Summary: The article outlines how, since the 18th National Congress of the Party, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has pursued full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, opening new frontiers in the self-revolution of the century-old Party. It details achievements in strengthening the Party's overall leadership, advancing the sinicization and modernization of Marxism, implementing the Party's organizational line for the new era, and enforcing the Central Eight-Point Regulation to correct the Four Malfeasances. The piece also highlights intensified anti-corruption efforts, the improvement of intra-Party laws and regulations, and the consolidation of responsibility for Party management and governance. These efforts have fundamentally reversed lax Party management, halted unhealthy tendencies, and provided a strong political guarantee for advancing Chinese modernization. The article attributes these achievements to the helm-steering of the Party Central Committee and the scientific guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.
Summary: The article argues that improving the system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is an effective path for advancing Party building and a long-term strategy for the Party's self-governance. It emphasizes the need to plan Party political, ideological, organizational, work style, discipline, and institutional construction, along with the fight against corruption, as an organic whole. The piece outlines five focal points: building a strong organizational system, improving the education system, optimizing the supervision system, consolidating the institutional system, and consolidating the responsibility system. It cites General Secretary Xi Jinping's explanations and his emphasis at a collective study session of the Political Bureau on improving these five systems. The author is identified as the deputy principal in charge of daily work of the Party School of the Shandong Provincial Party Committee.
Summary: The article argues that loyalty to the Party must be placed at the forefront of Party spirit cultivation, as mandated by the Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee. It stresses that loyalty is the foremost political quality of Communists and is essential to prevent degeneration, citing the Party's historical resilience as proof of the importance of member loyalty. The piece calls for unconditional loyalty expressed through concrete actions, including upholding the Two Establishments, the Four Consciousnesses, the Four Confidences, and the Two Upholds, and maintaining high consistency with the Party Central Committee. It links firm ideals and convictions to loyalty, requiring continuous theoretical arming and Party spirit education. Finally, it emphasizes that Party spirit cultivation is a lifelong task, to be tempered through implementing Central Committee decisions and facing difficult tasks, so as to advance the new great project of Party building.
Summary: The article discusses how the Party must answer the fundamental question of breaking the historical cycle of order and chaos, citing Mao Zedong's first answer—"Let the people supervise the government"—and the second answer found since the 18th National Congress: "self-revolution." It defines self-revolution as self-examination and self-correction, full and rigorous self-governance, and maintaining the Party's advanced nature and purity. The Party has always prioritized governing and disciplining itself, growing stronger by solving its own problems with the people's support. The century-old Party remains vibrant and in its prime.
Summary: The article discusses China's push to integrate technology with commerce, following the Ministry of Commerce and eight other departments issuing the "Opinions on Accelerating the Promotion of Commerce through Science and Technology," which outlines 18 measures across six areas. It argues that promoting commerce through science and technology is an inherent requirement for cultivating new quality productive forces and a strategic choice for building a strong domestic market. The piece highlights how technologies like artificial intelligence are reshaping commodity and service consumption, with smart glasses sales growing 110 percent and service retail sales up 5 percent from January to September this year. It also emphasizes smoothing the commercial circulation chain and shaping future commercial scenarios, noting that China's humanoid robot products exceeded 400 models in the first half of this year. The author, the director of the Institute of Circulation and Consumption Studies at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation under the Ministry of Commerce, concludes that a sound ecosystem of technological innovation, market application, and institutional safeguards is needed to support small and medium-sized enterprises in this transformation.
Summary: The article explains the concept of "agricultural factories" as a high-level form of facility agriculture, promoted by recent central policy documents to develop new quality productive forces. It argues these factories are necessary due to China's land constraints, labor shortages, and the need to overcome traditional reliance on natural conditions, while also boosting production efficiency and meeting rising consumer demand for high-quality, traceable products. However, challenges include high upfront investment, energy and maintenance costs, a shortage of interdisciplinary talent, and systemic security risks. To advance, the article recommends tailoring development to local conditions, improving operation and management mechanisms, and strengthening industry standards and professional training.
Summary: The article outlines how, since the 18th National Congress of the Party, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has pursued full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, opening new frontiers in the self-revolution of the century-old Party. It details achievements in strengthening the Party's overall leadership, advancing the sinicization and modernization of Marxism, implementing the Party's organizational line for the new era, and enforcing the Central Eight-Point Regulation to correct the Four Malfeasances. The piece also highlights intensified anti-corruption efforts, the improvement of intra-Party laws and regulations, and the consolidation of responsibility for Party management and governance. These efforts have fundamentally reversed lax Party management, halted unhealthy tendencies, and provided a strong political guarantee for advancing Chinese modernization. The article attributes these achievements to the helm-steering of the Party Central Committee and the scientific guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.
Summary: The Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission issued the "Opinions on Investigating and Punishing Illegal and Criminal Acts Endangering Food Safety Strictly in Accordance with the Law," which arranges for improving the coordination mechanism between administrative law enforcement and criminal justice in the food safety sector. The article explains that this coordination involves forward linkage, where administrative organs transfer suspected crimes to judicial organs, and reverse linkage, where judicial organs transfer cases requiring administrative penalties. It notes persistent problems such as "cases not being transferred despite their existence" and "substituting administrative penalties for criminal punishment." The piece proposes improvements including clarifying case transfer standards, refining rules for inspection, identification, and evidence conversion, strengthening information sharing, and enhancing the reverse linkage mechanism. It concludes by urging stronger supporting safeguards, including legal revisions and procuratorial supervision, to protect the people's "safety on the tip of the tongue."
Summary: The article argues that advancing information disclosure throughout grassroots deliberation and consultation is essential for mass participation, requiring timely, understandable, and interconnected information to support judgment and oversight. It emphasizes disclosing facts, costs, and impacts in plain language, tailoring timing to plan stages, and continuously updating progress to enable cross-checking. The piece cites the "Opinions on Strengthening Deliberation and Consultation in Urban and Rural Communities" and the newly revised Organic Laws of Villagers' and Urban Residents' Committees as statutory bases for disclosure. It stresses that effective disclosure must narrow the gap between "already disclosed" and "truly informed," ensuring the people can raise opinions and conduct oversight on a reliable factual foundation.
