm support of the broadest masses of the people. The people are the greatest source of confidence for our Party's governance and also the deepest source of strength for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out, "If the Party is ineffective in management and lax in governance, and the prominent inner-Party problems strongly reflected by the masses are not resolved, then our Party will sooner or later lose its governing qualification and will inevitably be eliminated by history. This is by no means alarmist talk." If our Party forgets its sense of purpose, deviates from the people's standpoint, it will inevitably become divorced from the masses, become water without a source (无源之水, wu yuan zhi shui - "no, source, of, water") and a tree without roots (无本之木, wu ben zhi mu - "no, root, of, wood"), and ultimately will inevitably endanger the Party's governing foundation.
People-centeredness is the most distinctive political character of Marxism, and the people's standpoint is the fundamental political standpoint of a proletarian party, profoundly answering the fundamental question of for whom and relying on whom the proletarian movement is carried out. The greatest political advantage of a Marxist political party is close ties with the masses, and the greatest danger after a Marxist political party comes to power is becoming divorced from the masses. The practice of the world socialist movement and the lessons of the rise and fall of some Marxist political parties profoundly enlighten us that the greatest threat facing a Marxist political party in long-term governance often comes from within, and the fundamental cause lies in abandoning the basic principles of scientific socialism, forgetting the original aspiration and founding mission, becoming divorced from the masses, and degenerating and corrupting. If a political party weakens its spirit of self-revolution and loses its capacity for self-purification, the inevitable result is that it becomes divorced from the masses, loses the people's support and endorsement, and ultimately finds it difficult to escape the historical cycle of order and disorder, rise and fall.
Popular support is the greatest politics, and the people's support and endorsement are the most solid foundation of our Party's governance. For a major party like ours with a hundred years of history, whether it can always stay true to the Party's original aspiration and founding mission and always maintain flesh-and-blood ties with the masses is a major issue that needs to be continuously and deeply answered well. Xi Jinping's thought on Party building profoundly summarizes the historical laws of regime changes and the rise and fall of political parties in ancient and modern times, at home and abroad, creatively proposes that our Party has found self-revolution as the second answer to escaping the historical cycle of order and disorder, rise and fall, and scientifically answers the major contemporary questions of what kind of long-term governing Marxist party to build and how to build a long-term governing Marxist party. To consolidate the Party's long-term ruling position, it is necessary to always maintain the sobriety and resolve that full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is always on the way, persistently advance full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, educate and guide the broad masses of Party members and cadres to stay true to the Party's original aspiration and founding mission, firmly establish the mass viewpoint, stand firm on the people's standpoint, consciously practice the people-centered development philosophy, take realizing, safeguarding, and developing the fundamental interests of the broadest masses of the people as the starting point and foothold of all work, adhere to development for the people, development relying on the people, and development achievements shared by the people, effectively solve the urgent, difficult, and anxious problems of the masses, continuously enhance the masses' sense of gain, happiness, and security, further strengthen the flesh-and-blood ties between the Party and the masses, continuously consolidate the mass foundation of the Party's governance, and ensure that the Party always becomes the strong leading core in the historical process of upholding and developing socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era.
The fundamental guarantee for realizing the Party's mission and tasks and comprehensively advancing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation through Chinese modernization
In comprehensively building a modern socialist country and comprehensively advancing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, the key lies in the Party. Reviewing the Party's more than one hundred years of struggle history, it can be clearly seen that Party building and the Party's mission and tasks have always been closely linked. The Party's mission and tasks determine the fundamental direction of Party building, and the effectiveness of the Party's self-revolution is directly related to the rise and fall and success or failure of the great cause of building a strong country and national rejuvenation. For more than one hundred years, our Party has always closely focused on the needs of the development of the situation and tasks in different periods, unremittingly advanced Party building, and provided a strong guarantee for uniting and leading the people to create a series of great achievements.
Persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is an important guarantee for completing the Party's mission and tasks and comprehensively advancing the great cause of building a strong country and national rejuvenation through Chinese modernization. To run China's affairs well, the key lies in the Party, and the key lies in the Party managing the Party and practicing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party. Focusing on the Party's central tasks and advancing Party building as a great project is a great innovation of our Party, a great magic weapon for building the Party and the country and rejuvenating the Party and the country, and an important experience for the continuous development and progress of the Party's and the people's cause. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out, "To whatever stage the Party's and the people's cause develops, Party building must be advanced to that stage. This is the basic law that must be grasped in strengthening Party building." Only by closely focusing on the Party's central tasks, continuously strengthening the Party's self-building, persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party with higher standards and more concrete measures, and effectively implementing the Party Central Committee's major decisions and deployments, can we unite the strength of the whole Party and the people of all ethnic groups in the country and complete the mission and tasks of comprehensively advancing the great cause of building a strong country and national rejuvenation through Chinese modernization.
Persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is an inevitable requirement for completing the arduous and heavy tasks of reform, development, and stability. The period of the 15th Five-Year Plan is a critical period for consolidating the foundation and comprehensively exerting efforts for basically realizing socialist modernization. Our country is at a critical stage of accelerating the pace of transformation and upgrading and striving to advance high-quality development. The more complex international situation and the more arduous and heavy domestic tasks of reform, development, and stability during the period of the 15th Five-Year Plan put forward new and higher requirements for persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, deeply advancing the great new project of Party building in the new era, and further enhancing the Party's creativity, cohesion, and combat effectiveness. To forge iron, one must be strong oneself. Chinese modernization is an unprecedented pioneering cause, and on the road forward it is inevitable that we will encounter various predictable and unpredictable risks, challenges, and even stormy waves. For the Party to unite and lead the people to complete the goals and tasks of economic and social development during the period of the 15th Five-Year Plan, solidly promote high-quality development, solve the prominent problems of unbalanced and inadequate development in our country, effectively respond to the impact of profound and complex changes in the external environment, strengthen the leading role of scientific and technological innovation, develop new quality productive forces in light of local conditions, strengthen the domestic major circulation and smooth the domestic and international dual circulation, promote solid steps in common prosperity for all the people, lay a more solid foundation for basically realizing socialist modernization, win historical initiative amidst international vicissitudes, upholding and strengthening the Party's overall leadership and the centralized, unified leadership of the Party Central Committee is of paramount importance, and persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party and building the Party to be stronger and more powerful is equally important. It is necessary to follow the Party Central Committee's strategic deployment on persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, more consciously use Xi Jinping's thought on Party building to plan and advance Party building, and provide a strong guarantee for economic and social development during the period of the 15th Five-Year Plan with new achievements in full and rigorous self-governance of the Party.
(The author is the former director of the Academic and Editorial Review Committee of the Central Institute of Party History and Literature)
Return to TopBy: 马立新
General Secretary Xi Jinping has emphasized that population development is a major matter concerning the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The Shandong Provincial Party Committee and the Provincial Government resolutely implement the decisions and arrangements of the Party Central Committee, base themselves on the provincial conditions of a major population province, place high-quality population development in an important position in overall work, adhere to overall regional coordination and systematic planning, further improve working mechanisms, perfect the policy system, and vigorously grasp the implementation of work, promoting the coordinated development of population and the economy and society.
Elevate political positioning and courageously fulfill the responsibility and mission of a major population province. As a major population province, Shandong has a large population scale and broad service demands, and the quality of population development directly affects the effectiveness of Shandong's practice of Chinese modernization. Doing population work well is not merely routine operational work, but is also a major political task that must be firmly shouldered and a livelihood project that must be solidly implemented. In response to the new characteristics, new changes, and new trends emerging in population growth and population structure, the Provincial Party Committee and the Provincial Government adhere to overall consideration and comprehensive decision-making on population and development, have successively issued a series of documents on optimizing fertility policies to promote long-term balanced population development, incorporated the improvement of the population development support and service system into the Provincial Party Committee's key work, incorporated the improvement of fertility supporting measures into the Provincial Government's annual work priorities, and listed the implementation of the population target management responsibility system among the Provincial Party Committee and Provincial Government's major supervision and inspection matters.
Under the leadership of the Provincial Party Committee and the Provincial Government, the province-wide health system consciously shoulders the mission and responsibility of a major population province, adheres to taking the promotion of high-quality population development as the theme, plans population issues with a systematic concept, empowers the improvement and upgrading of population work through reform and innovation, accurately identifies changes, responds scientifically to changes, and actively seeks change, striving to promote the transformation of population work from government-led to government-social collaboration, the transformation of fertility support policies from fragmented to systematically integrated, and the transformation of working methods toward positive advocacy, high-quality services, and bottom-line guarantees, perfecting the whole-life-cycle population development support and service system, and exploring a path of high-quality population development with Shandong characteristics.
Deepen reform and innovation, and actively build a whole-life-cycle service system. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, Shandong adhered to a systematic concept, coordinated all links of marriage, childbearing, parenting, and elderly care, continuously improved institutions and filled service shortcomings, issued a series of supportive policies and measures on marriage and childbearing leave, maternity insurance, childcare services, as well as education, housing, and employment, and promoted the implementation and effectiveness of the construction of a whole-life-cycle population service system.
Further increase support for marriage and romance. Based on the marriage and romance needs of young people, focusing on bottlenecks and difficulties, targeted warm services such as public welfare marriage and dating, pre-marital counseling and education, and marriage and family adjustment have been rolled out, standardized, healthy, and public welfare marriage and romance exchange platforms have been established, public welfare activities for marriage and romance culture week have been carried out, and young people have been actively guided to establish a view of marriage and romance featuring marriage at an appropriate age, rational mate selection, and shared responsibility.
Further increase support for pregnancy and childbirth. Build a full-chain closed-loop maternal and child health service system, strictly implement the five systems for maternal and infant safety, strengthen the rescue network for critically ill pregnant women and newborns, and open up the full-chain services of early pregnancy care, reproductive health, prenatal screening and diagnosis, comprehensive prevention and treatment of birth defects, postpartum care, and child health management. Achieve full coverage of prenatal diagnosis institutions at the municipal level and full coverage of prenatal screening institutions at the county level, and coordinate the promotion of the construction of childbirth-friendly hospitals and child-friendly hospitals.
Further increase support for childbearing. Comprehensively implement the childcare subsidy system. Relying on the "Ai Shandong" digital government service platform, optimize the online handling of birth registration, cross-regional handling, and joint handling of "marriage, childbearing, and household registration," deepen the integrated reform of "one thing for birth," and realize the online joint handling of birth medical certificates, vaccination certificates, household registration, and other matters. Actively promote the "efficient handling of one thing" for childcare subsidy applications, so that data runs more and the masses run less, making preferential policies accessible and fully enjoyed.
Further increase support for childcare. Expand capacity, improve quality, and upgrade the supply of childcare services; inclusive childcare has been incorporated into the province-wide practical livelihood projects and deeply promoted; municipal-level childcare comprehensive service centers have achieved full coverage; and service models such as community-embedded childcare, employer-run childcare, and kindergarten childcare classes have developed in a diversified manner. Comprehensively promote the integration of medical care and childcare, and guide grassroots medical and health institutions to provide technical support to childcare institutions in child health care, disease prevention and control, and dietary nutrition. Coordinate and grasp institutional filing management, quality evaluation, personnel training, and safety supervision, so that parenting families can conveniently and safely entrust their children to childcare.
Further increase support for education. Vigorously promote the high-quality and inclusive development of preschool education; the proportion of children in public kindergartens province-wide has reached 65.55%; implement the policy of free preschool education for one year; and the number of childcare class places in kindergartens has reached 209,300. Issue implementation measures for mutual transfer between regular high school and secondary vocational school students, promote the integration of vocational and general education, expand the supply of public high school places, and broaden diversified paths for students to become successful. Carry out modular science popularization training on intergenerational care in communities to enhance the scientific nature of intergenerational care.
Further increase support for leave. Adhere to empowerment by the rule of law and bottom-line protection of rights and interests, and guarantee the masses' rights to marriage and childbearing leave with institutional rigidity. The Standing Committee of the Provincial People's Congress has twice revised the "Regulations of Shandong Province on Population and Family Planning," continuously optimizing the institutional design of marriage and childbearing leave. The Provincial Health Commission, together with multiple departments, has issued guiding opinions on the application of leave provisions, promoting the implementation of marriage and childbearing leave policies.
Further increase support for medical insurance. Continuously consolidate the achievements of the combined implementation of maternity insurance and employee medical insurance, and guide cities such as Weifang to include flexible employment personnel in the coverage of maternity insurance; medical expenses within the policy scope for insured employees' hospitalization for childbirth are fully reimbursed, raise the payment standards for hospitalization for childbirth for residents' second and third children, continuously expand the coverage of direct online settlement of maternity medical expenses, continue to do a good job in the "application and immediate receipt" and "direct payment to individuals" of maternity allowances, and effectively solve the problems of the masses advancing funds and running around.
Further increase support for health and elderly care. Coordinate planning to actively respond to population aging and reduce family care burdens, and perfect the service systems for elderly health, integration of medical care and elderly care, rehabilitation nursing, and hospice care. Innovate the "integration of two institutions" service model of township health centers and nursing homes; secondary-level and above public general hospitals generally set up geriatric medicine departments; hospice care wards achieve full coverage at the county level. Strengthen services for the elderly end, coordinate "raising the young" and "supporting the elderly," expand the boundaries of childbirth-friendly policies, and effectively alleviate the dual care pressure on young and middle-aged families of simultaneously supporting the elderly and raising children.
Strengthen quality improvement and integration, and continuously promote high-quality population development. Facing the 15th Five-Year Plan, Shandong Province firmly shoulders the mission and responsibility of "taking the lead and shouldering the heavy burden," takes reform, innovation, and digital empowerment as the driving force, promotes the deep integration of population policies with various economic and social policies, actively builds a whole-life-cycle population service system that connects pre-marital and pre-pregnancy, childbearing and parenting, child development, social support, and elderly health, and effectively stabilizes the scale of newly born population and enhances family development capacity.
Improve the population monitoring and research and judgment mechanism, and build a solid scientific decision-making support system. Strengthen inter-departmental coordination, open up data sharing channels for birth, death, marriage, migration and mobility, education, employment, and medical and elderly care, and perfect the population monitoring and early warning mechanism. Explore the population impact assessment of major economic and social policies, incorporate population development and changes into various work such as territorial spatial planning and public service layout, both research and judge the province-wide aggregate trend and analyze regional structural differences, both grasp macro population trends and focus on the real demands of families, providing timely and accurate data support for scientific decision-making.
Improve the fertility policy coordination mechanism, and build a province-wide linked governance system. Promote the embedding of childbirth-friendliness into all aspects and the entire process of economic and social development, consolidate the responsibility chain of provincial-level overall planning, city and county-level implementation, and departmental coordination, and perfect the mechanism for the government, employers, and families to reasonably share childbearing and parenting costs. Select and organize some cities and counties to carry out pilot projects for perfecting fertility support policies, addressing problems by tackling key areas first (以点带面, yi dian dai mian - "take, one, point, lead, face") and achieving breakthroughs at key points.
Improve the whole-cycle health service mechanism, and consolidate the service system for eugenics and superior child-rearing. Strengthen youth health education and fertility protection, and continuously optimize the continuous services of pre-marital health care, pre-pregnancy eugenics, pregnancy health care, hospital delivery, postpartum rehabilitation, and child health care. Strengthen the special case management of advanced-age pregnant women, build a strong rescue system for critically ill pregnant women and newborns, solidly implement comprehensive prevention and treatment of birth defects, standardize assisted reproductive technology services, and pay close attention to the mental health of pregnant women and postpartum social support.
Improve the inclusive childcare development mechanism, and perfect the child-rearing service supply system. Promote local legislation on childcare services, and regulate and promote the development of childcare services through the rule of law. Optimize the layout of childcare supply, promote community-embedded childcare, employer-run childcare, integration of childcare and kindergarten, and family childcare in light of local conditions, and create a "fifteen-minute childcare service circle." Develop multiple models such as half-day care and temporary care, enrich the forms of childcare service supply, and enhance the adaptability and convenience of services.
Improve the family development empowerment mechanism, and cultivate a marriage and childbearing-friendly social system. Implement the concept of "one elderly, one child, one family," promote the sinking of services such as the integration of medical care and elderly care and rehabilitation nursing into communities and into families, and efficiently do a good job in the effective connection of service scenarios. Continuously develop family health service packages, and perfect support measures for family caregivers; deeply carry out "warm heart actions" to provide precise assistance such as health management, rehabilitation guidance, and family care for special families such as those with disabled elderly and disabled children.
(The author is the Secretary of the Party Leadership Group and Director of the Health Commission of Shandong Province, and the Director of the Provincial Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine.)
Return to TopThe Party Committee of Anhui Branch of China Huadian Corporation Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as the Company) has vigorously advanced the construction of "Clean Huadian Anhui," implementing six major projects: "Cultivating Roots and Casting the Soul, Enforcing Discipline with Deterrence, Supervision as Escort, Rectifying Conduct and Upholding Integrity, Nurturing the Political Ecosystem, and Forging an Iron Army," making unremitting effort or persistence (驰而不息, chi er bu xi - "gallop, not, stop, not") to push the Party conduct and integrity building and the fight against corruption to greater depths, clearing obstacles and providing escort for the Company's high-quality development. In the past two years, the Company has maintained stable safety in production, accelerated and improved business development, and the Company headquarters has been awarded titles such as National Civilized Unit, Advanced Enterprise of Huadian Group, and Outstanding Contribution Unit for Improving Quality and Efficiency.