Summary: The article argues that improving the system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is an effective path for advancing Party building and a long-term strategy for the Party's self-governance. It emphasizes the need to plan Party political, ideological, organizational, work style, discipline, and institutional construction, along with the fight against corruption, as an organic whole. The piece outlines five focal points: building a strong organizational system, improving the education system, optimizing the supervision system, consolidating the institutional system, and consolidating the responsibility system. It cites General Secretary Xi Jinping's explanations and his emphasis at a collective study session of the Political Bureau on improving these five systems. The author is identified as the deputy principal in charge of daily work of the Party School of the Shandong Provincial Party Committee.
Summary: At the 2026 National Conference on Health and Wellness, General Secretary Xi Jinping delivered an important speech outlining the blueprint for building a Healthy China during the 15th Five-Year Plan period and emphasizing six key capacities. Sinopharm, guided by Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, positions itself as the national team and main force of the industry. The company focuses on strengthening health management, disease prevention, medical service, medical insurance support, pharmaceutical innovation, and talent cultivation capacities. Sinopharm supplies 80% of vaccines under the national immunization program, operates over 8,000 retail pharmacies, and has laid out 54 medical and elderly care bases across 18 provinces. Looking ahead, Sinopharm will continue to serve the Healthy China strategy and contribute to national health goals with tangible results.
Summary: The Party committee of China Railway Real Estate Group has established "China Railway Good Housing" as its "No. 1 Project," integrating Party leadership into enterprise reform and the cultivation of new quality productive forces. The committee has built an organizational system with unified leadership, incorporated construction goals into annual Party-building tasks and business performance assessments, and issued strategic plans including the "Residential Product System Version 3.0" featuring the "Four Goods and Twelve Excellences." A "1+N" standard system has been developed, balancing scaled replication with regional customization across Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chengdu, and Xi'an. The company has driven innovation in green low-carbon, smart community, fourth-generation residential, and health care fields, while building a full-chain quality management system demonstrated by landmark projects in Xiong'an New Area and Beijing. In March 2026, China Railway Real Estate ranked 16th in the "2026 TOP 500 Real Estate Development Enterprises by Comprehensive Strength."
Summary: The article discusses how China Huadian Corporation Hainan Co., Ltd. is leveraging Party building to support Hainan's "Five Directions for Strengthening" strategy following the Free Trade Port's independent customs operations. The Party Committee has advanced clean energy projects across 14 cities and counties, achieving 100% clean energy installed capacity, and is optimizing its industrial layout in areas such as green electricity for seed industry enterprises, offshore wind power, hydrogen energy for space launches, and integrated energy services for digital industry users. The company has built Party branches on projects, established Party member commando teams for emergency support, and implemented talent cultivation mechanisms including the "Hundred Craftsmen" project and industry-university-research cooperation. It has completed Hainan's first green electricity transaction, guaranteed green electricity for the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference, and donated green electricity certificates to offset the 6th Asian Beach Games' carbon emissions. The Party Committee will continue to deepen Party building integration to drive green, low-carbon, high-quality development and contribute to national rejuvenation.
Summary: The author, Vice Chairman of the Ningxia Writers Association and winner of the Ninth Lu Xun Literature Prize, reflects on decades of writing about Xihaigu, a historically impoverished region in Ningxia, and explains his decision to write the nonfiction work *Notes on Xihaigu* to document its transformation. He traces Xihaigu's history of poverty, war, and hardship, noting that despite millennia of governance, it remained destitute until the state launched poverty alleviation efforts, including the "Sanxi" plan and the Fujian-Ningxia collaboration. He describes how the Yellow River-lifting irrigation project and ecological initiatives brought rapid change, enabling Xihaigu to enter a moderately prosperous society by 2020. To capture this epic transformation truthfully, he adopted an "original-ecology" writing approach, conducting over 40 unarranged interviews from 2018 onward to gather authentic details from ordinary people's daily lives. He emphasizes that only such grounded, detailed reporting could present the historical shift with sincerity and avoid the falseness of top-down narratives.
Summary: The article discusses *Miracle*, a 24-episode anthology micro-short drama series from China Media Group marking the 45th anniversary of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, which uses 15 unit stories to depict Shenzhen's transformation from a fishing village into an international metropolis. It highlights how the series, based on over 1,000 real stories, portrays ordinary people as protagonists and heroes, covering themes such as Huaqiangbei's electronics industry, the "one floor in three days" Shenzhen speed, ecological shifts, and the robotics sector. The series has achieved high viewership and rankings, and it aims to reveal the driving forces behind miracles by embodying the special economic zone spirit and the spirit of reform and opening up. The article also notes the series' cinematic exploration of global topics like technology and ethics, positioning it as a model for micro-short dramas to promote the main theme and support cultural going-global.
Summary: This is a personal essay by a former graduate student of the late academician Jiang Long, a renowned physical chemist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The author recounts a memory of seeing Jiang reading a high school chemistry textbook during a break at an international conference, a gesture that taught him the importance of revisiting basic theory. Jiang explained that textbooks help one "see the road one has traveled" and that difficult problems often have roots in foundational principles. The author reflects that this lesson, about both knowledge and scholarly conduct, has guided him amid the pressure to chase novelty in research. He concludes that true scholarship is rooted in fundamentals, and he now shares this story with younger generations.
Summary: The article argues that science popularization must be placed on equal footing with scientific and technological innovation, citing General Secretary Xi Jinping's "two wings being equally important" exposition as foundational to building a strong science and technology nation. It notes that China's citizen scientific literacy rate reached 16.74% in 2025, exceeding the 14th Five-Year Plan target, but identifies "three insufficient transformations" in development: from knowledge dissemination to value guidance, from flood irrigation to precision drip irrigation, and from one-way output to interactive service. The author proposes five solutions, including strengthening value guidance, assisting science and technology governance, activating innovation factors, fostering virtue through education, and deepening international cooperation. The piece emphasizes cultivating an innovation culture, promoting the spirit of scientists, and enhancing China's right to speak in international science and technology culture. The author is a member of the Party Leadership Group and Secretary of the Secretariat of the China Association for Science and Technology.