The "Cultivating Roots and Casting the Soul Project" polishes the true character. Adhering to strengthening people's resolve and ideological character (凝心铸魂, ning xin zhu hun - "congeal, heart; cast, soul") with the Party's innovative theories, a mechanism of "first study at Party committee meetings + seminar study at central group meetings + concentrated segmented study at weekly meetings" has been established. Party committees at all levels in the region have cumulatively held 13 special reading classes, with Party members and leading cadres taking the lead in studying theory and strengthening Party spirit. The "online + offline" full coverage education mechanism for Party members has been deepened, with education platforms such as State-owned Assets e-Learning and Huadian e-Learning working in tandem with Party branch themed Party days to promote the normalization and long-term effectiveness of integrity education. Relying on Anhui's red resources, Party members and leading cadres have been organized to conduct immersive education at the Memorial Hall of the Crossing-the-Yangtze-River Campaign and the Cultural Park of Bao Gong's Hometown, guiding Party members and leading cadres to strengthening a line of defense (筑牢防线, zhu lao fang xian - "build, solid, defense, line") against corruption and moral degeneration.
The "Enforcing Discipline with Deterrence Project" clarifies discipline and restrains conduct. Efforts to enforce discipline and pursue accountability have been intensified. For problems in key areas such as engineering construction, bidding and procurement, and new energy development, the principle of "investigate each case as it is discovered, and handle each case as it is investigated" has been implemented, with precise application of the "four forms" of discipline oversight, addressing problems at an early and minor stage (抓早抓小, zhua zao zhua xiao - "grasp, early, grasp, small"), precise discipline enforcement, and strict investigation and punishment. The "First Lesson of the New Year" warning education mechanism has been consolidated. For two consecutive years, on the first day after the New Year, the Party Committee Secretary has presided over warning education meetings, reporting typical cases of violations of discipline and rules within the Company system and typical problems in key areas, continuously sending the signal that strictness begins from the very start.
The "Supervision as Escort Project" corrects deviations and rectifies malpractices. Coordination and integration of various types of supervision have been strengthened, with "discipline inspection, audit, inspection, and law" working in coordinated supervision. A "regular + special" problem collection mechanism between supervision departments and business departments has been established to promote the sharing of supervision results and joint governance of problems. An innovative "Five Co-Operations Joint Inspection" mechanism has been established with sister units, featuring shared strength, joint mid-term adjustment, joint problem governance, shared results, and joint talent cultivation, focusing on solving the difficulty of supervising acquaintances. During inspections, special supervision on economic responsibility audits, engineering visa approvals, and material management has been carried out simultaneously to enhance the intensity of coordinated supervision. Extending the reach of supervision, leaders of the Party Committee and the Discipline Inspection Commission have gone deep into engineering projects to carry out the "Sending Integrity to the Frontline" action, distributing "Sunshine Cards for Clean Engineering Construction," holding one-on-one discussions with personnel from participating construction units, and opening a "direct express" channel for reporting problems and reflecting demands.
The "Rectifying Conduct and Upholding Integrity Project" tempers work style. The normalization and long-term effectiveness of work style building have been promoted, with the issuance of the "Notice on Strengthening Work Style Building and Improving Investigation and Research Work." Members of the leadership team have taken the lead in implementing the "Three Ones" 24-hour on-site duty mechanism, with company leaders conducting on-site duty at each grassroots enterprise no fewer than once a year, principal persons in charge of grassroots enterprises conducting on-site duty no fewer than once a month, and deputy persons in charge of grassroots enterprises conducting on-site duty no fewer than once a week. A negative list of "micro-corruption" behaviors has been compiled, covering seven categories and 60 items, establishing rules, drawing red lines, and clarifying boundaries for all employees. The affiliated Suzhou Company has deployed integrity supervision officers in each department, built a "grand supervision" network, and implemented supervision reward and punishment assessments. The Xixingchong Pumped Storage Company has built a "four-party linkage" integrity prevention and control system involving the owner, supervision, construction, and design parties, focusing on preventing corrupt behavior.
The "Nurturing the Political Ecosystem Project" addresses the root cause to ensure long-term stability (固本清源, gu ben qing yuan - "solidify, root; clear, source"). Implementing the three-year action plan for building a clean culture in the new era, under the guidance of Huadian Group's "Striving" culture, and combined with regional characteristics, the "Wan Song Qing Feng" (Anhui Pine and Clear Breeze) clean culture characteristic case has been formed. The propaganda positions for clean culture have been enriched, with affiliated Wuhu Company and Lu'an Company respectively building a "Seeing Lotus, Thinking of Integrity" clean culture square and an "audio-visual integrated" clean education experience hall, making clean culture becoming deeply ingrained in people's hearts (深入人心, shen ru ren xin - "deep, enter, people, heart"). At the same time, special integrity awards have been established at affiliated grassroots enterprises to encourage addressing problems at an early and minor stage and preventing risks, jointly creating a sound political ecosystem.
The "Forging an Iron Army Project" tempers and strengthens the vanguard (砥砺先锋, di li xian feng - "grind, whet, pioneer"). Implementing the work deployment of the "Year of Standardization, Rule-of-Law, and Professionalization of Discipline Inspection and Supervision Work," continuing to leverage the advantages of cross-regional joint training, comprehensive training classes have been jointly held with five directly affiliated units, promoting theoretical study, practical exercise, and seminar improvement in an integrated manner. Ten business backbone personnel have been selected to participate in on-the-job training with the Discipline Inspection and Supervision Group stationed at China Huadian and the Supervision Center, striving to build a discipline inspection iron army that is politically competent, professionally competent, work-style competent, and integrity competent.
(Party Committee of Anhui Branch of China Huadian Corporation Ltd.)
Return to TopBy: 方俊钦
Dehua County is an ancient county with a thousand-year history, whose name carries the meaning of "transforming people through virtue." Located in central Fujian and northern Quanzhou, it covers an area of 2,232 square kilometers and has a registered population of 355,000. It holds numerous honors including National Civilized City, National All-for-One Tourism Demonstration Zone, and National Ecological Civilization Construction Demonstration County. Over the years, Dehua has upheld fundamental principles and broken new ground, driving the traditional porcelain industry to achieve breakthroughs through inheritance and leap forward through transformation. It has persisted in shaping the industry with culture, strengthening it with innovation, and revitalizing it through opening up, elevating the traditional ceramic industry into a hundred-billion-yuan ceramic industry cluster. Today, the county is home to more than 4,500 ceramic enterprises with over 100,000 employees. In 2025, the ceramic industry cluster reached a scale of 76 billion yuan, with over 60% of products exported to more than 190 countries and regions worldwide.
Deeply cultivating cultural roots to enrich the foundation for industrial development. The Dehua ceramic industry has a long history, with over 3,700 years of porcelain-making history, accumulating rich historical and cultural resources and accumulating a profound cultural heritage, providing solid support for the industry's continued development.
First, deeply exploring history so the world can understand Dehua. Dehua has collaborated with the Ceramics Research Institute of the National Museum to compile the History of Dehua Ceramics, filmed the documentary movie Borderless Realm, and leveraged national-level communication platforms such as Intangible Cultural Heritage in China to systematically sort out the development trajectory of Dehua ceramics, allowing the Eastern aesthetics accumulated over a thousand years to be seen by the world.
Second, cultural heritage must be both well protected and "brought to life." Dehua adheres to the principle of "restoring the old as it was," transforming the Hongqifang state-owned old porcelain factory into a cultural and creative landmark, which received 169,000 visitors during the 2026 May Day holiday. It has revitalized nearly a thousand master exhibition halls and industrial exhibition halls, launching the "World Heritage Site · Dehua Hundred-Hall Tour." It has also created ceramic warehouse-style supermarkets, shifting the business model from "selling products" to "spreading culture," making the thousand-year ceramic culture visible, appreciable, and consumable.
Third, passing the torch from generation to generation so skills are handed down. In 2006, Dehua porcelain firing techniques were included in the first batch of the national intangible cultural heritage list, establishing an inheritance system of "intangible heritage protection + master cultivation + institutional linkage." It has deepened the integration of industry and education, relying on Quanzhou Arts and Crafts Vocational College to offer specialized ceramic programs, cultivating more than 2,000 ceramic professionals annually, building up talent strength for the industry.
Activating innovation momentum to empower the transformation of the porcelain industry. For a traditional industry to go global, innovation-driven development is indispensable. Dehua focuses on the coordinated synergy of design, technology, and brand, reshaping industrial competitiveness with an international perspective, adding modern wings to the thousand-year-old white porcelain and reshaping the industry's global competitiveness.
On the design front, Dehua has established the only national industrial design research institute in the national ceramic industry, gathering 54 design institutions and nearly 2,000 design professionals. It has launched the AI design tool "Nenghuo AI" for the ceramic field, established an "AI+OPC" development promotion center, and increased design efficiency by more than threefold. It has also held the "He Chaozong Cup" Ceramic Industrial Design Competition for ten consecutive sessions, increasing product added value by more than 30%, driving the industry's transformation from standardized mass production to personalized creative creation.
On the technology front, Dehua has planned the "World Porcelain Valley," vigorously promoting "machine substitution for labor and digital empowerment." A total of 803 sets of intelligent equipment have entered workshops, with intelligent application rates among above-scale ceramic enterprises exceeding 95%, enterprise production efficiency increasing by more than 60%, and product qualification rates remaining stable above 95%, forming an irreplaceable industrial advantage in Western-style craft porcelain. It has also built a closed loop of "recycling - regeneration - intelligent use" for waste gypsum mold.
On the brand front, Dehua has built a system of "regional public brand + enterprise independent brand + geographical indication," owning eight geographical indication certification trademarks including "Dehua Ceramics" and "Dehua Porcelain Sculpture." In March 2025, the "China White" graphic trademark obtained EU certification, and Dehua's ceramic brand matrix is growing increasingly robust.
Optimizing the business environment and providing targeted measures to safeguard industrial development. An internationalized business environment cannot be separated from the government's scientific guidance and precise services.
Policies provide targeted empowerment and stimulate market vitality. Dehua regards the ceramic industry as the pillar industry of the county economy, formulating and implementing plans such as the high-quality development of the Dehua ceramic industry, AI empowerment of the ceramic industry, and the "World Porcelain Valley," systematically and comprehensively advancing the goal of a "hundred-billion-yuan ceramic industry cluster." It has successfully secured special support policies from the province and the city, and issued a series of supporting special policies, forming a "1+N" policy support system covering multiple aspects such as capital increase and expansion, technological innovation, industrial design, and market expansion, stimulating the vitality of ceramic industry development and supporting high-quality development. The continuity and precision of policies have provided stable expectations for enterprise development and fully activated the vitality of market entities.
Services are meticulously cultivated to boost enterprise confidence. Dehua has established a system for leading cadres to maintain contact with key enterprises, regularly carrying out "Enterprise Visit Day" activities to promptly resolve difficulties encountered by enterprises in production and operation, such as raw material supply, talent recruitment, and market connection. Adhering to "enterprises first, service foremost," it has implemented "one-window acceptance and parallel approval," providing ceramic enterprises with full-process services from project landing and production operation to market expansion. It has innovated the Dehua experience of "the Five-Sphere Integrated Plan, pluralistic co-governance" for county-level intellectual property protection, built a national (ceramic) intellectual property rapid rights protection center, and fully opened a "fast track" for pre-examination of design patents in the ceramic industry.
Creating a strong atmosphere and coalescing development synergy.Adhering to "whole-society participation and all-round development promotion," Dehua fully leverages the bridge-and-linkage role of the ceramic industry association and the ceramic artists association, strengthens industry self-discipline, regulates market order, and promotes enterprises developing together. It promotes the spirit of craftsmanship, the spirit of innovation, and the spirit of entrepreneurship, creating a strong atmosphere of "respecting craftsmen, advocating innovation, and supporting entrepreneurship," making ceramic culture a shared pride of the entire county's people and forming a favorable situation in which "everyone cares about ceramics and everyone supports ceramics."
Consolidating the industrial foundation and gathering strength for the cluster's long voyage. Dehua is committed to building a modern industrial ecosystem with cluster development, factor aggregation, and platform support, striving toward the goal of a hundred-billion-yuan ceramic industry cluster by 2027.
Improving the cultivation of the industrial echelon. In recent years, Dehua has built 7.31 million square meters of standardized parks, improved the enterprise cultivation system of "small enterprises upgrading to above-scale, above-scale enterprises upgrading to high-tech, and high-tech enterprises upgrading to standardized," supported leading enterprises in growing bigger and stronger, supported small and medium-sized enterprises in taking the path of specialization, refinement, uniqueness, and novelty, and formed an industrial ecosystem of "leading enterprise guidance, complete supporting facilities, and clear division of labor."
Clearing bottlenecks in factor guarantees. Dehua has established a global ceramic supply chain management center for centralized procurement and distribution, reducing enterprise procurement costs by more than 10%. It has built a logistics supervision center, ending the history of customs clearance in other places, and increasing customs clearance efficiency by 40%. It has established a ceramic industry development fund, launched special financial products such as "Ceramic Loans," with cumulative credit of 92.1 billion yuan, and was selected as a demonstration zone for inclusive financial development supported by central finance, irrigating the real economy with financial vitality.
Improving public service platforms. Dehua has invested a cumulative total of ten billion yuan in building carriers such as the Porcelain Art City, Hongqifang, and the e-commerce logistics park. It has established a ceramic industry innovation research institute to tackle key technologies, built a talent exchange center and designer alliance, and established local standards for Dehua white porcelain and a product quality traceability system.
(The author is the Secretary of the Dehua County Party Committee of Fujian Province)
Return to TopBy: 杨磊
Shandong Vocational College of Special Education, based on years of exploration, has formed the educational philosophy that special vocational education is by no means a social burden, but rather an innovative vehicle for activating human capital and empowering individual growth. The college, grounded in the physical and mental characteristics of its students, has carved out a distinctive path of school-running centered on distinctly different or unique (与众不同, yu zhong bu tong - "with, different, not, same") competitive positioning.
Focusing on innate strengths, transforming physiological characteristics into developmental advantages. The college has shifted its educational approach, insisting on developing strengths rather than remedying weaknesses, and deeply excavating the advantageous potential inherent in the natural traits of students with disabilities. Students with hearing impairments possess extremely strong visual concentration, patience, and perseverance, enabling them to focus on fine-detailed tasks for extended periods and excel at capturing subtle nuances; students with visual impairments have acute tactile sensitivity and precise perception, with hand control and concentration far exceeding that of ordinary people. The college has established an admission advantage-assessment mechanism, using comprehensive observation, professional evaluation, and staged trial study to precisely match each student with a suitable major, not pursuing all-round development but rather concentrating efforts on strengthening individual strengths. Relying on the advantages of hearing-impaired students, it has focused on developing majors in cultural relic restoration, arts and crafts, and visual communication design; leveraging the strengths of visually impaired students, it has concentrated on directions such as traditional Chinese medicine rehabilitation, tuina physiotherapy, and music therapy.
Deeply cultivating specialized skills, building a solid core competency. Ordinary vocational education emphasizes training in multiple skills; the college, based on student characteristics, has established the teaching philosophy of not seeking proficiency in everything but rather excelling in one skill, honing students' innate concentration and refined perception into hard-core skills recognized by the market. The college integrates modern technologies such as 3D scanning and digital modeling to combine traditional craftsmanship with technological empowerment, achieving restoration standards at an advanced level within the industry. In professional development, each distinctive major streamlines its curriculum system, focusing on deep refinement of 1–2 core skills, with teaching and practical training standards benchmarked against the highest industry requirements and strictly controlled, with key deployment in job fields demanding high levels of concentration and fine operational ability.
Transforming the employment orientation, winning market recognition through solid capability. The college has made clear that employment is not sympathy or preferential treatment, but value matching; positions are not passive placement, but two-way selection. Today, graduates of the college, relying on their professional competence, have become talents eagerly sought after by various employers.Students in the cultural relic restoration major are booked in advance by museums and archaeological institutions inside and outside the province before graduation; graduates of the traditional Chinese medicine rehabilitation major are highly favored by hospitals, earning unanimous praise from patients for their exquisite skills and warm service. The college is taking a series of measures simultaneously (多措并举, duo cuo bing ju - "many, measures, together, lift") to open up channels for employment and entrepreneurship. It closely tracks market positions in short supply to carry out order-based training; it links up with medical institutions, cultural heritage units, and cultural and creative enterprises to jointly build practical training bases, achieving seamless connection between academics and jobs, and providing entrepreneurial students with all-round support in venues, equipment, operations, and more.
Dissolving identity labels, enabling students to integrate equally into ordinary life. The college focuses on cultivating skilled talents with distinctive abilities, allowing students to live with dignity and stand on an equal footing as ordinary people. Beyond skills instruction, it simultaneously strengthens students' abilities in independent living, social interaction, and psychological adjustment, offering social integration practice courses and organizing students to enter shopping malls, hospitals, and other settings for real-scenario training, helping students establish an identity as ordinary workers. The significance of special education is not to mold "stars" who are distinctly different, but to eliminate group estrangement and prejudice. Enabling every student with disabilities to integrate into society with dignity and live an ordinary life with peace and ease is the greatest success of the special education endeavor.
Clarifying development perceptions, treating educational investment as long-term human capital investment. The average salary of the college's graduates is on par with that of ordinary higher vocational students, and outstanding practitioners show notable income performance; they work, pay taxes, consume, and start families normally, continuously creating diverse value for society. The college proactively communicates with the government, enterprises, and society, actively seeking resource support from all parties; at the same time, it repays social trust with high employment rates and high-quality educational outcomes, building a virtuous development cycle of "quality cultivation—smooth employment—value contribution—multi-party empowerment."
Deeply cultivating distinctive paths, steadily expanding the demonstration effect of school-running. Relying on the new deployments for special education and vocational education in the national "15th Five-Year Plan" outline, and in conjunction with the requirements for high-quality development of vocational education in Shandong Province, the college will continue to deepen the "competitive positioning" path of school-running, promoting further improvement in educational quality and the replicability of its school-running model. First, optimizing the cluster of distinctive majors. Continuing to strengthen advantageous majors such as cultural relic restoration, traditional Chinese medicine rehabilitation, and arts and crafts, upgrading quality in line with first-class domestic standards. Second, deepening deep integration of industry and education. Jointly building industry colleges with museums, medical institutions, and cultural and creative enterprises, promoting collaborative education between schools and enterprises, and achieving immediate employment upon graduation. Third, strengthening digital technology empowerment. Popularizing intelligent assistive devices and digital teaching resources, using technology to break down physical and mental barriers. Fourth, exporting distinctive school-running experience. Sharing the "competitive positioning" school-running experience with special education institutions across the province and the whole country.
(The author is the Party Committee Secretary of Shandong Vocational College of Special Education)
Return to TopThe "15th Five-Year Plan for Accelerating Agricultural and Rural Modernization" proposes developing resilient agriculture, setting the goal that by 2030, the capacity to ensure the supply of grain and other important agricultural products will be steadily enhanced, the foundation of food security will be continuously consolidated, and the quality, efficiency, and competitiveness of agriculture will be constantly improved. At present, China's food security situation is generally under control, but structural contradictions, climate risks, and the impact of the international market are intertwined, making it necessary to focus on developing resilient agriculture to continuously safeguard national food security. Centering on the development of resilient agriculture, the high-end think tank section of Study Times has launched an in-depth discussion.
Return to TopBy: 张红宇
2026 marks the opening year of the 15th Five-Year Plan. This year's Central Document No. 1 explicitly requires strengthening the construction of the agricultural disaster prevention and mitigation system, and puts forward specific arrangements such as conducting a survey and zoning of agricultural climate resources and improving the capacity to respond to extreme weather. The "15th Five-Year Plan for Accelerating Agricultural and Rural Modernization" further proposes comprehensively enhancing the capacity for agricultural disaster prevention, mitigation, and relief, and developing resilient agriculture. Within the holistic approach to national security, the security of the agricultural industry occupies a foundational position, bearing on the food bowl of more than 1.4 billion people and on the overall stability of the economic and social landscape. We must do everything possible to enhance disaster prevention and mitigation capacity and consolidate the foundation of agricultural industry security.
The security of the agricultural industry faces a situation where multiple risks are superimposed. At present, the security situation of China's agricultural industry is more extremely complicated and intricate than at any time in the past. From the perspective of natural risks, extreme weather events are impacting agricultural production with unprecedented density and intensity. In 2025, various natural disasters affected a total of 67.0337 million people across the country to varying degrees, with 6.0694 million hectares of crops affected and direct economic losses of 241.617 billion yuan. This year, a super El Niño event has already formed. The World Meteorological Organization bulletin shows that the intensity of El Niño may peak at the end of the year, and the probability of it lasting until February 2027 is close to 100%. Affected by this, China's climate this summer shows obvious anomalous characteristics. The central and eastern regions are generally more prone to flooding than drought, presenting a pattern of "more in the north and south, less in the middle." Rainstorm processes are broad in scope with strong intensity, overlapping affected areas, and compounding disaster-causing effects. Typhoons are active and intense. Disasters such as waterlogging, lodging, and pests and diseases are superimposed and occur frequently. Geological disasters such as mudslides and landslides triggered by heavy rainfall have become one of the most prominent natural risks threatening the safety of people's lives and property and the security of the agricultural industry. From the perspective of market risks, the long-term price inversion between domestic and international grain prices has exerted continuous pressure on domestic production capacity. Factor prices such as domestic land rent, labor costs, and agricultural input investment have risen rigidly, and the cost of grain production continues to increase. With the upgrading of residents' dietary structure, the grain supply structure finds it difficult to meet the expansion of diversified consumer demand, and the problem of insufficient supply of high-quality specialized varieties is becoming increasingly prominent. At the national level, emphasis is placed on deploying the cultivation of superior grain varieties and quality improvement, expanding the production of strong-gluten and weak-gluten specialized wheat, high-quality eating-quality rice, and fresh corn. This is precisely using the demand side as the orientation to force supply-side reform, promoting the transformation of grain production from "sufficient quantity" to "structural adaptation and excellent quality." The import dependence ratio remains high, structural contradictions among varieties are prominent, a production-demand gap still exists, and the overall pattern of a tight balance between supply and demand has not changed. From the perspective of trade risks, international geopolitical confrontation has intensified, and events such as local wars, port blockades, maritime transport interruptions, and channel blockages occur frequently, directly impacting the global circulation of grain and agricultural manufactured goods. Global food prices have risen to their highest point in nearly three years. The international environment facing the security of grain and the agricultural industry is in a period of unprecedented turbulence and transformation.
While soberly recognizing external risks, we must also face squarely the structural shortcomings of China's agriculture itself. The first is the factor shortcoming. China feeds nearly one-fifth of the world's population with 9% of the world's arable land and 6% of its freshwater resources. Per capita arable land is less than half the world average, water resources are unevenly distributed in time and space, and the problem of groundwater over-extraction in the northern major grain-producing areas is prominent. The second is the science and technology shortcoming. At present, China's agricultural science and technology innovation has overall entered the world's first echelon. However, overall speaking, the momentum of derivative innovation "from 1 to 100" is rapid, while the driving force of original innovation "from 0 to 1" is relatively insufficient. Some key core technologies are still controlled by others, the conversion rate of agricultural science and technology achievements is relatively low, the cultivation of innovation entities is insufficient, and some high-end agricultural machinery and equipment and core germplasm resources still depend on imports. The third is the talent shortcoming. Data from the Third National Agricultural Census show that among agricultural practitioners nationwide, those aged 55 and above account for 33.6%, those aged 36 to 54 account for 47.3%, and those aged 35 and below account for only 19.2%; in some areas, practitioners aged 51 and above account for more than half of agricultural practitioners. The trend of aging in the labor force engaged in grain production is obvious, the structural contradiction of "who will farm the land" is prominent, and there is a large gap in both the quantity and quality of "new farmers" who possess human capital, understand technology, can manage, and are good at operating. The fourth is the industrial chain shortcoming. The coordination across the entire chain of agricultural product production, procurement, storage, processing, and marketing is insufficient, the processing and conversion rate still has a large gap compared with developed countries, the cold chain logistics system is imperfect, the post-production loss rate is relatively high, the mechanism for distributing value-added benefits across the entire agricultural industry chain is not sound, and farmers benefit limitedly within the industrial chain.
Faced with such a complex and ever-changing domestic and international situation, China has already explored and formed theoretical guidance, institutional guarantees, technical means, and strategic decisions to ensure grain and industrial security. In terms of development philosophy, we adhere to the food security strategy of focusing on self-reliance, basing ourselves on domestic production, ensuring production capacity, moderate imports, and scientific and technological support. The newly revised Agricultural Law explicitly writes this national food security strategy into law, and constructs an institutional system covering strategic positioning, production capacity protection, income security, and risk prevention and control from aspects such as protecting land and other agricultural resources, strengthening agricultural science and technology innovation, improving the mechanism for safeguarding grain producers' income, and establishing a grain security monitoring and early warning system. This marks the elevation of the food security strategy from the policy level to national legal will, upgrading risk management from policy response to legal guarantee, giving rigid constraints to key links such as production capacity protection, income security, and monitoring and early warning, and providing stable institutional expectations for agricultural risk prevention and control. In terms of institutional mechanisms, the Party's leadership is always the fundamental guarantee. The Party Central Committee insists on treating food security as a matter of "the greatest importance to the nation," and Party committees and governments at all levels implement the joint responsibility of the Party and government for food security. In practice, a work approach of the Five-Sphere Integrated Plan covering "land, technology, funds, people, and responsibility" has been formed, strictly maintaining the red line of 1.865 billion mu of arable land and 1.546 billion mu of permanent basic farmland. In 2025, China's agricultural insurance premium scale exceeded 155 billion yuan, providing risk protection of 5.2 trillion yuan for 125 million farmer households, and paying out more than 120 billion yuan in claims to farmers. In the first half of 2026, agricultural insurance premium income was 109.3 billion yuan, providing risk protection of 3.31 trillion yuan for 83 million farmer households, paying 46 billion yuan in claims to disaster-affected farmers, with 15.97 million farmer households benefiting. The coordinated efforts of the food security strategy and the concepts, institutions, and technical means have ensured China's continuous stable grain production and increased output, making productive forces and production relations more compatible. This is valuable experience formed in our long-term practice and is also the solid confidence for China's agriculture to rapidly, safely, and with high quality move toward becoming a "major industry."
Forge agricultural industry resilience with a modern major industry. The environment for agricultural industry development changes rapidly, and development thinking must also be upgraded accordingly. Building agriculture into a modern major industry is precisely a new approach that adapts to changes in the situation, strengthens the resilience of the industrial system itself, consolidates the foundation of agricultural industry security, and guarantees national food security. The whole-chain integration, diversified supply, and technological empowerment constructed by a modern major industry are the fundamental path to effectively counter various natural and market risks and forge "weak links" into a "solid foundation." At present, China already possesses a solid foundation for building agriculture into a modern major industry. The next step is to enhance the capacity for developing the major industry.
In terms of resource capacity. China has a forest area of 231 million hectares, with a forest coverage rate of 24.02%; a grassland area of 265 million hectares, of which natural pasture is 210 million hectares, with a comprehensive vegetation coverage rate of grasslands reaching 50.32%; wetlands of 56.35 million hectares; and, according to the relevant provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and China's claims, a maritime area under jurisdiction of approximately 3 million square kilometers. China is also one of the countries with the richest biodiversity in the world. The abundant resource endowment provides broad space for building a diversified food production system.
In terms of science and technology capacity. Aim at three directions and make coordinated efforts. The first is the technological upgrading of traditional agriculture. Deeply implement the seed industry revitalization action, and accelerate the breeding and promotion of breakthrough varieties. At present, the area share of independently bred crop varieties exceeds 95%, and the market share of domestic germplasm sources for livestock and poultry, aquatic products, and vegetables exceeds 80%, 86%, and 91%, respectively. The second is technological breakthroughs in strategic industries. This year's Central Document No. 1 explicitly proposes "developing new quality productive forces in agriculture in light of local conditions, and promoting the combination of artificial intelligence with agricultural development." Drones and robots are written into the Central Document No. 1 for the first time, expanding the application scenarios of the low-altitude economy, robots, and other technologies in the agricultural and rural fields. The third is the forward-looking layout of future industries. Accelerate key technological innovation in agricultural biomanufacturing, use remote sensing satellites, drones, and other technologies to shift disaster prevention and mitigation from post-disaster relief to front-end prevention, and greatly enhance the capacity for timely prevention, risk resistance, and reduction of disaster losses in agriculture.
In terms of operational capacity. Vigorously cultivate new types of business entities, promote the transformation from "a large country with small farmers" to "a large country with strong farmers," improve the mechanism for linking farmers with industries, and form a new pattern of agricultural development that is scaled, specialized, regionalized, and enterprise-based. In the field of grain production, focus on developing cooperatives and family farms and promoting socialized service models; in the fields of animal husbandry and aquaculture, give play to the leading role of leading enterprises, use scale to resist various disasters, and avoid the capsizing of small boats.
In terms of trade capacity. Open up the entire chain of production, procurement, storage, processing, and sales, and enhance competitiveness, discourse power, and global layout capability. This year's Central Document No. 1 explicitly proposes "promoting the coordination of agricultural product trade and production," emphasizing the promotion of diversification of agricultural product imports, the cultivation of internationally competitive agricultural enterprises, and support for expanding exports of advantageous and specialty agricultural products. At present, China's grain import sources are highly concentrated in a few countries, and the dependence of varieties such as soybeans and corn on the American market is particularly prominent. It is necessary to be vigilant about the vulnerability of transport channels, strive to avoid high dependence on a few channels and key nodes, and prevent supply chains from breaking at points when facing extreme weather, channel congestion, or geopolitical conflicts. In recent years, China's grain trade is transforming from "buying globally" to "linking globally." COFCO will build a soybean crushing plant in Brazil, marking the move of China-Brazil soybean trade from spot transactions to deep cooperation in the industrial chain. While consolidating the advantage of the domestic super-large market, we should improve the agricultural product price formation mechanism and circulation system, actively participate in international food and agriculture governance, strengthen agricultural industry resilience, and withstand the winds and waves of the global food and agriculture market.
In terms of institutional capacity. Uphold and strengthen the Party's overall leadership over work concerning agriculture, rural areas, and farmers, improve the inter-provincial horizontal interest compensation mechanism between grain production and marketing areas, improve the fiscal and financial coordinated mechanism for supporting agriculture, and transform institutional advantages into industrial resilience and security effectiveness.
Systematically construct a support system for the development of the major industry. The enhancement of the capacity for developing the major industry cannot be separated from systematic guarantees.
Conceptual renewal is the prerequisite. Adhere to bottom-line thinking and extreme thinking, and prevent the spread and diffusion of risks to the greatest extent. Establish a broad view of resources, base ourselves on all-domain and all-factor resources, adhere to the principle of using land for grain where suitable for grain, for cash crops where suitable for cash crops, for animal husbandry where suitable for animal husbandry, for aquaculture where suitable for aquaculture, and for forestry where suitable for forestry, scientifically utilize resources such as mountains, waters, fields, forests, lakes, grasslands, and sand, and build a diversified food production system. Establish a broad view of food, on the premise of protecting arable land, seek food from forests, grasslands, rivers, lakes, and seas, seek calories and protein from plants, animals, and microorganisms, and broaden the channels of food sources. Establish a broad view of industry, promote the extension of agriculture from the production link to both the pre-production and post-production ends, deepen the integration of primary, secondary, and tertiary industries, and cultivate new industries and new business forms such as smart agriculture, factory agriculture, and customized agriculture. Establish a broad view of services, develop cooperatives, family farms, and large planting households, promote socialized service models, and promote the transformation from "a large country with small farmers" to "a large country with strong farmers." Establish a broad view of the market, consolidate the advantage of the domestic super-large market, improve the agricultural product price formation mechanism and circulation system, and actively participate in international agricultural competition and food and agriculture governance. Through various means such as education and training, typical demonstration, and policy guidance, let new concepts truly enter the mind and heart and take root and flourish. Through the transformation of concepts, reconstruct the logic of agricultural development from the perspective of risk management: the broad view of resources expands the space for risk diversification, the broad view of food reduces dependence on a single source, the broad view of industry enhances the impact resistance of the entire chain, the broad view of services improves the degree of organization of small farmers in resisting risks, and the broad view of the market uses a diversified market network to hedge against external uncertainties. The more thorough the conceptual renewal, the more solid the ideological foundation of agricultural industry security.
Factor empowerment is the key. We must adhere to the close combination of investing in things and investing in people, and provide sufficient human, financial, and material guarantees for industrial development. In terms of fiscal investment, continuously optimize the expenditure structure, focus funds on key areas such as high-standard farmland construction, seed industry revitalization, agricultural machinery and equipment upgrading, and disaster prevention and mitigation infrastructure, and ensure stable growth, optimized structure, and improved efficiency of agricultural and rural expenditure. In terms of financial support for agriculture, guide more credit resources to tilt toward major grain-producing areas and new types of business entities, innovate product and service models such as industrial chain finance and supply chain finance, reduce agricultural financing costs, and solve the problems of "difficult and expensive financing." In terms of insurance protection, the "Implementation Plan for Accelerating the High-Quality Development of Agricultural Insurance" explicitly proposes that by 2030, a multi-level agricultural insurance system that matches farmers' risk protection needs, adapts to modern agricultural development, and divides responsibilities between central and local governments should be basically established, with agricultural insurance depth reaching 1.9%, agricultural insurance density reaching 1,200 yuan per person, and the agricultural insurance coverage rate for the three major grain crops of rice, wheat, and corn stably maintained at around 90%. Accelerate the promotion of the deepening transformation of agricultural insurance from "insuring costs" to "insuring income, insuring prices, and insuring the chain," expand the coverage of full-cost insurance and planting income insurance, and improve the efficiency and accuracy of claims settlement. In terms of social capital investment, improve the benefit linkage mechanism, and through the methods of government guidance, market operation, and farmer participation, leverage more social capital to invest in the modern major industry of agriculture, forming a diversified investment pattern with fiscal priority guarantee, financial key tilt, and active social participation. In terms of science and technology investment, focus on the scientific and technological support for disaster prevention and mitigation, and increase R&D investment in fields such as agricultural meteorological monitoring and early warning, disaster risk assessment, and rapid disaster identification. Improve the layout of agricultural meteorological observation station networks, and enhance the accuracy and timeliness of forecasting and early warning for major disasters such as drought, flooding, typhoons, and low-temperature freezing damage. Accelerate the R&D and promotion of new varieties with strong stress resistance and applicable technologies for disaster prevention and mitigation, promote models such as waterlogging-tolerant and drought-tolerant crop varieties, facility agriculture, and disaster-avoidance agriculture, and enhance the disaster resistance capacity of agricultural production itself. Use remote sensing satellites, drones, the Internet of Things, and other means to carry out rapid disaster assessment and precise verification, improve the efficiency of insurance loss assessment and claims settlement, and let disaster-affected farmers resume production as soon as possible. Build an agricultural disaster big data platform, promote information sharing among multiple departments such as meteorology, water resources, agriculture, and emergency management, and realize whole-chain scientific and technological support from pre-disaster warning, in-disaster response, to post-disaster recovery. Transform factor input into material guarantees for agriculture to resist natural and market risks, and shift risk management from passive remedy to active prevention.