Summary: China's embodied intelligence industry is advancing rapidly, supported by policy deployments under the national 15th Five-Year Plan and government work reports for 2025 and 2026, with industrial scale and innovation strength steadily rising. The article notes that in the first half of 2026, industry financing reached approximately 93.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5 times, and humanoid robot shipments accounted for 97% of the global total. It highlights that the United States focuses on underlying original innovation with strong foundational large models but weak manufacturing bases, while China has forged a path of policy guidance combined with market drive and technological innovation linked to the real economy. The piece identifies persistent gaps in core technologies, industrial ecosystem soundness, commercial implementation, and key factor support, including a data shortage of more than 99% for robot commercial implementation. It calls for strengthening research on key core technologies, accelerating standards system construction, adhering to scenario-driven empowerment, and activating the potential of data and talent to promote high-quality development.
Summary: The article examines why users lose track of time on short-video platforms, attributing it not solely to self-control but to the interaction between personalized algorithmic recommendations and brain reward systems. It discusses how dopamine-related reward prediction errors, rapid feedback, and uncertainty about the next item can turn continuous swiping into a habit, with brain imaging studies showing altered functional connectivity in regions like the dorsal caudate nucleus linked to overuse tendencies. The piece highlights the difficulty recommendation systems face in inferring true user intentions from behavioral signals like dwell time and likes, as the same behaviors can stem from different motivations. It references China's Provisions on the Administration of Algorithmic Recommendations, which require providers to review algorithms, prohibit models inducing addiction, and offer users options to turn off personalized recommendations. The author concludes that mature systems should balance precision with safeguarding users' autonomous choice and usage rhythm, integrating brain science insights to evaluate interventions.
Summary: The construction of complete communities has entered a new stage of region-wide advancement and quality improvement, aiming to provide well-developed public service facilities and municipal infrastructure within comfortable walking distances. While pilot programs have benefited over one million residents, challenges remain regarding the mismatch between standardized configurations and differentiated resident demands, the sustainability of facility operations, and the need for better social governance. To address these, the article proposes shifting from standard configurations to needs identification by establishing flexible, people-centered implementation units. It further advocates for a shift from construction delivery to an operation-first approach, incorporating sustainable planning and diversified operating entities into project approvals. Finally, the article calls for a transition from administrative drive to diversified co-governance to transform residents into active participants in community affairs.
Summary: The article discusses China's first special protection system for over-age workers, the Interim Provisions effective July 1, 2026, which address a long-standing institutional gap amid deepening population aging and the growth of the silver-haired economy. It notes progress in establishing an institutional framework, expanding rights protection to include labor remuneration, rest, occupational safety, and work-related injury protection, and smoothing rights defense channels through labor inspection and mediation systems. Challenges remain, including unclear legal definitions of employment, inconsistent enforcement standards, insufficiently standardized enterprise management, and imperfect long-term supervision mechanisms. The piece calls for refining supporting implementation rules, unifying administrative and judicial standards, consolidating enterprises' primary responsibility through written agreements and safety obligations, and optimizing rights defense services with diversified dispute resolution and multi-party collaborative governance.
Summary: The article discusses the "15th Five-Year Plan for the Protection and Inheritance of Famous Historical and Cultural Cities (Towns, Villages) and Historic Buildings," which aims to strengthen historical and cultural protection in urban and rural construction. It highlights achievements such as the establishment of a multi-level protection system, including 143 national famous historical and cultural cities and 8,155 traditional Chinese villages, and the restoration of approximately 200 historic districts and 10,000 historic buildings during the 14th Five-Year Plan period. The article identifies challenges including insufficient adaptability of protection technologies, a shortage of traditional craftsmen, population loss in historic urban areas, and singular value transformation paths reliant on tourism. Proposed measures include improving flexible restoration technical standards, building a support system for long-term resident retention, and creating a diversified activation and operation model for historical resources. The piece emphasizes balancing heritage protection with livelihood improvement and promoting the organic integration of historical remains into modern life.
By: 中央党校（国家行政学院）党的建设教研部
Since the 18th National Congress of the Party, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, with tremendous political courage and a strong sense of responsibility, has directly confronted the severe reality of a period in which the Party's leadership was weakened, hollowed out, and diluted, in which Party management and governance were not strict, not solid, and not effective, and in which some problems within the Party were shocking to behold. It has unswervingly pursued full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, engaged in self-correction through internal scrutiny (刀刃向内, dao ren xiang nei - "blade, towards, inside"), applied severe punishment to restore order, continuously resolved prominent problems, fundamentally reversed the previous state of lax, loose, and soft Party management and governance, halted certain unhealthy tendencies that had long gone unchecked, corrected certain deep-seated and long-standing problems (顽瘴痼疾, wan zhang gu ji - "persistent, miasma, old, disease") that had persisted for many years, eliminated serious hidden dangers existing within the Party, the state, and the military, and made the Party stronger and more capable through revolutionary tempering. In the new era, full and rigorous self-governance of the Party has opened up a new realm of self-revolution for the century-old Party, propelled the cause of the Party and the state to achieve historic accomplishments and undergo historic changes, and enabled the Party and the people to gain the historical initiative in strengthening the Party and strengthening the country.
The Party's overall leadership and the centralized, unified leadership of the Party Central Committee have been markedly strengthened, the Party's unity and solidarity have been further consolidated, and the hearts of the Party, the military, and the people have been highly united.