Human resource support is fundamental. Focus on enhancing the human capital of agricultural practitioners, build mechanisms for the training, use, incentive, and service of rural talent, and cultivate a group of new types of agricultural business entities that love agriculture, understand technology, and are good at management. Improve the training system for high-quality farmers, and carry out tiered and classified precise training around key areas such as grain production, smart agriculture, and disaster prevention and mitigation, so that grain growers can master new technologies, new equipment, and new concepts. Improve the mechanism for attracting, cultivating, retaining, and using talent, and through policy incentives, entrepreneurship support, honor commendations, and other means, attract college graduates, returning entrepreneurs, and veterans to engage in agriculture, injecting fresh blood into agriculture. Support family farm owners, cooperative leaders, agricultural enterprise operators, and others to grow in practice, and cultivate a group of "new farmers" with market vision and operational capability. Strengthen service guarantees, provide more support to agricultural workers in areas such as social security, housing, and children's education, and let more young people be willing to farm, learn to farm, and farm with peace of mind. Through professional training and income security, gradually reverse the trend of aging in the agricultural labor force. Make high-quality agricultural practitioners an important support for technology application, equipment efficiency, and organizational management, build the first line of defense for agricultural risk management, provide solid guarantees for pre-disaster prevention and orderly and effective post-disaster recovery, and provide a continuous supply of talent support for the modern major industry of agriculture.
Reform and innovation are the driving force. Focus on grasping the reform of the land system, comprehensively carry out the pilot of extending rural land contracts for another 30 years upon the expiration of the second round of contracts at the provincial level, and promote moderate-scale operation. Grasp the reform of the management system, build a modern agricultural management system of "large-scale operation, large-scale services, and large-scale trade," and promote the organic connection between small farmers and modern agriculture. Deepen the reform of the rural land system, on the premise of adhering to the collective ownership of land, stabilize farmers' contract rights, invigorate land management rights, and promote the rational allocation and efficient use of land resources. Innovate agricultural management methods, support the coordinated development of multiple entities such as cooperatives, family farms, and agricultural enterprises, improve the socialized service system, and let small farmers share the dividends of scale operation and industrial integration. Improve the agricultural support and protection system, optimize subsidy policies and price regulation mechanisms, both guaranteeing national food security and protecting farmers' enthusiasm for grain production. Promote the reform of the agricultural science and technology innovation system, open up all links of industry, academia, research, and application, accelerate the transformation of scientific and technological achievements into actual productive forces, remove the bottlenecks of risk management through the smooth operation of institutional mechanisms and the orderly flow of factors, let the industrial system continuously enhance its resilience in the process of transformation, provide the premise for gathering synergy for agricultural risk management, make agriculture a modern major industry with a complete chain, multiple functions, and strong competitiveness, and provide institutional support for firmly holding the initiative of food security and agricultural industry security in our own hands.
Standing at the new starting point of the opening year of the 15th Five-Year Plan, we should build a broad view of industry with a broader vision, enhance disaster prevention and mitigation capacity with more pragmatic actions, consolidate the foundation of agricultural industry security with a more resilient modern major industry system, and contribute wisdom and strength to holding the Chinese people's rice bowl firmly and advancing Chinese modernization.
(The author is the President of the China Agricultural Risk Management Research Association)
Return to TopBy: 许吟隆
Food security is a matter of national importance ("a matter of the state"). At present, the concept of food security has expanded from initially ensuring the quantitative safety of food needed for basic human survival to ensuring the qualitative safety of health, undergoing a transition from "having enough to eat" to "eating well and eating healthily." In this process, climate change is becoming an increasingly unignorable variable, profoundly affecting every link of food security—not only affecting grain output, but also affecting food quality, triggering the "hidden hunger" problem of missing nutritional elements in food, and becoming a hidden danger threatening public health. At the same time, climate change causes severe impacts on China's grain production, storage, circulation, consumption, and other links. High-temperature forced ripening, low-temperature freezing damage, drought and flooding, and aggravated pests and diseases—these seemingly scattered meteorological disaster events, when superimposed, become an important problem that cannot be avoided in the process of achieving food security.
Global warming leads to frequent extreme weather and climate events, and agricultural production faces increasingly severe challenges—this is the broad background we must face squarely. But the impact of climate change cannot be generalized; it has both advantages and disadvantages for agricultural production, and the favorable and unfavorable factors are also relative. On the one hand, rising carbon dioxide concentrations increase plant photosynthetic rates and improve water use efficiency, which is conducive to increasing crop yields; climate warming extends the crop growing season and expands suitable planting areas, promoting the optimization and adjustment of planting structures and driving changes in advantageous production areas for agricultural products. On the other hand, drought in the north and drought in the southwest are becoming normalized, autumn drought in the Yangtze River basin occurs frequently, the area affected by flood disasters increases year by year, the northward shift of the rain belt brings risks such as rain-soaked grain at harvest time, ear sprouting, and mildew in the northern major grain-producing areas, and the occurrence and harm of agricultural pests and diseases are also worsening. Faced with the trend of climate change, the key lies in actively adopting climate change adaptation measures to "turn harm into benefit" and promote the transformation of unfavorable factors into favorable ones.
To effectively respond to climate change, China has already adopted a large number of measures to safeguard food security. Through the construction of small-scale farmland water conservancy projects, regulating and improving the moisture conditions of farmland and the water conservancy conditions of regions, vigorously developing facility agriculture to reduce the exposure of agricultural production to dangerous climate impacts, and safeguarding stable and high agricultural yields; selecting and breeding adaptive improved varieties to enhance the climate resilience of organisms themselves; strengthening farmland infrastructure construction and high-standard farmland construction, optimizing agricultural production layouts and crop planting structures, implementing the fertile soil project, and improving crop cultivation and livestock management, so as to reduce the climate vulnerability of the agricultural production system. At the same time, efforts are made to enhance agriculture's capacity to adapt to climate change, strengthen and improve agricultural disaster monitoring, early warning, and response plans, strengthen the construction of germplasm resource protection bases and seed banks adapted to climate change, and vigorously develop climate-smart agriculture. Technological innovation for agricultural adaptation to climate change is strengthened, agricultural machinery suitable for complex climate environments is developed, and the contribution rate of agricultural scientific and technological progress and the level of agricultural mechanization are raised. The agricultural meteorological service system and risk-sharing mechanism are improved, exploration of weather index insurance is carried out, and the agricultural catastrophe insurance mechanism is innovated.
Although this series of efforts has achieved great results, the capacity building for agricultural adaptation to climate change still faces problems such as insufficient scientific understanding, weak targeting of adaptation work, weak adaptation management, and insufficient implementation capacity. Some places lack refined climate resource assessments and disaster risk zoning in their judgment of climate risks; some adaptation measures apply a one-size-fits-all approach (一刀切, yi dao qie - "one, knife, cut"), lacking differentiated plans for different regions, different disaster types, and different crops; adaptation management has not yet formed a closed loop, and the links of monitoring and early warning, emergency response, and post-disaster compensation are not smoothly connected; there are still obvious gaps in the disaster-resistance standards of agricultural infrastructure, the adaptability of agricultural machinery, and farmers' technical capabilities. If these problems are not solved, it will be difficult to truly transform climate change adaptation measures into the resilience of agricultural industry security.
Integrating the concept of climate change adaptation into the national food security strategy—the key lies in "true implementation." First, the concept of climate change adaptation must be embedded into planning and layout. Based on the spatiotemporal distribution changes and new characteristics of agricultural climate resources and climate-related disasters, adjust the layout of agricultural infrastructure construction, carry out dynamic assessment and refined zoning of agricultural climate resources, adjust and optimize industrial layouts, planting structures, and crop variety configurations, and rationally plan and adjust the pattern of agricultural product trade. In mid-to-high latitudes, appropriately increase the multiple cropping index and expand warm-loving crops northward; in low-latitude regions, expand the scale of winter planting, making full and good use of the favorable side of climate change.
Second, climate change adaptation measures must be implemented in specific scenarios. In response to the intensification of high-temperature forced ripening and low-temperature disasters for crops, strengthen the selection and breeding of stress-resistant crop varieties. In response to the normalization of drought in the north and the southwest, the frequent occurrence of autumn drought in the Yangtze River basin, and the year-by-year increase in the area affected by flood disasters, strengthen the construction of agricultural water conservancy projects and high-standard farmland to ensure stable harvests despite drought or flood. In response to the northward shift of the rain belt, expand flood diversion and storage projects at key nodes, build dams in river valleys, construct small reservoirs, intercept and regulate runoff, and turn rain and flood water into opportunities for agricultural development in the drought-prone northern regions. Improve systematic adaptation management measures such as fiscal and financial support, cross-regional emergency harvesting, warehouse facility construction, and technological iteration and upgrading. In addition, based on the new characteristics of pests and diseases caused by climate change, promptly adjust animal and plant protection strategies, vigorously develop biological control and integrated prevention and control technologies, and fully leverage the service functions of agricultural ecosystems.
Third, enhancing the capacity to adapt to climate change requires the support of science and technology and mechanisms. Strengthen technological innovation, carry out integrated innovation of high-tech such as biotechnology, the Internet of Things, and big data, achieve disruptive technological breakthroughs in agricultural adaptation to climate change, research and develop facilities and technologies for reducing losses and saving grain in grain harvesting, storage, and processing, build climate change adaptation technology systems at different levels, and formulate technical specifications for climate-smart agriculture and strengthen their promotion and application. Establish and improve systems for monitoring, forecasting, supply-demand, and risk estimation of grain output and production potential in major domestic and international production areas, improve the agricultural meteorological service system and information platforms, improve the risk-sharing, transfer, and compensation mechanisms for agricultural climate-related disasters, further explore agricultural catastrophe insurance mechanisms, and gradually promote weather index insurance. Fully leverage the role of agricultural cooperative organizations in adapting to climate change, strengthen training for farmers in adaptation technologies, and through the construction of agricultural climate change adaptation demonstration zones, promote and popularize scientific knowledge and technologies for agricultural adaptation to climate change.
Finally, the challenges brought by climate change are long-term and complex. The concept of climate change adaptation must be turned into social consensus, guide rational consumption, and reduce grain and food waste. Promote the coordinated development of grain, economy, and feed crops, the integration of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fisheries, the integration of planting, breeding, and processing, and the integrated development of primary, secondary, and tertiary industries, promoting the green and low-carbon transformation and upgrading of the agricultural industrial structure. Capacity building for climate change adaptation is not the business of any single department or any single link, but a systematic project running through the entire chain of food security, requiring the government, the market, farmers, and all sectors of society to work in the same direction. Only by truly integrating the concept of climate change adaptation into every step of the national food security strategy can China's rice bowl not only be held more steadily, but also have more substance.
(The author is a researcher at the Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences)
Return to TopBy: 孙少琳
Intelligent warfare is overturning traditional perceptions of time and space. One noteworthy phenomenon is this: the iteration of weaponry and equipment can be rapidly updated, and the restructuring of operational systems can be accelerated, but rigid and ossified thinking patterns that lack battlefield adaptive capacity often become the deeper bottleneck constraining the leap in combat effectiveness. Clinging to the outdated thinking of the mechanized warfare era makes it very difficult to command the informationized and intelligent battlefield of the future.
First, based on the urgent need for thinking transformation in future warfare, the primary task is to clarify the connotation of adaptive thinking, and thereby reshape the modern military view of time and space.
In recent years, discussions on adaptive operations have gradually become a hot topic. Existing research mostly approaches this from the technical level, focusing on how intelligent algorithms drive the autonomous adjustment of operational systems, or analyzing at the system level the evolutionary path from "human-in-the-loop" to "human-on-the-loop." These studies reveal the "hardware" logic of adaptive operations, but a more fundamental question has not yet been fully answered: is the commander's cognitive model already prepared to adapt to this new form of operations? In other words, adaptive operations require not only intelligent systems, but also minds with adaptive capability.
Adaptive thinking is not the same as responding flexibly to changes (随机应变, suiji yingbian - "random, respond, change"), nor is it free action that abandons planning. Its essence is a thinking model that, under conditions of incomplete information, rapidly changing situations, and continuous adversary competition, revolves around clear operational intent and a unified action baseline, perceiving the situation in real time, rapidly adjusting plans, and dynamically reorganizing elements. The core lies not in "change," but in "change with a baseline"; not in "speed," but in the continuous operation of the closed loop of "perceive—judge—adjust—perceive again." It contains at least three elements: real-time perception, namely forming judgments synchronously amid the continuous inflow of information; baseline-based decision-making, namely adjustments revolving around unified intent; and closed-loop action, namely the continuous cycle of "act—feedback—correct—act again."
After clarifying this connotation, a deeper question emerges: adaptive thinking does not arise out of thin air; it requires a matching cognition of time and space as support. Mechanized warfare is rooted in the industrial era, corresponding to deterministic, linear, single-causality thinking, and it shaped the traditional military view of time and space. Industrial production pursues standardized unity, fixed processes, and controllable results; this logic, projected into operational concepts, formed a regularized, procedural, controllable mechanized thinking model. Relying on deterministic control thinking, mechanized operations emphasize rigid command, echeloned advancement, and procedural operations, relying on the superposition of force size, firepower density, and maneuver speed to achieve victory. This model of "responding to a fixed battlefield with fixed procedures, and predicting outcomes through linear deduction" possesses adaptability on battlefields of platform confrontation, linear attack and defense, and positional decision. But its shortcomings are prominent: it over-relies on known conditions, fixed processes, and pre-set plans, rejects uncertainty, and finds it difficult to cope with complex and interwoven battlefield situations. The time and space it envisions are fragmented and static; the tempo of time can be pre-planned, spatial boundaries are relatively fixed, actions unfold within delineated spaces according to a set sequence, and it lacks the capability for dynamic adaptation, autonomous adjustment, and immediate response.
In the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Azerbaijan used TB-2 armed reconnaissance and strike drones and "Harpy-2" anti-radar drones to destroy more than ten sets of Armenian air defense systems in an extremely short period of time, including S-300 systems and the "Repellent-1" counter-UAV electronic warfare system. Armenia was not lacking in equipment, nor was it lacking the will to respond; rather, it had no time to respond—the time from target detection to strike completion by the drones was compressed to the minute level or even shorter. In traditional air defense operations, from radar detection to command decision to fire interception, there is a relatively unhurried sequence; when the adversary compresses the "detect—decide—strike" chain to the extreme, if the defender still operates at its original tempo, the window has already closed. Here, time is no longer a "process" that can be calmly planned, but a window that, once missed, cannot be revisited.
Second, entering the era of informationized and intelligent warfare, the rules of the battlefield have been completely rewritten, the underlying logic of war has shifted from deterministic linear gaming to uncertain networked confrontation, and military time and space have undergone profound changes.
Information has become a core combat capability element, data has become the dominant battlefield resource, and networks have become the supporting carrier for operations. All operational elements are linked across the entire domain, respond in real time, and dynamically reorganize; the operational chain is no longer a one-way linear transmission, but a complex networked structure with multiple nodes, multiple paths, and multiple dimensions. The modern battlefield has no unchanging or staying the same (一成不变, yi cheng bu bian - "one, become, not, change") front line, no fixed and rigid process, and even less any uniquely determined causal deduction. The situation is changing rapidly in an instant (瞬息万变, shun xi wan bian - "instant, breath, ten thousand, change"), elements are highly interwoven, and the adversary is flexible and mobile; no single factor can alone decide the course of battle, and fluctuations in tiny variables can trigger subversive changes in the situation.
In the 2023 Gaza conflict, armed groups used modified consumer-grade drones to drop bombs, destroying Israeli observation post remote-controlled weapon stations and creating conditions for ground operations to blow up the separation barrier. Even more striking was the underground space: a tunnel network of approximately 350 to 450 miles was built beneath Gaza, with thousands of entrances and exits deeply interwoven with civilian facilities on the surface. The Israeli military no longer faced a two-dimensional battlefield, but a three-dimensional structure of "surface—underground" superposition. When battlefield space shifts from planar to three-dimensional, from a single domain to multi-domain superposition, any thinking model that only watches one dimension will develop blind spots.
The essence of war is making the right decision at the right time and in the right space. The key to winning future wars is no longer the simple superposition of forces and firepower, but precise decision-making, precise coordination, and precise exertion of force under the guidance of a new military view of time and space; the core is possessing battlefield adaptive capability that changes with the situation, adjusts with the circumstances, and autonomously adapts.
But there is a paradox here that is easy to overlook: in the intelligent era, battlefield information is unprecedentedly abundant, reconnaissance and surveillance are increasingly precise, and algorithmic deduction continues to accelerate. Logically, decision-makers should be better positioned to make precise judgments, but the actual situation is often the opposite: the more abundant the information, the longer the time spent on verification and screening; the more precise the decision pursued, the narrower the time window left for action. Some research points out that the criterion for judging effective operational timing is shifting from "length of the window period" to "degree of chain synchronization"—only when perception, decision-making, and strike achieve instantaneous synchronization at each link can the operational closed loop be completed in an extremely short time. This means that commanders face not only the question of "is there enough information," but also the question of "when must a decision be made." Speed and precision, under conditions of continuously compressed time windows, are increasingly difficult to satisfy simultaneously.
The procedural playbooks and deterministic prediction models of the mechanized stage can no longer adapt to intelligent, complex gaming scenarios. Still using single-causality, deterministic old thinking to assess situations, plan operations, and handle command often leads to lagging judgment, biased decisions, and inaccurate actions, falling into a passive position of being beaten. But merely emphasizing "accelerating decision speed" is also insufficient. The real challenge lies in how to make judgments that are good enough under conditions of incomplete information and insufficient time, rather than pursuing the "optimal solution" and missing the action window.
Third, informationized and intelligent warfare reconstructs the dimensions of military time and space.
Corresponding to the three elements of adaptive thinking, reshaping the military view of time and space requires grasping three interrelated dimensions: first, window awareness in time, corresponding to real-time perception, namely that the struggle over every second becomes the norm, and one must seize fleeting time windows while recognizing that window periods are compressing from the "hour level" to the "minute level" and even shorter; second, cross-domain awareness in space, corresponding to closed-loop action, namely that all-domain three-dimensionality, the interweaving of virtual and real, and cross-domain coordination become mainstream, and one cannot be confined to linear thinking in a single space or a single domain—the superposition of underground tunnels and surface operations in the Gaza conflict is a warning; third, flexible awareness in decision-making, corresponding to baseline-based decision-making, namely that the situation is highly uncertain, and one must act decisively around unified intent even when information is insufficient. The three dimensions are not isolated, but interwoven with each other. The key to reshaping the military view of time and space is precisely to shift in time from "waiting for intelligence" to "seizing windows," in space from "defending one domain" to "controlling the entire domain," and in decision-making from "seeking the optimal" to "seeking good enough."
The transformation of thinking models is the fundamental prerequisite for the transformation of combat effectiveness. This transformation will not happen automatically. Training, command, and combat readiness—every link may become a continuation of old thinking, or may become a growth point for new thinking. In training, one must break the mechanized, formulaic troop drilling and template-based combat readiness; while consolidating foundational and standard capabilities, one should proactively set up complex electromagnetic environments, dynamic gaming scenarios, and unknown sudden special situations to temper the ability to adapt on the spot. For example, in adversarial training, set up decision-making scenarios with "information coverage below 60 percent," requiring commanders to make decisions under conditions of incomplete intelligence, forcing them to develop the ability for "baseline-based judgment." In command, one must break through the traditional models of rigid echelons, rigid chains, and rigid decision-making, strengthen systems thinking, relational thinking, probabilistic thinking, and timeliness thinking, and raise the adaptive level of command decision-making. In combat readiness, one must break free from empiricism, path dependence, and static prediction, assess the situation with a dynamic perspective, coordinate operations with an all-domain vision, and seize opportunities with precise timeliness, achieving the dynamic adjustment of combat capability in accordance with battlefield conditions.
What needs to be guarded against is that adaptation does not mean arbitrary response, and flexibility does not mean having no bottom line. The more one emphasizes adaptation, the more one needs clear intent, a unified baseline, and iron discipline as support. From the rapid suppression of Armenia's air defense system in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, to the passivity of the Israeli military facing underground tunnels in the Gaza conflict, a common lesson is: when action loses a unified baseline and clear intent, so-called "flexibility" becomes chaos. The prerequisite for adaptation is "having a baseline to rely on," and the prerequisite for flexible decision-making is "having intent to lead." Flexibility without discipline constraint is laxity, and adaptation without a unified baseline is loss of control.
The uncertainty of future warfare will not decrease; it will only increase. Rather than seeking a solving a problem once and for all (一劳永逸, yi lao yong yi - "one, toil, forever, easy") template for victory, it is better to forge the adaptive capability to change with the situation and adjust with the circumstances. In the final analysis, the victor of future warfare is not the side that possesses the most information, but the side that can still make judgments good enough when information is incomplete. This is both the essence of reshaping the military view of time and space, and an unavoidable requirement for winning future wars.
Return to TopBy: 高嵩 黄晨
Whenever a flight deviates around weather, circles, or is delayed due to weather, many passengers cannot help but wonder: the sky before their eyes is clearly clear and cloudless, so why does the aircraft deliberately avoid certain airspace? In fact, the sky we see with our naked eyes is only the appearance of the outermost layer of the atmosphere. At an altitude of ten thousand meters, hidden inside the clouds are many invisible meteorological risks, and the core equipment that ensures an aircraft's safe journey is the airborne weather radar installed in the aircraft's nose.
Specially designed to identify hazardous weather
As one of the most important airborne detection devices on an aircraft, the airborne weather radar is known as the "sky eye above the clouds." It can penetrate cloud cover and precisely capture severe convective weather such as thunderstorms and hail along the flight path within a range of hundreds of kilometers, building a solid safety line for every flight in the rapidly changing circumstances (瞬息万变, shun xi wan bian - "moment, instant, ten thousand, change") of the high-altitude environment.
Ground-based weather radars are fixedly deployed at various observation stations and are mainly responsible for large-scale, long-duration weather monitoring. They can continuously scan the movement of cloud systems and the development of precipitation within a region, providing data support for daily weather forecasts, heavy rain warnings, and severe convective weather forecasts, with the advantage of macro-level coordination of overall weather changes. However, for aircraft moving at high speed, ground-based radars have obvious limitations. High-altitude weather changes rapidly and violently, and large-scale ground forecasts often cannot precisely match the aircraft's real-time changing route, nor can they determine locally sudden convective cloud clusters ahead on the flight path. The airborne weather radar, by contrast, is a mobile weather detection system carried by the aircraft itself. It is not meant to replace ground-based weather forecasting, but to supplement the real-time weather information the aircraft needs most during flight, providing pilots with precise grounds for adjusting routes in a timely manner and avoiding hazardous weather.
The working principle of the airborne weather radar is easy to understand. It relies on emitting electromagnetic waves to detect meteorological targets. When electromagnetic waves encounter particles such as raindrops, ice crystals, and hail while propagating through the air, they are reflected to form echoes. The onboard computer calculates information such as the intensity and propagation time of the received echoes, analyzes the position, thickness, precipitation intensity, and distribution range of the cloud cluster ahead, and converts them into intuitive color images in the cockpit. The key knowledge point here is that the airborne weather radar is only sensitive to water-containing particles. Dry air, clear airspace, and thin clouds without precipitation cannot reflect electromagnetic waves. Therefore, the black areas on the radar screen do not mean clear skies for miles around, but rather represent the absence of effective precipitation and severe convective activity, indicating a relatively stable and safe flight environment. This also determines the core positioning of the airborne weather radar: it is specially designed to identify precipitation-type severe convective weather that poses the greatest hazard to flight safety.
Four-color warning: green, yellow, red, and purple
Pilots rely on the airborne weather radar to avoid hazardous weather, and the core of this is the display on the radar screen. Green, yellow, red, and purple color blocks flow and spread across the map. What looks like a chaotic patchwork of colors is in fact the "weather code" provided by the weather radar, containing meteorological information such as rainfall intensity, storm movement, and sudden extreme weather events.
Green is a low-risk signal, representing weak precipitation in the airspace, mostly scattered light rain and thin-layer cloud moisture. Such cloud clusters have weak convective activity, with no risks such as lightning or strong air currents, and will almost never cause aircraft turbulence. The aircraft can pass through normally and smoothly.
Yellow is a mild warning signal, corresponding to moderate-intensity precipitation. At this time, the concentration of water vapor in the clouds increases, convective activity begins to become active, and there is slight vertical airflow disturbance within the clouds. When an aircraft passes through, there is a high probability of slight turbulence. When encountering a yellow echo area during flight, pilots generally pass through with caution and, when necessary, make small adjustments to the route to avoid dense cloud areas.
Red is a high-hazard warning area and a key target for avoidance during flight. Red echoes represent strong precipitation and severe convective cloud clusters. The internal structure of the cloud body is extremely unstable, with concentrated strong lightning, strong updrafts and downdrafts, and severe turbulence. If an aircraft rashly penetrates such an area, it will experience violent turbulence, seriously affecting flight safety. Approximately 30% of flight accidents are related to weather, and civil aviation operating regulations strictly prohibit directly penetrating red strong-echo areas.
Purple carries the highest danger level on the radar display, representing the core area of severe convective weather. This area not only has extremely heavy rainfall, but is also a high-incidence zone for hail, extreme downdrafts, and severe turbulence, posing an extreme threat to the aircraft fuselage, propulsion system, and flight attitude. It is an absolute no-fly zone, and pilots must immediately deviate around it at a long distance upon detection.
Why deviate around on a clear day
On a day with clear skies for miles around (晴空万里, qing kong wan li - "clear, sky, ten thousand, mile"), why does an aircraft still deliberately deviate around? The key reason is that the airborne weather radar has detection blind zones. The clouds people observe with their naked eyes are only their external form. A seemingly flat and calm cloud may conceal violent convective weather and heavy precipitation inside, which the naked eye simply cannot identify, whereas radar can penetrate the cloud body and see its true internal conditions. However, the radar's detection capability is also limited. Severe convective cloud clusters can block the radar's line of sight. Thick red and purple cloud clusters completely absorb electromagnetic waves, causing the airspace behind the cloud cluster to form a detection blind zone, leaving pilots unable to determine the weather conditions behind. For flight, unknown airspace risks are far more dangerous than visible wind and rain. Therefore, pilots usually deviate around severe convective cloud clusters, not only to avoid hail risks, but also to avoid the unknown dangers hidden in the blind zone. This is also the main reason flights deviate around on clear days.
Radar technology iterates and updates, continuously improving flight safety. From the early days when it could only simply identify precipitation intensity, to today's realization of multiple functions such as thunderstorm identification, turbulence warning, wind shear detection, and intelligent obstacle avoidance, airborne weather radar technology has continuously iterated and updated, steadily raising the level of flight safety. Today's airborne weather radar can automatically screen hazardous cloud systems, filter ground interference clutter, and scan cloud structures at different altitudes in layers, assisting pilots in quickly formulating the optimal deviation route. With its precise detection capability, it resolves in advance the threats posed by countless high-altitude hazardous weather conditions, becoming the most reliable safety guardian at an altitude of ten thousand meters.
In the constantly changing and unpredictable conditions (风云变幻, feng yun bian huan - "wind, cloud, change, transform") of the high altitude, there has never been an absolutely stable and safe flight path. Every safe takeoff and landing of an aircraft and every comfortable journey above the clouds are inseparable from the uninterrupted scanning and detection of the weather radar. The invisible sky eye above the clouds uses the power of technology to safeguard every flight.
Return to TopBy: 朱若男
The Laomukong Battle took place on April 5, 1935. It was a classic mountain ambush in which the Red Ninth Army Corps, cut off from the main force and trapped deep in enemy territory in a desperate situation, seized the opportunity for battle and relied on mountain terrain to set up an ambush and annihilate the enemy, winning a victory with inferior numbers (以少胜多, yi shao sheng duo - "take, few, win, many"). Because the combat area was located in the Laomukong and Caiziao area of Jinsha County, Guizhou Province, it is called the "Laomukong Battle."
An Isolated Force Blocking the Enemy, Trapped in a Heavy Encirclement
In the spring of 1935, the Central Red Army's Four Crossings of the Chishui River campaign entered a critical stage of strategic transfer. To realize the strategic intent of crossing the Wujiang River southward and advancing into Yunnan, the Central Military Commission sent a telegram to the Red Ninth Army Corps on March 30, ordering it to temporarily remain in the area north of the Wujiang River, disguise itself as the main force of the Red Army to conduct feinting maneuvers, pin down the Nationalist forces along the riverbanks, and make every effort to cover the main force of the Central Red Army in its river-crossing operations. According to the deployment, the Red Ninth Army Corps operated in the Fengxiangba and Changganshan area, making a feint to intimidate (虚张声势, xu zhang sheng shi - "false, expand, voice, momentum") to draw the enemy's attention and create a window for the main force to cross the river.
On March 31, the main force of the Central Red Army successfully crossed the Wujiang River from the Jiangkou, Datang, and other ferry crossings, advanced into the Xifeng and Zhazuo area, and pointed its spearhead directly at Guiyang, completely disrupting Chiang Kai-shek's encirclement and blockade deployment. But the Nationalist forces reacted quickly; the units of Wu Qiwei and Zhou Hunyuan soon concentrated their forces to seal off the ferry crossings along the Wujiang River, cutting off the Red Ninth Army Corps' route across the river. Because the enemy advanced too quickly, the Red Ninth Army Corps, which bore the task of pinning down the enemy, was unable to cross the river as planned and was cut off in the area north of the Wujiang River, falling into the perilous situation of being separated from the main force and fighting alone. At this time, five regiments of You Guocai's 25th Army of the Guizhou Army (the other two regiments did not participate in this battle), about 5,000 troops, pursued relentlessly along the highway, attempting to surround and annihilate this detached Red Army force while it was in an unstable position (立足未稳, li zu wei wen - "stand, foot, not, stable") and without support.
At that time, the Red Ninth Army Corps actually had about 3,000 troops, commanding the 7th, 8th, and 9th regiments. After long-distance marching and combat, the troops had consumed enormous amounts of ammunition, were short of light and heavy firepower, and logistical supplies were almost completely cut off. With a great river blocking the front, a powerful enemy pursuing from the rear, and local Nationalist armed forces encircling them on all sides, the Red Ninth Army Corps' situation for survival was extremely grave. If it could not quickly break free of the pursuing enemy's entanglement, it would not only be unable to reunite with the main force, but even risk being surrounded and annihilated by the enemy.
Seizing the Opportunity for Battle Amid Mountains and Forests
With the overall balance of forces heavily against them and strategically in a passive defensive posture, a head-on fight with the enemy would be no different from striking a stone with an egg; a futile effort (以卵击石, yi luan ji shi - "use, egg, strike, stone"). Only by maintaining high mobility, avoiding strength and attacking weakness (避实击虚, bi shi ji xu - "avoid, solid, strike, void"), and seeking out the enemy's weak links within the tight encirclement could they seize the opportunity to survive against all odds. Red Ninth Army Corps Commander Luo Binghui and Political Commissar He Changgong commanded with composure, leading the troops to reconnoiter enemy situations while moving, seeking an opportunity to break the deadlock. Luo Binghui had long commanded guerrilla operations in the Soviet areas and excelled at flexible and mobile mountain tactics; in the face of danger he always maintained a keen sense of the battlefield.
On April 4, when the troops moved to the Laomukong and Caiziao area, a reconnaissance staff officer reported that the pursuing Guizhou Army troops were advancing northward along the highway, with their marching column stretched very long, making it difficult for the head and tail to support each other. Luo Binghui immediately climbed to high ground to survey the terrain, and saw that the area had rolling hills and dense forests, with the highway running through narrow mountain valleys, flanked by tall mountains and steep slopes on both sides. The enemy's large force could not deploy, heavy firepower could not be brought to bear effectively, and it was excellent terrain for an ambush. More critically, the Guizhou Army, confident in its numerical superiority and convinced that the Red Army was only a remnant force that dared not take the initiative to attack, was lax in its vigilance on the march and did not detect that the Red Army was right at hand. Its blind firing to the west was merely making a feint to intimidate, attempting to force the Red Army to show itself.
The opportunity was fleeting. Luo Binghui immediately convened an emergency operational meeting of the corps to analyze the enemy situation and terrain conditions at hand. The comrades present unanimously agreed that although the enemy was numerous, its organization was fragmented and its morale low, and the terrain was extremely favorable to the Red Army, so they could certainly fight an ambush battle, eliminate the pursuing enemy's effective strength, and reverse the passive situation. The corps leadership finally made the decision: abandon the original transfer route, use the favorable terrain on the spot to set up an ambush, turn strategic transfer into tactical offense, take the enemy by surprise (出其不意, chu qi bu yi - "exit, its, not, intention") to strike the pursuing troops, decisively convert the mobile posture into offensive advantage, and achieve "taking the enemy by surprise and attacking when the enemy is unprepared" (攻其不备, gong qi bu bei - "attack, its, not, prepared").
Setting Up the Ambush and Annihilating the Enemy in One Decisive Battle
The Red Ninth Army Corps quickly completed its combat deployment. One battalion of the 9th Regiment was assigned to frontal blocking, relying on the mountain-pass positions to lure the enemy in deep; the 7th Regiment concealed itself in the forested high ground on the left side of the highway, and the 8th Regiment concealed itself on the ridge on the right side of the highway, ready to launch a pincer attack from both flanks once the enemy entered the ambush circle; guerrilla forces active in northern Guizhou cooperated by occupying the high ground on the north side, cutting off the enemy's retreat route and forming an encirclement posture. Each unit entered its position overnight, strictly sealed off information, and quietly waited for the enemy to enter the pocket.
At dawn on April 5, the Red Ninth Army Corps entered its positions. Around 8 a.m., the enemy's vanguard troops strode with a swagger (大摇大摆, da yao da bai - "big, sway, big, stride") into the ambush circle. Seeing that the enemy had fully entered the predetermined strike range, the Red Army's charge bugle suddenly sounded, and rifle and machine-gun fire from the high ground on both sides poured down from above, with dense firepower cutting the enemy's marching column in two at the waist. Assault troops seized the moment to launch their charge, plunging straight into the enemy's depths and striking hard at its command organs. The enemy immediately fell into chaos, with officers and soldiers scattering for cover.