The Party's leadership is the most essential feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics and the greatest strength of the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics. For a period of time, some localities and departments fell into cognitive misunderstandings and deviations in action on the major issue of upholding the Party's leadership, a matter of matters of principle (大是大非, da shi da fei - "great, is, great, wrong"). The Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core unequivocally proposed upholding and strengthening the Party's overall leadership and promptly corrected prominent problems such as the weakening, hollowing out, and dilution of the Party's leadership. For example, the 19th National Congress of the Party amended the Party Constitution, and the Second Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee proposed recommendations on amending the Constitution, with both the Party Constitution and the general provisions of the Constitution subsequently explicitly stipulating that the leadership of the Communist Party of China is the most essential feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics; the Third Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee deployed the reform of Party and state institutions, building a systematic, complete, scientifically standardized, and efficiently functioning system of Party and state institutional functions on the premise of upholding the Party's overall leadership; the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee emphasized that the Party's leadership system is the fundamental leadership system of our country and occupies a commanding position within the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics; the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee proposed upholding and improving the systems and mechanisms for Party leadership over economic and social development, providing a fundamental guarantee for high-quality development; the Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee summarized the historical experience of the Party's century-long struggle and placed "upholding the Party's leadership" first; and so on. This series of new and major measures has enabled the whole Party to form new understanding in theory, clarifying the inherent logical connections between the Party's leadership and socialism with Chinese characteristics, such as "true essence," "original nature," "native roots," and "fundamental foundation"; provided new safeguards in institutions, forming a series of Party leadership regulations, with the Party's leadership written into relevant laws and constitutions, ensuring that the Party's leadership has a basis in law and regulation. Upholding the Party's leadership first of all means upholding the authority of the Party Central Committee and its centralized, unified leadership. The Party Central Committee has continuously improved the leadership system for major work, formulated and implemented the "Several Provisions of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on Strengthening and Safeguarding the Centralized, Unified Leadership of the Party Central Committee," improved the implementation mechanisms for the Party Central Committee's major decisions and deployments, advanced political supervision in a concrete, precise, and routine manner, and strictly implemented the reporting and request-for-instructions system for major matters. The whole Party's ideological, political, and action consciousness in safeguarding the authority of the Party Central Committee and its centralized, unified leadership has been markedly enhanced, the decisive significance of the Two Establishments (两个确立) has become more deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, the Four Consciousnesses (四个意识) have been continuously strengthened, the Four Confidences (四个自信) have become more firmly established, the Two Upholds (两个维护) have become the common political responsibility and conscious action of the whole Party, and the Party's unity and solidarity have been further consolidated. The leading core role of the Communist Party of China in exercising overall leadership and coordinating the efforts of all sides has been further demonstrated, the judgment, decision-making, and action capabilities of the Party Central Committee have been fully brought into play, the cohesion and centripetal force of the whole Party, the whole military, and the people of all ethnic groups in the country in united struggle have been markedly enhanced, and the advantages of the Party's leadership have been continuously transformed into national governance effectiveness, providing a strong political guarantee for comprehensively advancing the building of a strong country and the great cause of national rejuvenation through Chinese modernization.
The sinicization and modernization of Marxism have achieved a new leap, the Party's theoretical arming has been continuously deepened, and the whole Party's level of Marxism has been further raised.
Ideological development is the foundational development of the Party, and arming the whole Party with the Party's innovative theory is the fundamental task of the Party's ideological development. In response to problems that existed for a period of time among some Party members and cadres, such as loss of ideals and convictions, weak awareness of the Party's purpose, loss of Party spirit, and enslavement of the mind to material things, General Secretary Xi Jinping has always attached importance to building the Party through ideology, emphasizing that "revolutionary ideals are higher than heaven" and that "ideals and convictions are the 'calcium' in the spirit of Communists." For the first time in the Party's history, he proposed the great founding spirit of the Party and continuously enriched and developed the spiritual pedigree of Chinese Communists, made "stay true to the Party's original aspiration and founding mission" an eternal subject of Party building and a lifelong subject for Party members and cadres, and guided the whole Party to properly resolve the master-switch issue of worldview, outlook on life, and values, and to consciously become firm believers and faithful practitioners of the lofty ideal of communism and the common ideal of socialism with Chinese characteristics. The Party has consciously advanced the strengthening of the Party through theory, upheld the Two Integrations, and founded Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, achieving a new leap in the sinicization and modernization of Marxism. Nine intra-Party centralized education campaigns have been successively carried out, guiding Party members and cadres to read original works, study original texts, and comprehend underlying principles, to grasp standpoints, viewpoints, and methods from General Secretary Xi Jinping's original works and classics, and to appreciate the realm and sentiments contained therein. Party schools have actively played their role as the "great crucible" for Party members and cadres to temper their Party spirit. The whole Party's consciousness and firmness in studying and implementing Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era have been markedly enhanced, and the practice of comprehending laws, clarifying directions, learning methods, and increasing wisdom from the Party's innovative theory has become a prevailing trend. The systematic and scholarly research and interpretation of the Party's innovative theory have been continuously deepened, the construction of an autonomous knowledge system for Chinese philosophy and social sciences has become more conscious, and the Project on Marxist Theory Research and Development has been deeply implemented, providing a solid academic foundation for the arming of the whole Party with the Party's innovative theory. The broad masses of Party members and cadres have continuously strengthened their confidence in the path, theory, system, and culture, leading the people of all ethnic groups across the country to become more confident, self-reliant, and self-empowered, and pooling together a more proactive spiritual force for strengthening the Party and strengthening the country.
The Party's organizational line for the new era has been implemented effectively, the organizational functions of Party organizations at all levels and the overall quality of the Party member and cadre contingent have been improved, and the Party's organizational advantages have been fully demonstrated.
The Party's strength comes from its organization. Since the 18th National Congress of the Party, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has continuously deepened its understanding of the laws governing the strengthening of Party organizational development, put forward the Party's organizational line for the new era, and provided the fundamental guidance for doing organizational work well in the new era. In terms of building the organizational system, it has emphasized that the Party's overall leadership and all of the Party's work must be realized through the Party's strong organizational system; emphasized the need to make the Party's organizational system rigorous, give play to the exemplary role of Party organizations in central and state organs, strengthen the functions of local Party committees, coordinate the advancement of the development of primary-level Party organizations in all fields, highlight efforts to strengthen Party building in emerging fields, and strengthen the building of the Party member contingent. In terms of building the cadre contingent, it has emphasized upholding the principle of the Party managing cadres, proposed and implemented the standards for good cadres in the new era, placed political standards first, established a correct orientation for selecting and appointing personnel, insisted on not relying solely on votes, not relying solely on scores, not relying solely on GDP, not relying solely on age, and refrained from engaging in "mass recommendation" and "mass election," thereby correcting the deviations in selecting and appointing personnel that had once existed. It has advanced in an integrated manner the work of selecting, nurturing, managing, and employing cadres, establishing a quality development system featuring source cultivation, follow-up cultivation, and whole-process cultivation; a system for understanding and evaluating personnel featuring routine assessment, categorized assessment, and close-range assessment; a selection and appointment system featuring virtue first, merit-based appointment, and matching people with posts; a strict management system covering thought, work, conduct, and discipline; and a positive incentive system advocating practical work, driving responsibility, and providing encouragement and support. It has grasped the fundamental plan of ensuring successors for the cause, and improved the normalized working mechanism for cultivating and selecting outstanding young cadres. It has upheld the Party's overall leadership over talent work, deepened the reform of the systems and mechanisms for talent development, cultivated and made good use of talent in an all-round way, created an environment that recognizes, cherishes, respects, and employs talent, and profoundly answered the major theoretical and practical questions of why to build a talent-strong country, what a talent-strong country is, and how to build a talent-strong country. The Party's organizational foundation has become more solid, the Party's contingent has continued to grow and its structure has been continuously optimized, the bright red Party flag has flown high on the front lines of the battle against poverty, epidemic prevention and control, emergency rescue and disaster relief, and rural revitalization, the Party's political leadership, ideological guidance, mass organization, and social appeal have been further strengthened, and the Party's organizational advantages have been continuously transformed into development advantages and governance effectiveness, providing a strong organizational guarantee for promoting the cause of the Party and the state to achieve historic accomplishments and undergo historic changes.