After the chaos, one regiment of the Guizhou Army vanguard quickly discovered that the Red Army's numbers were not large, and promptly regrouped its troops and, under machine-gun cover, launched a counterattack against the positions of the Red Army's 8th Regiment on the left flank. The attack was fierce, at one point breaking through the forward positions and approaching the Red Ninth Army Corps' forward command post. At the critical moment (千钧一发, qian jun yi fa - "thousand, weight, one, hair"), Luo Binghui decisively ordered the reserve reconnaissance company into battle. The company commander led the charge into the enemy formation, and the soldiers fixed bayonets and engaged the enemy in hand-to-hand combat, pushing back the enemy's counterattack. The battle continued into the afternoon, when gunfire from the enemy positions gradually thinned. Luo Binghui judged that this was the Guizhou Army troops' opium addiction flaring up and that they were smoking opium, and immediately seized the opportunity to order a general offensive. The Red Army launched fierce attacks from all directions simultaneously, and at the same time, shouts of "Lay down your arms and you won't be killed" and "The Red Army treats prisoners leniently" rang out from the Red Army positions. Most of the Guizhou Army soldiers were conscripted laborers who had been forcibly impressed into service, and their morale was already low; under the combined military strike and political offensive, many stopped resisting and surrendered on the spot.
The fierce fighting continued until dusk that day, when the Guizhou Army collapsed across the entire front, with officers and soldiers scattering in flight. This battle took only a little more than half a day. At the cost of over 100 casualties, the Red Ninth Army Corps achieved a major victory, killing over 300 enemy troops and capturing over 1,800, seizing over 1,000 long and short firearms. The enemy division commander Wei Jinyong was wounded and fled. After the victory, the Central Military Commission sent a special telegram commending the Red Ninth Army Corps, praising the action as highly significant and saying it had played an enormous supporting role in the Red Army's strategic operations.
The Laomukong Battle is a model of combining "strategic defense" with "tactical offense" during the Long March, and a classic ambush battle in which a detached Red Army force won with inferior numbers and defeated the strong with the weak. The victory in this battle not only completely smashed the pursuing enemy and freed the Red Ninth Army Corps from its perilous situation, but also intimidated the Nationalist forces north of the Wujiang River, making them dare not easily pursue southward. It effectively pinned down enemy forces, greatly reduced the flank pressure on the main force of the Central Red Army, and created favorable conditions for the main force to advance westward into Yunnan smoothly. After the battle, the Red Ninth Army Corps pressed its advantage to capture the Piao'erjing salt works, seizing large quantities of salt, silver dollars, and other supplies, replenishing the troops' provisions, and also recruited several hundred new soldiers. It continued to carry out pinning-down missions behind enemy lines, becoming a "strategic wedge" driven into the enemy's flank and rear.
Return to TopBy: 刘成国
A century after the founding of the Northern Song dynasty, accumulated ills had grown ever deeper. Emperor Shenzong of Song was determined to reform and strengthen the state. Wang Anshi took the "government of the former kings" recorded in the Rites of Zhou (also known as the Offices of Zhou) as his blueprint, advocated modeling on the former kings and establishing new institutions, and presided over the compilation of the New Meanings of the Three Classics. The New Meanings of the Offices of Zhou, as the core chapter of that work, was also the theoretical program of the Xining Reform. In the sixth year of the Xining reign (1073), the court established the Bureau of Classical Meanings, with Wang Anshi personally glossing the Rites of Zhou; the new classical meanings and the new laws supported each other and were promoted in tandem. In the eighth year of the Xining reign (1075), the New Meanings of the Three Classics was promulgated and became the official standard for selecting officials through the civil service examinations. During the Yuanyou restoration, the book was abolished and discarded along with the new laws. But in the reign of Emperor Huizong of Song it was once again honored as a canonical text of the official school. After the Southern Song, students of the New Meanings of the Offices of Zhou grew increasingly few. Yet among the New Meanings of the Three Classics, only the New Meanings of the Offices of Zhou, having weathered the political upheavals of the two Song dynasties, still has fragmentary chapters surviving to later ages.
Reshaping the interpretive path of the Rites of Zhou
The New Meanings of the Offices of Zhou stood out from the crowd (独树一帜, du shu yi zhi - "alone, tree, one, mark") in Song dynasty classical studies, the key being that Wang Anshi broke free of the cage of Han and Tang chapter-and-sentence glossing and exegesis, carrying out a highly distinctive interpretation.
The first was constructing moral principle through the meaning of characters. By explaining the meanings of characters, he connected the learning of moral nature and destiny with political ethics, so that textual glossing was no longer confined to the examination of form, sound, and meaning, but became a path for expounding the Way of Heaven, ritual institutions, and the order of governance and education. For example, in explaining "Using jade to make the six vessels, to pay ritual to Heaven, Earth, and the four directions: with the dark-green bi disc paying ritual to Heaven, with the yellow cong tube paying ritual to Earth, with the green gui tablet paying ritual to the East, with the red zhang tablet paying ritual to the South, with the white hu tiger-shaped tablet paying ritual to the West, with the black huang half-disc paying ritual to the North; all have sacrificial animals and silk offerings, each matching the color of its vessel," the New Meanings of the Offices of Zhou says: "The color of Heaven is dark-green, which is the time when affairs begin; the color of Earth is yellow, which is the time when merit is completed. Bi means pi (to open up); the myriad things are close to Earth and Heaven opens up for them; cong means zong (ancestor); the myriad things take Heaven as their ancestor and Earth is their ancestor. With the dark-green bi paying ritual to Heaven, Heaven takes the beginning of affairs as its merit; with the yellow cong paying ritual to Earth, Earth takes the completion of merit as its affair... All have sacrificial animals and silk offerings, each matching the color of its vessel, which also means each follows its own kind." Wang Anshi, from the structural form of the characters, split the two characters bi and cong into "jade + pi" and "king (jade) + zong," and used "pi" and "zong" as the keys to semantic glossing, thereby corresponding the color, form, name, and position of the jade vessels to the generation of yin and yang, the transformation of Heaven and Earth's merit, and the order of ritual institutions. Glossing the meaning of characters thus became a path for constructing a system of moral principle. He later wrote the Explanation of Characters, which was fashionable for a time, making this method of constructing moral principle through the meaning of characters even more systematic.
The second was emphasizing the wholeness of the text. In Wang Anshi's eyes, the classics were not a pile of scattered objects, names, and institutions, but an organic whole with rigorous internal logic. Wang Anshi said "Using jade to make the six vessels, to pay ritual to Heaven, Earth, and the four directions," holding that above it continues the generation of Heaven, Earth, yin and yang, below it runs through the ritual institutions of the six vessels and four directions; internally it governs the form, color, name, and position of the bi, cong, gui, zhang, hu, and huang; externally it echoes the ritual regulations of sacrifice, sacrificial animals and silk offerings, and Heaven, Earth, and the four directions, so that color, form, name, position, and number each follow their own kind, mutually depend on one another, link above and below, and form a seamless whole (浑然一体, hun ran yi ti - "completely, mixed, one, body"). Wang Anshi's interpretation was like a short, concise classical essay, extending from the Way of Heaven and yin and yang to the system of ritual vessels, and from glossing the meaning of characters to the order of governance and education, having a consistent and coherent structure (首尾呼应, shou wei hu ying - "head, tail, echo, respond") and clearly ordered, molding the Rites of Zhou into an all-encompassing (无所不包, wu suo bu bao - "not, place, not, encompass"), precisely operating ideal model of the "laws of the former kings."
Modeling on the intent of the former kings to establish laws and measures for the world
The New Meanings of the Offices of Zhou set forth a complete political philosophy, the core of which was to establish laws and measures for the world according to the Way of the former kings, achieving great order through institutional construction.
Wang Anshi, taking the Rites of Zhou as his basis, put the institutional ideals of the classical meanings into practice, and his new policies were first embodied in the governance of finance. He proposed: "Government affairs are for managing finance, and managing finance is what is called righteousness. In one Rites of Zhou, managing finance occupies half of it — how could the Duke of Zhou have been pursuing profit?" In his view, managing finance for the state, fair distribution, curbing land annexation, and regulating surplus and deficiency were precisely for realizing public righteousness, not contending with the people for profit. Discussing the "Office of the Spring Treasury" in the Offices of Zhou, he held that "The Spring Treasury manages the levies of the market. It collects goods not sold in the market and goods that are stagnant in the people's use, buying them at their market price; it tags and records them, awaiting buyers who come at irregular times. Buyers each follow their guarantor: those from the capital and outlying areas follow their lord, those from the capital city and suburbs follow their officials, and only then are they given the goods. For all credit sales, for sacrifices no more than ten days, for funerals no more than three months. For all people who borrow, they are examined together with their officials and then given the loan, with interest according to the state's service obligation. For all state affairs' financial expenditures, it draws from this. At year's end, it reconciles income and expenditure, and takes in the surplus." The Spring Treasury was a good policy for relieving and lending to the poor and weak and maintaining public righteousness, and from it the various laws of equitable transport and market regulation all obtained their basis in the classical meanings.
Second was the governance of offices. Through the New Meanings of the Offices of Zhou, Wang Anshi set forth the meaning of the six offices dividing their duties, advocating that offices match their titles and duties match their capabilities, so that affairs have their place of return and responsibilities have their bearers. In explaining the "duty of the Grand Steward," he said: "The canon of affairs and the office of affairs both serve to enrich the states. For the canon of affairs as a book, and the office of affairs as a post, serve only to enrich the states. The canon of affairs serves to give life to the myriad people, and the office of affairs serves to nourish the myriad people. For the canon of affairs as a book serves only to give life to the myriad people; the subordinates of the office of affairs, by extending and carrying out their duties, then have the means to nourish the myriad people." At the level of institutional implementation, taking the Market Exchange Law as an example, the court established the Market Exchange Bureau to manage daily trade and stabilize prices, so as to circulate goods and wealth. Wang Anshi, having grasped the intent of the former kings and combining it with the specific political circumstances of the time, adjusted the establishment of offices, giving the laws of the former kings an administrative vehicle.
Finally was the governance of talent. Wang Anshi said: "Laws alone cannot implement themselves; one must obtain people to implement the laws on behalf of the superior, and only then is governance accomplished." Laws and measures depend on people for their implementation; without good people, even good laws become empty words. One of his measures was compiling new classical meanings to match the new policies. The new classical meanings served as the unified teaching materials for schools and the standard for the civil service examinations, so as to renew scholarship and unify thought. Another of his measures was reforming the talent selection system. Wang Anshi reformed the civil service examination system, abolishing the poetry and rhapsody and the classics-mastery subjects, selecting candidates solely through classical meanings, discourses, and policy essays. At the Imperial University level, he implemented the Three Halls Law, under which students advanced level by level according to their academic achievement and conduct and skill, with the outstanding receiving office directly, integrating the nurturing of scholars and the selection of scholars within the school. Wang Anshi, explaining "The Grand Director of Music administers the law of the Chengjun, to govern the educational affairs of the state and to unite the sons of the state," said: "Speaking of the educational affairs of the founding of the state, whenever a state is founded there is a school... The Way of teaching and learning is to complete what is deficient and to balance what is excessive or insufficient; calling it Chengjun, the meaning is taken from this... The Grand Director of Music governs the educational affairs of the state, merely to unite the sons of the state. The teaching is carried out by those who have the Way and virtue." Wang Anshi glossed "Chengjun" as "completing what is deficient and balancing what is excessive or insufficient," endowing educational governance with the philosophical meaning of remedying defects and returning to the mean. He further pointed out that what the Grand Director of Music governed was "the educational affairs of the founding of the state," the core of which lay in "uniting the sons of the state," that is, bringing scattered sons into a unified system of educational governance. Through the governance of finance, the governance of offices, and the governance of talent, mutually interpenetrating, Wang Anshi achieved the goal of training scholars through classical learning and establishing the state through institutions.
The institutionalization and transformation of the classical meanings
The New Meanings of the Offices of Zhou provided institutional prototypes for the various new laws. Taking the Baojia Law promoted by Wang Anshi as an example, Feng Jing held that the commanders of the volunteer forces were mostly drawn from local strongmen, and if a baojia system were additionally established, not only would the selection of great bao heads be difficult, but there would also be the defect of overlapping duties between baojia and the existing volunteer system. Wang Anshi, however, answered on the basis of the Rites of Zhou: "In antiquity, when the people dwelt, they were organized into bi, and each bi had a bi head; when troops were used, five men formed a wu, and each wu had a wu marshal; twenty-five households formed a lü, and each lü had a lü officer; twenty-five men formed a liang, and each liang had a liang marshal. The liang marshal is precisely the lü officer, and the wu marshal is precisely the bi head — they merely have different names according to the matter at hand." In the ideal institutions of the Rites of Zhou, civil affairs and military affairs were originally one body; the lü officer and bi head in peacetime managed education and public order, and in wartime became the liang marshal and wu marshal — it was not a matter of setting up a separate set of personnel. Accordingly, he proposed a concrete plan: "Now let three adult males form a volunteer unit, and register together with households of two adult males as baojia; in peacetime they serve as great and small bao heads, and in military service they serve as volunteers." Baojia and the volunteers "merely have different names according to the matter at hand" — they are the same group of people in different identities in peacetime and wartime. Wang Anshi's use of the Rites of Zhou to argue for the Baojia Law was a practice of the former kings' intent of embedding soldiers in agriculture, thereby transforming the personnel difficulty raised by Feng Jing into a legitimacy argument at the level of classical authority.
Thereafter, the court established the Office of Educational Affairs Supervisors, specifically in charge of the educational affairs of a circuit, so that the ideal of "the educational affairs of the founding of the state" was further implemented institutionally. Hence it is said: "Wang Anshi drew on the threads of the Offices of Zhou and the Royal Regulations... Yet when the New Meanings and the Explanation of Characters were promulgated throughout the four quarters, driving scholars to follow him, subsequently deliberating ministers exerted every effort to attack him, whereupon classical meanings and poetry and rhapsody were fixed as two examination tracks." The Three Halls Law that Wang Anshi distilled from the classics was initially implemented only at the Imperial University, and it was only during the reign of Emperor Huizong of Song that it was extended to the whole country. Wang Anshi's classical studies, with "managing the affairs of the world" as their core goal, were originally developed to respond to reality and cultivate talent for the new laws. But regrettably, this vision, in the hands of his successors, degenerated into rote memorization and a ladder to profit and rank, producing a batch of pedants who "recited only Wang's chapter and sentence glosses without understanding the meaning."
The fate of the New Meanings of the Offices of Zhou was closely bound up with the political changes of the Song dynasty. With the fall of the Northern Song, the transmission and study of the New Meanings of the Offices of Zhou grew daily rarer and ultimately it was lost. During the Qianlong reign of the Qing dynasty, the editors of the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries recovered the surviving fragments of the New Meanings of the Offices of Zhou from the Yongle Encyclopedia, arranging them into sixteen fascicles; although not a complete text, its core thought and main features were brought back to light. Although the editors of the Four Treasuries held that Wang Anshi's implementation of the methods of the Rites of Zhou was merely borrowing the classical meanings to carry out his private intentions, they further pointed out that Wang Anshi's interpretations of the classics and the new laws he implemented were originally two separate paths, and that his classical exegesis had its own insights and innovations, and could not be dismissed wholesale as "dancing with words to harm the Way." Viewed today, what the New Meanings of the Offices of Zhou carries is in fact the ideal and aspiration of ancient Chinese scholars to master the classics and apply them to practical affairs.
(The author is the director of the Institute of Ancient Texts at East China Normal University)
Return to TopBy: 孔华
"Sincerely holding fast to the Mean" (允执厥中) originates from the "Counsels of the Great Yu" (大禹谟) in the Book of Documents (尚书), and is the essential purport of the "sixteen-character heart-mind transmission" (十六字心传) handed down successively by the three sages Yao, Shun, and Yu: "The human mind is perilous; the Dao mind is subtle. Be refined and single-minded, and sincerely hold fast to the Mean." In terms of literal meaning, "允" (yun) means sincerity, trustworthiness, and reverent devotion; "执" (zhi) means to hold fast and maintain; "厥" (jue) means "its" or "that"; and "中" (zhong) refers to the Way of the mean, the upright and fitting. The phrase as a whole means grasping and practicing the standard of the upright and impartial with a sincere and reverent heart. These four characters both carry the traditional Chinese cultural value pursuit of the mean, the upright, and harmony, and also embody an important method for dealing with others and conducting oneself.
This idea also appears in the "Yao Yue" (尧曰) chapter of the Analects (论语): "The calendar and heavenly numbers rest in your person; sincerely hold fast to the Mean." Confucius regarded it as an important principle of governance of the ancient sage-kings. Through the systematic elaboration of Song-dynasty Confucians, "sincerely holding fast to the Mean" was elevated into an important heart-method of the Confucian orthodox transmission. In the Northern Song, the two Cheng brothers (Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi) were the first to explain the meaning of the human mind and the Dao mind from the perspective of the theory of mind-and-nature; in the Southern Song, Zhu Xi further advanced the theory of the "sixteen-character heart-mind transmission," incorporating it into a complete genealogy of the orthodox transmission of the Way. Hence the Preface to the Chapter-and-Sentence Commentary on the Doctrine of the Mean (中庸章句序) states: "'Sincerely holding fast to the Mean' is how Yao transmitted [the Way] to Shun; 'The human mind is perilous; the Dao mind is subtle; be refined and single-minded, and sincerely hold fast to the Mean' is how Shun transmitted [the Way] to Yu." Zhu Xi also made a distinction between substance and function with respect to "the Mean": "Before joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure are aroused, this is called the Mean" — this is the Mean as original substance, the great root of all under Heaven; "when aroused and all hitting the proper measure, this is called harmony" — this is the Mean as function, the universal Way of all under Heaven. The former is the original state of the mind-and-nature; the latter is the fitting measure for conduct. Together the two constitute the complete connotation of "the Mean."