The iron discipline of the Central Eight-Point Regulation has gained authority, the correction of the Four Malfeasances and the establishment of new practices have advanced step by step, and the Party's conduct, government conduct, and social atmosphere have taken on an entirely new look.
Starting from grasping work style to advance full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is an important experience in managing, governing, revitalizing, and strengthening the Party in the new era. Marx profoundly pointed out in his youth that "if the mores, freedom, and excellent qualities of an age are damaged or completely decline, while greed, extravagance, and unbridled indulgence prevail and overflow, then that age cannot be called a happy age." The Party's work style bears on the Party's image, bears on popular support, bears on the Party's survival or demise, and determines the success or failure of the cause of the Party and the state. Since the 18th National Congress of the Party, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has started from the problems about which the masses have the strongest complaints, treated the formulation and implementation of the Central Eight-Point Regulation as an act of establishing credibility by moving a wooden post, established iron rules and hard constraints, and strengthened work style development with the spirit of hammering nails. General Secretary Xi Jinping has led by example and set the pace, leading cadres have taken the lead in setting examples for those below, the hedonism and extravagance have been continuously and resolutely curbed, formalism and bureaucracy have been forcefully corrected, problems have been broken through one by one, nodes have been grasped one by one, and persistence has been maintained year after year. The intensity of rectification, the strictness of institutional enforcement, and the duration of persistence have been unprecedented. Certain unhealthy tendencies that had long gone unchecked have been halted, certain deep-seated and long-standing problems that had persisted for many years have been corrected, the Party's conduct and government conduct have taken on an entirely new look, and social customs and popular morality have moved upward and toward goodness. Since the 18th National Congress of the Party, discipline inspection and supervision organs across the country have investigated and dealt with a total of 1.644 million cases of the Four Malfeasances, and criticized, educated, and dealt with 2.257 million people. As of October 2026, the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the National Supervisory Commission has published the summary of nationwide investigations and handling of violations of the spirit of the Central Eight-Point Regulation for 157 consecutive months, releasing a strong signal of putting strictness first and maintaining strictness to the end. A 2025 survey by the National Bureau of Statistics showed that 95.5% of surveyed members of the public affirmed the effectiveness of implementing the spirit of the Central Eight-Point Regulation, and 92.2% of surveyed members of the public were satisfied with the effect of the improvement in Party and government conduct driving the improvement of social atmosphere. Good work style is "capital"; bad work style is "cost." China has a tradition of governing the country through moral transformation and education spanning thousands of years, in which "conduct is formed at the top and customs are transformed below." As long as our Party always maintains an excellent work style, the people will follow and learn from it, positive energy will fill the whole society, and we will surely be able to create the "happy age" that Marx envisioned.
The Party's discipline development has been solidly advanced, discipline and rules have become more stringent, and the roles of education, restraint, guarantee, and encouragement have been increasingly strengthened.
Strengthening discipline development is the fundamental solution for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party. Our Party is a Marxist party organized by revolutionary ideals and iron discipline, and strict discipline is the Party's glorious tradition and unique advantage. Since the 18th National Congress of the Party, in response to prominent problems among some Party members and cadres such as not taking Party rules and discipline to heart, not understanding them, not mastering them, and even treating discipline as a "rubber band," a "paper tiger," or a "scarecrow," the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has incorporated discipline development into the overall layout of Party building, introduced the concept of "Party rules" in terms of content, improved the system of intra-Party laws and regulations in terms of institutions, scientifically explained the relationship between discipline and law in terms of concepts, prioritized the Party's political discipline as the overarching and governing discipline in terms of focus, clarified the "four forms" of supervision and discipline enforcement in terms of standards, and further clarified the authority for disciplinary action in terms of subjects, making discipline truly a high-voltage line with electricity running through it. The Party's discipline and rules have been clearly established and strictly enforced, and the previous state of lax discipline and drifting work style within the Party has markedly improved. Party organizations at all levels have, on the one hand, grasped discipline education, publicizing to the whole Party what the Party's discipline and rules are, what can be done, and what cannot be done, guiding Party members and cadres to correctly handle the relationships between self-discipline and heteronomy, self-cultivation and mind-cultivation, trust and supervision, principle and emotion, and high standards and bottom lines, and truly engraving compliance with rules and discipline in their hearts and internalizing it as a code of speech and conduct used daily without conscious awareness; on the other hand, they have grasped discipline enforcement, carrying the requirement of strictness through the entire process of formulating Party rules, conducting Party discipline education, and supervising discipline enforcement, making iron discipline "grow teeth" and iron rules gain authority, and regulating Party members' and cadres' performance of duties and use of power with strict discipline. More and more Party members and cadres have come to feel that the atmosphere of combining strict management with caring support and combining encouragement with restraint in pursuing work and entrepreneurship has become increasingly strong, and a positive and healthy intra-Party political culture has continued to develop. More and more Party members and cadres have gained full freedom and broad space for pursuing work and entrepreneurship while complying with rules and discipline, our Party has marched forward in unison amid strict discipline, and has demonstrated to the world the image of a confident, firm, and powerful Marxist party.
The fight against corruption has been carried out with unprecedented intensity, with results visible to all, and a path of fighting corruption with Chinese characteristics has been successfully forged.
Adhering to the integrated advancement of not daring to be corrupt, not being able to be corrupt, and not wanting to be corrupt is an important strategy for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party and the basic policy for the fight against corruption. Since the 18th National Congress of the Party, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has incorporated the deepening of the fight against corruption into the overall layout of Party building in the new era and launched an unprecedented fight against corruption, investigating as many as are involved and digging as deep as the cases reach. It has adhered to severe punishment, ensuring that corruption is punished wherever it exists, graft is eliminated wherever it exists, and evil is eradicated completely, focusing on areas where power is concentrated, funds are dense, and resources are abundant, with emphasis on increasing the intensity of investigating and punishing corruption problems involving "top leaders" and young cadres, deeply investigating and carefully uncovering new types of corruption and hidden corruption, increasing the intensity of investigating and handling cross-border corruption cases, deepening cooperation in foreign law enforcement and judicial affairs such as the pursuit of fugitives and recovery of stolen assets, achieving notable results in rectifying corruption problems in key areas and key links, and continuously strengthening the deterrent effect of not daring to be corrupt. It has adhered to precise governance, relying on institutions to control power, revising and implementing the "Regulations of the Communist Party of China on Intra-Party Supervision," improving institutional mechanisms that unify the authorization, exercise, and restriction of power and are clear, transparent, and traceable, cutting off the chains of interest transfer through reform and institutional innovation, confining power within the cage of institutions, and tightening the institutional cage of not being able to be corrupt ever further. It has adhered to effective prevention, deepening integrity education, continuously shaping the ideological character of being clean and upright, the political virtue of serving with integrity, the moral conduct of self-discipline and integrity, and the social atmosphere of advocating integrity and rejecting corruption, with the awareness of integrity and self-discipline and the ability to resist corruption and prevent degeneration among the broad masses of Party members and cadres markedly enhanced, and the ideological consciousness of not wanting to be corrupt continuously improved. It has adhered to integrated advancement, building an anti-corruption work pattern under the Party's overall leadership, improving the anti-corruption work systems and mechanisms featuring centralized, unified leadership of the Party Central Committee, overall command by Party committees at all levels, organization and coordination by discipline inspection commissions and supervisory commissions, efficient coordination among functional departments, and participation and support by the people, and forming a closed-loop mechanism of supervision, case handling, rectification, and governance. Through strengthening the systems concept, the governance of corruption has expanded from case-by-case elimination and focused punishment to systematic rectification and whole-domain governance, the simultaneous investigation and treatment of misconduct and corruption and the promotion of rectification and governance through case analysis have been continuously deepened, and the fight against corruption has achieved an overwhelming victory and been comprehensively consolidated. The people's satisfaction with the development of Party conduct, clean government, and the fight against corruption has continued to improve, and the political and mass foundations for the Party's long-term governance and the country's lasting peace and stability have been further consolidated.
The system of intra-Party laws and regulations has become more complete, the authority and enforcement of institutions have been effectively strengthened, and the level of scientific, institutionalized, and standardized Party management and governance has been markedly improved.
To govern the country, one must first govern the Party; to govern the Party, one must be strict; and to be strict, one must rely on laws and regulations. Since the 18th National Congress of the Party, General Secretary Xi Jinping has creatively proposed "governing the Party according to regulations" and made a series of important expositions on it, promoting the governance of the Party according to regulations to become the basic method of Party management and governance, and achieving major innovations in the concepts, strategies, and practical paths of Party management and governance. Full and rigorous self-governance of the Party started from the formulation and implementation of the Central Eight-Point Regulation, and the implementation of the spirit of the Central Eight-Point Regulation has been written into the Regulations on Disciplinary Action and the Law on Administrative Discipline for Public Officials. The Party Central Committee has convened two national conferences on intra-Party laws and regulations, and formulated and implemented three five-year plans for the formulation of central intra-Party laws and regulations, ensuring the overall advancement and sustained, long-term effort of governing the Party according to regulations. In terms of institutions, a relatively complete system of intra-Party laws and regulations has been formed, building an organic and unified whole with the Party Constitution as the foundation, democratic centralism as the core, central intra-Party laws and regulations such as guidelines and regulations as the main body, and the four major sections of Party organizational regulations, Party leadership regulations, Party self-development regulations, and Party supervision and guarantee regulations interconnected with each other. As of the end of December 2025, there were 3,372 intra-Party laws and regulations currently in effect, including 239 central intra-Party laws and regulations, 253 departmental intra-Party laws and regulations, and 2,880 local intra-Party laws and regulations, of which those newly formulated or revised since the 18th National Congress of the Party account for more than 70%, opening up a new realm of governing the Party according to regulations in the new era. It has adhered to simultaneously establishing rules and regulations and strictly enforcing them, increasing the intensity of institutional enforcement, strictly implementing the responsibility system for the enforcement of intra-Party laws and regulations, promoting leading cadres to take the lead in respecting, studying, observing, and using regulations, and using the "key minority" to demonstrate and lead the "overwhelming majority" in strictly observing systems and rules. It has resolutely resisted the erosion of intra-Party life by the principle of commodity exchange and relationships of personal dependence, adhered to establishing clear rules, and vigorously broken down hidden rules. The institutional awareness and rules awareness of Party organizations at all levels and the broad masses of Party members and cadres have been markedly enhanced, and respecting, observing, and defending institutions has become a common consensus and conscious action of the whole Party. Institutional civilization has been continuously consolidated, providing solid support for advancing the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity.
The awareness of Party organizations at all levels in managing and governing the Party has been continuously strengthened, responsibility implementation has produced visible results, and a joint force of upper-lower linkage and coordinated management by all parties has been formed.
Implementing the political responsibility for managing and governing the Party is the "ox nose" that must be firmly grasped in full and rigorous self-governance of the Party. Leadership is responsibility, and the Party's leadership itself contains the requirements of education, management, and supervision. Practice has fully demonstrated that without clarifying responsibility, without implementing responsibility, and without pursuing accountability, full and rigorous self-governance of the Party cannot be achieved. Since the 18th National Congress of the Party, our Party has gradually formed a responsibility system with clear subjects and clear requirements, clarifying the primary responsibility of Party committees (Party leading groups) for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party around strengthening leadership over Party management and governance, selecting and using good cadres, strengthening supervision and restriction over the exercise of power, and safeguarding the interests of the masses; clarifying the supervisory responsibility of discipline inspection commissions at all levels around efficient supervision, strict discipline enforcement, and precise accountability; clarifying the responsibility of the first responsible person of Party committees (Party leading groups) as secretaries around managing the leadership team well, leading the contingent well, and promoting implementation; clarifying the responsibility of other members of leadership teams for Party management and governance in accordance with the requirements of holding dual responsibilities for one's post (一岗双责, yi gang shuang ze - "one, post, double, responsibility") in conjunction with the division of duties and tasks; and clarifying the specific responsibilities of Party members and cadres around strict self-discipline and mutual supervision, mutual reminding, and mutual assistance, in conjunction with the characteristics of Party members' and cadres' posts and the actual conditions of their work. At the same time, it has treated accountability as a sharp weapon for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, formulated and revised the "Regulations of the Communist Party of China on Accountability," and promoted the implementation of responsibility for Party management and governance through improving precise and scientific accountability mechanisms. In the past, some Party organizations narrowly understood the responsibility for Party management and governance as the responsibility for developing Party conduct and clean government, and even vaguely handed it over to discipline inspection commissions, resulting in prominent problems such as the hollowing out of the primary responsibility of Party committees (Party leading groups), the layer-by-layer diminution of pressure, and the idling and non-implementation of responsibility. Today, "doing Party building well is one's duty, not doing Party building well is dereliction of duty, and doing Party building poorly is incompetence" has become a common consensus, Party organizations at all levels and the broad masses of Party members and cadres have become more conscious in knowing responsibility in their hearts, bearing responsibility on their shoulders, and fulfilling responsibility through their actions, and the sound political situation of the whole Party joining hands to work together on Party management and governance has been continuously consolidated.