In essence, "sincerely holding fast to the Mean" is by no means a simple mediation between positions, still less an unprincipled compromise. Mencius's statement that "holding the Mean without weighing [the circumstances] is like holding to one extreme" is precisely a criticism of mechanical "holding the Mean" — if one merely clings to a static middle position without knowing how to weigh and adapt according to the times and circumstances, in essence one is still biased toward one extreme. The true "Mean" is dynamic and practical; it takes righteousness and duty as its fundamental standard and seeks the most fitting handling amid changes in the seasons of Heaven, the trends of affairs, and the circumstances of the moment — this is what Confucius meant by "the exemplary person is timely in holding the Mean." Inwardly, it is a state of cultivation in which the mind is upright and the will is correct, remaining impartial and unbiased (不偏不倚, bu pian bu yi - "not, biased, not, leaning"); outwardly, it is practical wisdom in which words and deeds accord with measure and handling is fitting. In his debate on righteousness and principle with Chen Liang, Zhu Xi pointed out: "The ancient sages and worthies, from the very root, possessed the cultivation of being refined and single-minded, and therefore could hold fast to the Mean, thoroughly or from beginning to end (彻头彻尾, che tou che wei - "through, head, through, tail"), with nothing that was not entirely good. Only with this cultivation can one become a sage-king's ruler; and only then can the government one carries out begin to be kingly government." Feng Youlan's History of Chinese Philosophy (中国哲学史) cites this passage to illustrate the esteem of Song-dynasty Confucians for the cultivation of "refinement and single-mindedness in holding the Mean."
"The human mind is perilous; the Dao mind is subtle" is the premise in the theory of human nature on which "sincerely holding fast to the Mean" is based. The "human mind," born of the private [endowments of] physical form and vital breath, is easily drawn by desire, emotion, and prejudice — perilous and unsteady; the "Dao mind," issuing from the public [principle of] righteousness and principle, is subtle and difficult to manifest, easily obscured by selfish desire. In cognizing things, people easily fall into one-sided perspectives. Some see only the benefit and not the harm; some value only the present and disregard the long term; some are confined by their standpoint and listen only to one side. "Sincerely holding fast to the Mean" requires people to leap beyond the limitations of private self-interest, to distinguish right from wrong through the effort of refined examination, to uphold the correct Way with a single-minded heart, and to bring cognition and action back to the track of the mean, the upright, and the fitting.
As a methodology, "sincerely holding fast to the Mean" runs through every level from individual self-cultivation to national governance. In the dimension of self-cultivation, it is the essential [method] for completing virtue, teaching people to nurture their temperament, moderate their words and deeds, and avoid the deviations of "excess" and "deficiency"; in the dimension of conducting oneself in the world, it is the Way of interpersonal harmony, advocating dealing with others remaining impartial and unbiased, combining firmness and gentleness, and seeking balance amid plural relationships; in the dimension of governance, it profoundly influenced the construction of institutions and legal practice in ancient China — traditional Chinese legal culture advocated that legislation and adjudication maintain due measure, constructing a social order of justice through "sincerely holding fast to the Mean," and realizing the governance goal of moving from "the Mean" to "the upright."
To hold fast to the Way of the Mean, one must first carefully examine the complete picture of affairs. The Doctrine of the Mean says, "Grasp the two extremes and apply the Mean to the people"; Confucius was also skilled at "striking the two extremes and exhausting them." The core of both is opposition to one-sided cognition and advocacy of comprehensively grasping the two opposing poles of things, seeking the upright and mean view amid comparison and discrimination. When planning affairs and making decisions, one should listen both to pleasing words and to jarring remonstrance; see both the advantageous aspect and detect the sprouting of risk; examine both the present situation and plan for the long-term trend. Only by clarifying the circumstances, accurately identifying the problems, and sorting out the principles can one avoid subjective conjecture and make judgments that accord with reality and hit the vital point. The essence of this effort is to break through cognitive blind spots and replace one-sided and extreme thinking with systematic thinking.
The "Mean" has no fixed form; it is established according to the times. Confucius's statement that "the exemplary person is timely in holding the Mean" explains that the key to "holding the Mean" lies in adapting to circumstances and timing (因时制宜, yin shi zhi yi - "according to, time, adapt, appropriate") and in dealing with each matter by taking the Mean in it. The affairs of the world flow and change, and circumstances differ; there is no fixed standard applicable universally in all places and times (放之四海而皆准, fang zhi si hai er jie zhun - "place, it, four, seas, and, all, standard"), nor any unchanging and fixed (一成不变, yi cheng bu bian - "one, become, not, change") plan for handling things. When the times shift but the method remains unchanged, when affairs differ but the countermeasure is not adjusted, one appears to be upholding principle but in fact often deviates from reality. The true "holding the Mean" is to flexibly adjust strategy according to the conditions of the era and the specific circumstances, seeking the optimal solution between development and preservation, efficiency and equity, vitality and order — neither recklessly advancing to extremes nor conservatively stagnating.
Knowing the Way of the "Mean" is easy; practicing the Way of the "Mean" is difficult. "Holding" is both a method of cognition and an effort of cultivation. In favorable circumstances people easily become complacent and self-satisfied; in adverse circumstances they easily become rash and lose measure. Facing choices, one may lose impartiality because of private thoughts; encountering contradictions, one may evade responsibility because of fear of difficulty. To practice sincerely holding fast to the Mean, one must engage in self-examination in daily practice. Examine whether one's insight is comprehensive, whether one's standpoint is fair, whether one's conduct accords with measure. When achieving success, do not be self-congratulatory; when encountering hardship, do not shrink back; when facing temptation, do not waver; when handling differences, do not act on impulse or emotion (意气用事, yi qi yong shi - "will, spirit, use, matter"). Through sustained, long-term effort, one can transform the Way of the Mean from an external norm into an internal self-awareness, and ultimately cultivate the character of the mean, upright, and harmonious and the wisdom of adapting to circumstances with flexibility.
The Doctrine of the Mean says, "Attaining the highest clarity and following the middle path" (极高明而道中庸, ji gao ming er dao zhong yong - "extremely, high, bright, and, follow, middle, moderate"). The loftier the realm, the more one must implement due measure in conduct; the more complex the situation, the more one needs to uphold the upright and hold the Mean. "Sincerely holding fast to the Mean" is by no means a passive and conservative philosophy of life; rather, it grasps the laws [of things] on the basis of clearly distinguishing right from wrong, adapts to circumstances and timing on the premise of upholding principle, and seeks, amid complex and manifold changes, the path that best accords with righteousness and duty and most fits reality.
Return to TopBy: 黄昊
The origins of Guizhou local gazetteers can be traced back to the illustrated administrative guides (tujing) of the Song and Yuan dynasties. After the establishment of the Provincial Administration Commission (buzhengshi si) in the Ming dynasty, the compilation of gazetteers gradually became a regular practice; it reached its peak in the Qing dynasty, when prefectural, sub-prefectural, departmental, and county gazetteers were compiled in succession. During the Republican period, political turmoil caused gazetteer compilation to proceed intermittently. Although the "local products" (wuchan) section of Republican-era gazetteers still followed the old gazetteers' categories, the records were more detailed, and the content recorded in some gazetteers regarding the cultivation and use of local products already resembled the research methods of modern botany and zoology. The Jiajing-era Guizhou General Gazetteer pointed out that Guizhou, "though its territory is small, yet the abundance of mountain forests, bamboo, trees, vegetables, fruits, and nuts roughly compares with Sichuan and Huguang." The Guizhou General Gazetteer of the Qianlong era stated in its editorial principles: the old gazetteers listed common products and specialty products mixed together indiscriminately, "which unavoidably resulted in an unclear or vague description" (眉目不清, meimu buqing - "eyebrows, eyes, not clear"); thereafter, common products were listed first and specialty products second, arranged sequentially by category of grain, vegetables, goods, fruits, medicinal herbs, grasses, flowers and trees, and birds, animals, fish, and shellfish. The gazetteers judged the preciousness of items not according to today's resource classification, but using experiential phrases such as "deep bamboo groves," "not easily obtainable," "most difficult to obtain," and "now gone entirely." This reflects the survival wisdom of our ancestors, who over generations identified, utilized, and exercised restraint in the use of these resources.
Local Products of Qian (Guizhou) as Described in Gazetteers
The precious fungi recorded in Guizhou gazetteers appear earliest in the Guizhou General Gazetteer of the Qianlong era. Its entry on the termite mushroom (jizong) of Guiyang Prefecture reads: "Produced in the prefecture's territory; there are purple and white varieties, the white one being inedible. In early autumn it grows among tangled grasses; at first it springs up like a conical hat, then spreads like an umbrella cover, and gradually opens out like chicken feathers — hence it is called 'chicken' (ji); because it emerges from the soil it is called 'cong' (zong). Steamed, it is very delicious, but it is not easily obtainable, and not as abundant as the Yunnan product." From breaking through the soil like a hat to opening out like an umbrella, the changes in form are recorded in detail in the text. The same volume also records the morel mushroom (yangdu jun), saying it "also grows among fine grasses; the common people name it by its shape." The Xingyi Prefecture Gazetteer of the Xianfeng era appends Tian Wen's "Discourse on the Termite Mushroom," which analyzes it in even greater detail. The text first distinguishes the varieties, saying, "There are two varieties; only the purple one is edible, the white one can harm people," then records the method of gathering: "Squatting to pick it, it can be obtained again the following year; standing, it cannot." It further records: "The local people pick and dry it over fire to send afar as a local tribute product; it is suitable both for steeping in tea and for cooking meat. Its smell and taste resemble the shiitake mushroom, and its price is quite precious." A single fungus from the mountains could be dried over fire, sent afar, and used in cooking — fully worthy of the designation "local tribute product." The Anshun Prefecture Gazetteer of the Xianfeng era lists several varieties — frozen fungus, morel, green oak, cogongrass, and green grass — and notes, "If the green grass fungus grows singly, it is a poisonous fungus and must not be eaten." All the distinctions of variety, color, and habitat ultimately come down to caution in eating.
Fragrant substances follow the same pattern. The Guizhou General Gazetteer of the Qianlong era records of jiangzhen incense from Guiyang Prefecture: "Produced in deep bamboo groves within the prefecture's territory, on overhanging cliffs, formed by ancient vines; only after a long time does it become fragrant." Deep bamboo groves are rarely visited by people, overhanging cliffs require climbing along the rock face, and the formation of incense by ancient vines requires years — only when all three conditions are met can a single wisp be obtained. Litsea cubeba (mujiangzi) is closer to daily use. The Guizhou General Gazetteer of the Qianlong era says of it: "Produced in deep bamboo groves; the fruit resembles pepper, with a pungent, fragrant taste; it can accompany food." The Guiyang Prefecture Gazetteer of the Daoguang era adds: "Its nature is hot; it cures cold in the stomach and such ailments as cholera with vomiting and diarrhea in summer months, with extreme efficacy." The Liping Prefecture Gazetteer of the Guangxu era further records: "In early spring it opens yellow flowers; in summer and autumn it bears fruit like pepper; put one or two grains into food, and the fragrance fills the plate and bowl." As for frankincense (ruxiang), the Liping Prefecture Gazetteer of the Guangxu era quotes the Guizhou General Gazetteer of the Qianlong era as saying it is produced in Jinping: "Those that are transparent like nipple-shaped drops are the best; market vendors often adulterate it with liquidambar resin. Formerly produced in considerable quantity, but recently it has also become scarce." Distinguishing the genuine from the false and recording abundance and decline are all compressed into a dozen or so characters.
In the gazetteers' records of medicinal herbs, the place of production is given first priority, followed by nature and flavor, edible uses, and gathering methods. Gastrodia (tianma) is a famous medicine for treating wind ailments. The Guizhou General Gazetteer of the Qianlong era records: "Produced within the prefecture's territory; commonly called native radish; its nature is pungent and warm; it treats all wind ailments. Those that are bright, shiny, and firm are the best." The Dushan County Gazetteer of the Republican era further records: "Taking the fresh ones and candying them with honey, they are also good as a fruit." A single medicinal root, candied with honey, could become a fruit for entertaining guests. The alternative name of Solomon's seal (huangjing) also appears in the Pingyue Prefecture entry of the Guizhou General Gazetteer of the Qianlong era: "Solomon's seal is produced in Huangping; commonly called mountain ginger." The Xingyi Prefecture Gazetteer of the Xianfeng era calls it "the immortals' surplus grain." Job's tears (yiyi) is listed in the gazetteers both under the grain category and under the medicinal category; the Xingyi Prefecture Gazetteer of the Xianfeng era calls it "six-grain rice." The root bark of the wolfberry (gouqi) enters medicine under the name digupi (lycium bark); yet the Guiyang Prefecture Gazetteer of the Daoguang era records that "villagers use it as a vegetable, calling it 'sweet sweet'" — one thing serving both as medicine and food, with the vegetable and the medicine each showing their use. Fleeceflower root (heshouwu) is also recorded in the Guizhou General Gazetteer of the Qianlong era: "Originally named night-joint vine; in autumn and winter the root is taken; the red one is male, the white one female. Produced in Weng'an; those weighing over ten catties are the best." Thus it can be seen that the gazetteers' records of medicines value not only the place of production, but also the time and method of gathering; only when place, time, and condition are all suitable does the efficacy appear.
The Multiple Uses of Mountain Products
What the mountains produce enters the dining table in bountiful years and relieves hunger in famine years. The Zunyi Prefecture Gazetteer of the Daoguang era records the method of making fern starch in great detail, from digging the roots, washing them, and putting them into a trough to pound them, to "after a night, it congeals and settles like paste," and also records the matter of relying on it for survival in lean years: "In the gengyin and wuzi years of the Qianlong era, in two famine years, refugees gathered from all directions; in the long forests and open wilds, they dug and took everything, and very many were kept alive by it." The record of the Roxburgh rose (cili) is especially complete; the same work gathers and cites various accounts, almost forming a short biography. It quotes A Record of Travels in Dian and Qian as saying of it: "Boiled down to a paste, its color is the same as hawthorn and pear." In winter months, Miao girls picked it and brought it to market; when travelers from Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hubei, and Henan came to buy, the Miao girls rejoiced, saying "good business," but when people from the province itself came to buy, they demanded "double the price." It quotes the Guizhou General Gazetteer of the Qianlong era as saying of it: "It exists throughout Qian, but disappears once one crosses the provincial border." It further quotes the Zunyi Prefecture Gazetteer of the Daoguang era as saying that the two items red berry (hongzi) and Roxburgh rose, in "the mountains and plains," are the grain of farmers and herders, and "along the roadsides and paths," are the grain of travelers; "during the great famine of the jichou and gengyin years of the Qianlong era in central Guizhou, the starving people filled the mountains and covered the fields, and many were saved by these." The same Roxburgh rose is a fruit in bountiful years and grain in famine years — serving two different purposes (一物两用, yi wu liang yong - "one thing, two uses") — this can be seen here.
Among the timber trees, nanmu (Phoebe) is the most precious and rare. The Xingyi Prefecture Gazetteer of the Xianfeng era quotes Li Shizhen as saying, "Nanmu is especially abundant in the mountains of Qian," and "its trunk is extremely upright and majestic; the tall ones are over ten zhang high, the huge ones several arm-spans in girth; its air is very fragrant; it is excellent both for beams and pillars and for utensils — a fine timber." The Zunyi Prefecture Gazetteer of the Daoguang era merely says: "Nanmu is produced in the three departments of Zheng'an, Suiyang, and Tongzi; recently it has also become hard to obtain." It also quotes Zhou Lin's "Discourse on Nanmu," whose text recalls: "The mountains of Suiyang were formerly full of nanmu; it took two people stretching out their arms to encircle one. I often saw them in childhood; now they are gone entirely. On the shady side of Tucheng Mountain there were two great nanmu trees, shading several mu of ground, their roots entwined around the rocks for dozens of zhang; now one of them has also been felled." From the trees one could encircle with one's arms in childhood to the single one remaining today, the survival and loss of the two trees shows the speed of nanmu depletion in the locality. The same work also records that in the fifteenth year of the Qianlong era, on the pretext of building the imperial mausoleum, it was planned to procure twelve imperial nanmu logs in Tongzi, and it was not until the twenty-fourth year of the Qianlong era — nine years in all — that half of them were obtained. The Expanded Renhuai Subprefecture Gazetteer of the Guangxu era records nanmu in only one sentence: "The fragrant nanmu trees are the finest; now they are very few within the territory."
The mountainous regions of Guizhou abound in tung trees, and the gazetteers mostly record their uses. The Guiyang Prefecture Gazetteer of the Daoguang era records: "The fruit is like a peach; it can be pressed for oil; the flowers are also charming; the seeds are collected and made into oil which is added to lacquer; it can oil utensils and boats, and is needed by the world." The Cengong County Gazetteer of the Republican era records the cultivation method in great detail: it is suitable to plant in moist, warm, fertile soil; "from the winter and twelfth month to the first and second months of the following year, sow the seeds directly, placing them in the soil with the tip downward," because "if the seeds are placed with the tip upward, the tree grows tall with sparse branches and does not bear much fruit." Every year "from after the Beginning of Summer to before the End of Heat, it must be hoed and weeded once; then the branches and leaves flourish, the fruit is abundant, and the oil yield is also greater." The uses of tung oil are very broad; the Xifeng County Gazetteer of the Republican era records that Guizhou people "use it in place of lacquer to decorate houses and utensils, or to make rain gear," and says that "ordinarily, in the dwellings of those below the middle class, even the lamps rely entirely on this product." From choosing the site, preparing the ground, sowing the seed, hoeing and weeding, to pressing the oil, and finally using it to decorate houses, caulk boat seams, and fuel night lamps — a few lines in the gazetteer already approach a short treatise on production.