The great achievements in managing, governing, revitalizing, and strengthening the Party in the new era and the opening up of a brand-new situation in the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics are fundamentally attributable to the helm-steering and command of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core and to the scientific guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. The new journey is the new Long March of the Party and the people. The longer the Party has been in governance, the longer the period of peace and prosperity, and the more complex the environment, the more necessary it is to strengthen our awareness of potential dangers, remain vigilant in times of peace, and build the Party well and build it strong. We must clearly understand the profound changes taking place in the world situation, the national situation, and the Party's situation, accurately grasp the new situations and new problems facing the Party, work with vigor and determination, strive to become stronger, persistently advance full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, and ensure that the great ship of China's rejuvenation breaks through waves and sails steadily and far.
Return to TopBy: 白皓
In his "Explanation on the 'Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Several Major Issues Concerning Persistently Advancing Full and Rigorous Self-Governance of the Party,'" General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is a systematic project, and that it is necessary to plan and advance the Party's political construction, ideological construction, organizational construction, work style construction, discipline construction, institutional construction, and the fight against corruption as an organic whole, with efforts focused on improving the system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party. Improving the system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is an effective path for continuously advancing the great new project of Party building in the new era, and is a long-term strategy for persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party. It aims to use systematic thinking and scientific methods to ensure that the governance and self-supervision of the Party covers all content, all objects, the full chain of responsibility, and the complete integration of institutions, so as to promote greater organic linkage, integrated aggregation, and coordinated synergy among the various measures for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party.
Fully Understanding the Era Value of Improving the System for Full and Rigorous Self-Governance of the Party
The system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is a dynamic system with rich connotations, complete functions, scientific standards, and efficient operation. Implementing the core essence of full and rigorous self-governance of the Party in the practice of governing and supervising the Party inevitably requires improving the system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party at a higher level. Since the 20th National Congress of the Party, full and rigorous self-governance of the Party has developed in the direction of systematization. The Party Central Committee has taken improving the system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party as an important starting point, placing greater emphasis on using the concepts of governance, the notions of system, and dialectical thinking to govern, supervise, and build the Party, so that all work of full and rigorous self-governance of the Party better reflects the characteristics of the times, grasps the laws of development, and is full of creativity.
An inherent requirement for promoting the systematic upgrading of Party governance and self-supervision. The progression from "strict governance of the Party," to "full and rigorous self-governance of the Party," and then to "improving the system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party" is a systematic upgrading of governance logic. This evolutionary process is closely connected to the profound changes in the historical position of our Party. Since the 18th National Congress of the Party, the Party Central Committee started with the formulation and implementation of the Central Eight-Point Regulation as the breakthrough, promoted the achievement of an overwhelming victory in the fight against corruption and its comprehensive consolidation, and delivered a set of "combined punches" for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party. Achieving systematization is an inevitable result of the development of full and rigorous self-governance of the Party to a certain stage. Party building in the new era is a systematic project led by the Party's political construction, with all other Party building efforts exerting force in the same direction and in a comprehensive manner. It involves multiple subjects, numerous governance contents, and a wide range of covered levels. Only by adhering to overall planning and coordinated advancement can governance synergy be formed. Improving the system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is not a simple superposition of various Party building tasks, but a dynamic optimization aimed at complete elements, complete functions, scientific standards, and efficient operation. Through the construction and improvement of the system, we must effectively integrate the forces of all aspects of Party building, link up all elements, and connect all links, so as to achieve a systematic leap from individual breakthroughs to comprehensive governance and continuously enhance the systematic nature, overall nature, and synergy of full and rigorous self-governance of the Party.
A key move to enhance the Party's long-term governance capability. The Communist Party of China, as the world's largest governing party with major global influence and a long history of successful governance, has remained full of vitality after more than a hundred years. An important reason lies in its consistent adherence to the principle that the Party must govern itself with strict discipline and conduct full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, and its high attention to its own construction. How to break out of the historical cycle of rise and fall, chaos and order, and achieve long-term governance is a major question that our Party always needs to answer and solve. Comrade Mao Zedong gave the first answer, which is to let the people supervise the government. General Secretary Xi Jinping gave the second answer, which is self-revolution. Improving the system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is an effective path for deeply advancing the Party's self-revolution. Improving the system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party means transforming the Party's leadership advantages and organizational advantages into governance effectiveness for long-term governance, consolidating the ideological foundation with theoretical arming, ensuring the Party Central Committee's decisions and deployments are carried through to the end with a tight organization, preventing the alienation of power with precise supervision, strengthening rigid constraints with institutional norms, and effectively transmitting pressure with a closed loop of responsibility. Only in this way can we maintain stability and achieve long-term progress amid high winds and rough waves, even stormy seas, maintain the whole Party's unified thinking, unified will, and unified action, and build a solid foundation for long-term governance.