Among bamboos and trees, many are listed separately because of a single implement or a single use. The Guizhou General Gazetteer of the Qianlong era records the square bamboo of Duyun Prefecture: "Produced within the prefecture's territory; the body is as if carved, strong and straight; it is fit to be made into staffs." It also records the sinew bamboo of Guiyang Prefecture: "Produced in the Yanglong and other Miao stockades within the prefecture's territory; it has the greatest sinew strength and has many uses." The Guiyang Prefecture Gazetteer of the Daoguang era records peach bamboo: "Produced in the Wujiang and other places within the prefecture's territory; it can be made into staffs," and also records boxwood: "Its nature is hard and it is extremely slow-growing; hence there is the saying that it suffers in intercalary years; all carvers use it." Although bamboos and trees of this kind are not timber for beams and pillars, because they grow with difficulty and are limited in distribution, the gazetteer compilers specially recorded their names.
Ecological Change Traced Through Phenological Traces
The local products section of the gazetteers also records fierce beasts, not merely listing their useful parts. Among the furred animals, tigers and leopards occupy the top of the mountain forest food chain; their survival is tied to the extent of the forests, so the advance and retreat of their traces can serve as a yardstick for the rise and fall of forest ecology. The Xingyi Prefecture Gazetteer of the Xianfeng era records the leopard: "Produced throughout the prefecture; the people of the prefecture mostly use its skin to make sitting cushions." The Majiang County Gazetteer of the Republican era records: during the Guangxu reign, the garrison soldier Jin Amao single-handedly killed a tiger in Laomao Cave; when the tiger was examined, it "had a 'majesty bone' shaped like the character 'one,' over an inch long, located beside the ribs on both sides and at the tip of the tail." The Zunyi Prefecture Gazetteer of the Daoguang era records that Zunyi had many tigers, of four distinct kinds: "The striped tiger has the same markings as the common tiger. The yellow-haired tiger has no black markings and is especially fierce and vicious. The straw-cloak tiger has long hair covering its body, like a straw rain cape; knives and arrows cannot penetrate it. But the red tiger is the fiercest; it has been heard of in the villages of Suiyang County." Although this classification does not accord with modern animal taxonomy, the coat color, ferocity, and other characteristics are all clearly distinguished. The gazetteers also record the tiger's retreat. The Xingyi Prefecture Gazetteer of the Xianfeng era, in discussing the dhole, appends a note: "The old gazetteer says 'bears and tigers are occasionally found,' but now for a long time none have been heard of." The Xifeng County Gazetteer of the Republican era says of the tiger: "In its fierce and violent nature, no mountain beast can match it," yet "the wilds have receded far away, and towns and cities have flourished. In mountains that are not high and paths that are not remote, this creature also finds it hard to dwell." As mountain forests were gradually opened up and towns gradually prospered, the tiger retreated into the deep mountains.
The local products sections of the various Guizhou gazetteers record not merely that such-and-such an item is edible, medicinal, or useful as an implement. Fungi are rare because of season, place, and color; fragrances are hard to obtain because of the depth of the bamboo groves and the steepness of the cliffs; fine timber is constrained by felling and transport; wild fruits are tied to the year's harvest — each has its proper use, and each has its proper limit. "Disappears once one crosses the border," "recently also hard to obtain," "for a long time none have been heard of" — these phrases are often recorded in the local products sections; what they record are the plants and trees, and also the life of the people of Guizhou.
(The author is Deputy Director of the Institute of History, Guizhou Academy of Social Sciences)
Return to TopBy: 赵书樊
On November 8, 2026, China Tobacco Sichuan Industrial Co., Ltd. will mark its 11th anniversary. Standing at a new starting point, the company's Party group has upgraded the formulation of its "three major strategic tasks," clarifying not only "what to do" but further clarifying "what to become," expanding the pattern outward and compacting the path inward. The Doctrine of the Mean states: "Reaching the broad and great while exhausting the subtle and minute." These words are precisely the key to understanding the company's strategic upgrade this year.
"Reaching the broad and great": Strategic self-awareness in the formulation upgrade
The company's Party group has elevated structural upgrading to a core proposition at the strategic level, strengthening the sense of urgency that declining if no progress is made (不进则退, bu jin ze tui - "not advance then retreat"), and making the strengthening and optimization of brands the fundamental support for the company's future development. This is a sober judgment under pressure, and also a strategic choice that follows the laws of development.
The formulation upgrade marks the further maturation of corporate culture. "Strengthening high-end leadership and promoting structural improvement" is the main engine driving the overall situation — structural issues concern not only current development but also the company's future; elevating them to strategy aims to further unify understanding and accelerate the transformation of old and new growth drivers; "telling product stories well and building a Chinese-style benchmark" is the differentiated track for competitive positioning — leveraging a century of heritage, red genes, and Eastern aesthetics to build triple advantages in technology, culture, and channels; "striving to advance in rankings and enhance competitive capability" is the overall lever guiding the whole situation — the enhancement of capability will drive the comprehensive upgrading of the company's technological capacity and talent team. The three major strategic tasks thus become an integrated whole that supports and synergizes with one another.
The formulation upgrade is also a cultural mobilization for all employees. Expanding the connotation and extension of the three major strategic tasks points out the direction and path for achieving strategic goals, enabling cadres and employees to know both "where to go" and "how to get there." Writing "structural improvement," "Chinese-style benchmark," and "competitive capability" solemnly into the company's development strategy means writing responsibility into daily work, guiding cadres and employees to shift from "being told to do" to "wanting to do," and continuously stimulating the internal driving force of the "second entrepreneurship."
"Exhausting the subtle and minute": Meticulous craftsmanship in product research and development
Eleven years ago, the company set out from Kuanzhai Alley, breaking through with the Kuanzhai culture of "integrity and open-mindedness, wisdom and subtlety." Setting out again from Kuanzhai Alley, the company's cultural development has advanced in depth, drawing nourishment from China's excellent traditional culture, empowering product research and development with the "Dongpo spirit," thereby expanding the connotation and extension of Kuanzhai culture.
With "the open-minded are at ease" as its spiritual core, the company has completed the leap of Kuanzhai culture from a "philosophy of life" to a "realm of living." "The open-minded are at ease" conforms to the concept of harmony between humanity and nature (天人合一, tian ren he yi - "heaven, human, combine, one") in Chinese civilization and incorporates the regional temperament of the Land of Abundance. In the fast-paced modern life, this concept precisely responds to contemporary people's deep pursuit of "slow living" and spiritual self-consistency.
"Dongpo culture," with its spiritual undertone of "seeing breadth in narrowness," writes a vivid footnote for Kuanzhai culture. The "narrowness" of Dongpo's fate was the imprisonment of the Crow Terrace Poetry Case and the road of exile to Huangzhou, Huizhou, and Danzhou; the "breadth" of his state of mind was the open-mindedness of "only the clear breeze over the river and the bright moon among the mountains," and the peaceful self-contentment of "wherever my heart finds peace is my hometown." When this philosophy falls into product design, it becomes the dialectical unity of "narrow form" and "broad meaning."
Only by "exhausting the subtle and minute" can one "reach the broad and great." The creative transformation and innovative development of traditional culture lie in the difficulty of sinking into patient effort — turning the concept of "harmony between humanity and nature" and the realm of "seeing breadth in narrowness" into cultural experiences that contemporary people can feel, know, and resonate with.
"Reaching the broad and great while exhausting the subtle and minute": Building the foundation of development with "millimeter-level effort"
Strategy establishes momentum at the heights, culture roots itself in the depths, and the landing point of all this lies precisely within the smallest measures. The company transforms its grand vision into focused attacks on small points.
Innovation for the company is not a choice of making something already good even better (锦上添花, jin shang tian hua - "brocade, on top, add, flowers"), but a required course for establishing oneself and finding a way to live (安身立命, an shen li ming - "settle, body, establish, life"). The company broadens its horizons by emancipating the mind, reconstructs its paths with innovative thinking, and opens up new prospects through technological breakthroughs. If technology is the foundation of a company's standing, then culture is the root of a brand's soul.
Relying on the "1+6+N" technical research system, the company breaks down barriers between technology, resources, and talent, promoting deep integration and mutual empowerment across multiple fields of technology. At the same time, it joins hands with universities and research institutes to sign cooperation agreements, using laboratory wisdom to solve production line problems. Basic laboratories and innovation teams are built in a tiered layout, and the postdoctoral research workstation was rated "excellent" for the first time in the national comprehensive evaluation of postdoctoral work. A network of innovation covering basic research, technical research, and the transformation of achievements is continuously empowering the company's "second entrepreneurship."
The company turns the "possibilities" in the laboratory into "reliability" on the production line: solid-state flavor base quality has achieved a breakthrough, and the low-temperature aroma-producing pilot line has been completed and passed acceptance; directionally regulated fermentation technology has been rated an outstanding scientific and technological innovation achievement in the industry; innovative research and development of the "one rod, dual core" technology, with breakthroughs in multiple key processes such as nano moisture retention and bamboo leaf bursting; and so on. Every single item is no less than painstaking and hard effort within a very small space (于方寸之间, yu fang cun zhi jian - "at, square inch, within").
The company consolidates the foundation of development with millimeter-level effort, making technology the skeleton of cultural expression. Every time technology sinks deep, it accumulates confidence for cultural expression; every bloom of culture expands the space of technological value.
Eleven years of spring and autumn have passed by in a flash (倏忽而过, shu hu er guo - "suddenly, and, pass"), and between breadth and narrowness, the company has completed an answer to "where it came from and where it is going." In breadth, "reaching the broad and great" — strategy stands at the heights, direction is carved into consensus; in narrowness, "exhausting the subtle and minute" — culture is cultivated in the depths, craftsmanship sinks into the smallest measures. One breadth, one narrowness, one tension, one release — these are working methods, and even more so a spiritual bearing.
Standing at a new historical starting point, the company carries "a bit of righteous spirit" and rides "a swift wind of a thousand li," fusing the breadth of strategy, the depth of culture, and the hardness of technology into one furnace, and will surely open up an even broader horizon in the magnificent voyage of the "second entrepreneurship."
(Author's affiliation: Party Building Department, China Tobacco Sichuan Industrial Co., Ltd.)
Return to TopBy: 杨洪涛
Adhering to the educational philosophy of health first is the answer that Laiwu Vocational and Technical College (hereinafter referred to as Laizhi) has delivered in its practice of high-quality development. Laizhi regards physical education as an important lever for leveraging students' all-round development. At the end of 2023, it created the brand "No Sports, No Youth," and by restructuring the curriculum system, igniting the competition ecosystem, deepening the "integration of body and mind," and consolidating safeguard mechanisms, it has built a sunny campus, enhanced students' psychological resilience and social adaptability, enabling students to have "sweat on their bodies and light in their eyes," thereby promoting an overall leap in students' comprehensive quality and exploring a new path for higher vocational education of "strengthening skills through sports and educating people through sports."
Restructuring the curriculum system to make "sweat on the body" the norm on campus
In response to the pain point that "students like sports but do not like physical education classes," Laizhi has broken the model of applying the same standard to everyone indiscriminately (一刀切, yi dao qie - "one, knife, cut") and built a three-dimensional curriculum system of "basic physical fitness + vocational skills + specialized strengths," ensuring that every student masters a lifelong-beneficial sports skill upon graduation.
Tiered and categorized, precise teaching. Implement tiered teaching of "required courses + elective courses + health care courses." Set up required physical education courses for freshmen and sophomores to consolidate the physical fitness foundation; open more than 30 elective courses to all students, offering not only ball sports such as basketball, volleyball, and football, but also promoting traditional sports such as Baduanjin, archery, and pitch-pot, while also introducing emerging trendy sports such as fencing, frisbee, and breakdancing to meet students' individualized needs; offer health care courses for students with special physical constitutions, issuing exclusive "exercise prescriptions" to ensure that "everyone has a project, and everyone has a specialty."
Inside and outside class, integrated requirements. Incorporate extracurricular exercise into credit assessment and implement the "check-in + monitoring" system. Use digital means to record students' "one hour per day" activity trajectories, turning "soft appeals" into "hard indicators," so that students gradually develop lifelong physical exercise habits and a healthy lifestyle.
Teaching and research, advancing in tandem. Upholding the philosophy of "educating people through sports," the school has in recent years initiated 1 teaching reform project under the Sports Work Committee of the Chinese Society of Technical and Vocational Education, completed 1 project under the Shandong Provincial Department of Education's University Scientific Research Development Plan, and published 4 monographs including Chen-Style Tai Chi, forming a batch of teaching and research achievements that are well-recognized and well-established. Today at Laizhi, "getting moving" has become a way of life.
Igniting the competition ecosystem to make the sports arena a stage for student growth. Laizhi has abandoned the mindset of "elite sports" and built a three-dimensional competition system of "competitions every month, activities every week, and events every day," with sports competitions gradually becoming classrooms for education.
Full coverage, everyone participates. The school has established a three-tier league mechanism at the school, department, and class levels, regularly holding school sports meets, marathons, and leagues in six major ball sports, with competitions expanded to emerging sports such as pickleball and traditional sports such as Tai Chi. Since 2024, the school has held more than 700 sports events of various kinds in total, with direct participation of more than 14,000 students and reaching an audience of 56,000.
Promoting reform through competition, tempering character. Through the dense schedule of competitions, students have enhanced their awareness of rules, level of cooperation, and ability to withstand pressure in sports competitions, and have learned how to face victory and defeat. This resilient character tempered on the playing field is difficult to cultivate through classroom instruction alone.
Through the tempering of a series of campus competitions, students' physical fitness levels and competitive strength have gradually emerged in some major competitions. In recent years, Laizhi students won 3 silver and 3 bronze medals at the 17th College Student Games of Shandong Province; won 5 gold, 3 silver, and 3 bronze medals at the 14th National Fitness Games of Shandong Province; and in the rope skipping finals of the 16th National Fitness Games of Shandong Province in 2026, the school's representative team won 5 gold, 3 silver, and 1 bronze medal, ranking among the top higher vocational colleges in the province.
Deepening the "integration of body and mind" to let "light in the eyes" bear witness to the effectiveness of education
Laizhi adheres to the "integration of body and mind," guiding students through sports to leave their dormitories and go outdoors, releasing pressure through sweat and rebuilding self-confidence through challenges.
In the process of deepening the Sunny Sports Campus Project, Laizhi pays special attention to excavating role models among students, using real stories to move and inspire others. For example, Xiao Liu, a typical example of "turning the tables," had a weak sports foundation upon enrollment, but under the strict training of the school team, he not only developed a strong physique but also honed a fighting spirit of daring to challenge, winning multiple gold medals. It is precisely such a group of athletes winning numerous gold and silver medals (摘金夺银, zhai jin duo yin - "pluck, gold, seize, silver"), as well as countless students who break through their own limits on the sports field, who use their own experiences to move those around them, gradually making sports a new trend on campus.
Data show that with the in-depth development of the Sunny Sports Campus Project, the pass rate and excellence rate of Laizhi students' physical fitness tests have both leapt to the forefront of higher vocational colleges in the province, the detection rate of students' psychological problems has shown a clear downward trend, and "light in the eyes" has become the most distinctive spiritual hallmark of Laizhi students. Through sustained efforts, Laizhi has been rated as a "Practice Unit for the Comprehensive Quality Cultivation Project of Sunny Sports."
Consolidating safeguard mechanisms to ensure the educational philosophy of health first takes root and delivers results
Laizhi has built a solid backing for sports work through sustained capital investment and systematic institutional design.
Space expansion, facility upgrades. The school invested 40 million yuan to build a 2,437.84-square-meter high-standard badminton hall; invested 110 million yuan to build a 20,500-square-meter cultural and sports center integrating indoor basketball, badminton, yoga, volleyball, table tennis, fitness, and other functions. Together with outdoor standard track and field venues and dozens of courts, a sports venue network of "all-weather indoors, all-time outdoors" has been formed. The nighttime lighting project for campus sports venues has been implemented, making the playground at night the most vibrant landscape on campus.
Institutional innovation, diversified co-governance. In recent years, the school has successively issued documents such as the Laiwu Vocational and Technical College "Three-All Education" Comprehensive Reform Construction Plan and the Regulations on the Management of Students' Extracurricular Physical Exercise, established a sports work leading group with the Party Committee Secretary and the Dean as co-leaders, and formed a "diversified subject co-governance" mechanism with coordinated efforts from multiple departments including the Academic Affairs Office, the Student Affairs Department, and the Public Teaching Department. At the same time, a "four-in-one" evaluation system of planning, activities, monitoring, and characteristics has been established, relying on a big data platform to dynamically monitor students' sports data in real time. Physical fitness health level certificates are included in graduation requirements, and students' sports performance is used as a core indicator of comprehensive quality evaluation, promoting coordinated efforts across departments to ensure that every investment is translated into health dividends for students.
Only with sports can there be a scorching youth; only with health can there be a promising future. From the creation of the "No Sports, No Youth" brand to the vivid practice of "sweat on the body, light in the eyes," Laizhi has fully implemented the educational philosophy of health first, wholeheartedly safeguarding students' physical and mental health and promoting their growth and success. In the future, Laizhi will continue to deepen the integration of sports and education, enabling more students to enjoy pleasure, strengthen their physique, improve their character, and temper their will through physical exercise, and to run at full speed on the track of "health first" in the reform of vocational education.
(The author is the Deputy Party Committee Secretary and Dean of Laiwu Vocational and Technical College)
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