An inherent requirement for further deepening reform comprehensively and advancing Chinese modernization. Comprehensively advancing the great cause of building a strong country and national rejuvenation through Chinese modernization is the central task of the Party and the state on the new journey of the new era. The connotation of Chinese modernization is very rich, which determines that further deepening reform comprehensively is also all-encompassing. There is no ready-made model for Chinese modernization to copy, and every step of further deepening reform comprehensively faces risks and challenges. The Party's governance capability and leadership level directly determine the effectiveness of state governance. At present, the once-in-a-century changes in the world are accelerating, and China's development has entered a critical period of consolidating the foundation and exerting full efforts for basically realizing socialist modernization. Strategic opportunities and risk challenges coexist, uncertain and unpredictable factors increase, a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation is developing in depth, and the tasks of reform, development, and stability are arduous and heavy. This places new and higher demands on the Party's leadership of modernization, its ability to manage complex situations, and its advancement of national governance. Facing the increasingly complex internal and external environment, it is necessary to give full play to the Party's core leadership role in commanding the overall situation and coordinating all parties, run the Party's leadership through all aspects and the entire process of reform, improve the Party's ability and level in leading economic and social development, and ensure that reform always advances along the correct political direction. Improving the system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is conducive to giving full play to the political guidance and political guarantee role of full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, is conducive to improving and optimizing the Party's leadership methods, making state governance more stable, efficient, and sustainable, effectively implementing the strategic deployments for further deepening reform comprehensively, and providing a strong guarantee for advancing Chinese modernization.
Accurately Grasping the Focal Points for Improving the System for Full and Rigorous Self-Governance of the Party
When presiding over the 15th collective study session of the Political Bureau of the 20th Central Committee, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized that the whole Party must forever maintain the sobriety and firmness of "taking the examination," take improving the system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party as an effective path, continuously advance the great new project of Party building in the new era, and clearly proposed improving the five systems of organization, education, supervision, institutions, and responsibility, pointing out the path for improving the system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party.
Build a strong organizational system to ensure strength and effectiveness. A tight organizational system is where the Party's advantages and strength lie. Only when the Party's organizational system is tight, and the political and organizational functions of Party organizations at all levels are fully brought into play, can the major strategic deployments of the Party Central Committee be precisely transmitted to the grassroots level, can the Party's leadership be like the body commanding the arms and the arms commanding the fingers, and can full and rigorous self-governance of the Party continue to advance in depth. It is necessary to systematically advance the construction of Party organizations at all levels and in all fields, strengthen the political and organizational functions of Party organizations, and ensure that the implementation of the Party's line, principles, policies, and the Party Central Committee's decisions and deployments is coordinated at all levels and precise and efficient. Uphold the authority and centralized, unified leadership of the Party Central Committee, improve the mechanism for implementing the Party Central Committee's major decisions and deployments and General Secretary Xi Jinping's important instructions and approvals, and ensure that the Party Central Committee's orders are unimpeded and prohibitions are observed. Uphold and improve the Party building leadership system and organizational management system, improve the through-connection mechanism for conveying and implementing superior deployments, reporting grassroots situations upward, and jointly solving contradictions and problems, and promote comprehensive progress and comprehensive excellence of Party organizations at all levels. Adhere to the clear orientation of focusing great efforts on the grassroots, continuously rectify weak and lax grassroots Party organizations, classify and improve the Party building management system and responsibility system for emerging fields, strengthen Party building in new economic organizations, new social organizations, and new employment groups, and promote comprehensive excellence of Party organizations at all levels and in all fields. Innovate the forms of setting up Party organizations and their activity methods, and use Internet technology and information-based means to carry out Party building work. Comprehensively strengthen the building of the Party member team, the selection, training, and education of grassroots Party organization leaders, improve the quality of Party member development, and build platforms and carriers for Party members to play a vanguard and exemplary role.
Improve the education system to consolidate the ideological foundation. Strengthening ideological education is about solving fundamental problems for leading cadres such as ideals and convictions, Party spirit cultivation, and awareness of purpose. If leading cadres waver in their ideals and convictions, have weak Party spirit cultivation, and have a weak awareness of purpose, their political stance will deviate and their actions will cross the line. Therefore, mastering scientific theory and consolidating the ideological foundation provide solid support for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party. Unswervingly use Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era to consolidate the soul and strengthen the heart, improve the mechanism for regular training, especially basic training, adhere to the combination of centralized education and regular education, improve the quality evaluation and dynamic optimization mechanism for theoretical training in Party schools (schools of administration) and cadre colleges, and continuously cultivate the "mind science" of Communists. Give full play to the important role of Party schools (schools of administration) as the "great furnace" for tempering Party spirit, continuously strengthen and improve ideological and political work under the new situation, especially deeply study and implement Xi Jinping's thought on Party building, take learning, comprehending, and applying the Party's innovative theories as the fundamental path for strengthening Party spirit cultivation, and guide Party members and cadres to read original works, study original texts, and comprehend principles in a targeted and effective manner. Carry forward the fine style of study of integrating theory with practice, continuously innovate methods and approaches, implement systems such as the "first agenda" and the study of the theoretical study center group of Party committees (Party groups), and effectively promote the use of learning to cast the soul, learning to increase wisdom, learning to rectify work style, and learning to promote work. Strengthen research on full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, deepen understanding of the laws of Party building in the new era, and strengthen the construction of the discipline system, academic system, and discourse system of "the study of the history and Party building of the Communist Party of China."
Optimize the supervision system and focus on regular and strict management. Strict management and supervision are important guarantees for the correct operation of power. To integrate supervision into the entire process of governing and supervising the Party, it is necessary to promote the forward shift of the supervision gate, discover, remind, and warn about various problems early, and prevent minor problems from developing into major ones. It is necessary to closely monitor and analyze and judge new trends in the Party's conditions and work style, and achieve systematic governance and addressing both symptoms and root causes. Adhere to grasping Party spirit, work style, and discipline together, connect the rectification of work style, strict discipline, and the fight against corruption, promote the normalization and long-term effectiveness of work style construction, treat the Central Eight-Point Regulation as a long-term effective iron rule and a hard constraint, continuously deepen the rectification of the Four Malfeasances, and effectively prevent and rectify deviations in the view of political achievements. Improve the Party member management mechanism, strictly control the entry gate, consolidate the ideological gate, and strictly abide by the discipline gate, so that the team remains full of vitality. Improve the mechanism for strict management and supervision of cadres, strengthen all-round management and regular supervision, highlight supervision over "top leaders" and leading groups, and strengthen constraints on key links in the operation of power. Innovate the mechanism for integrity publicity and education, and give play to the exemplary and leading role of diligent and honest models and the warning and deterrence role of cases of discipline and law violations. Adhere to the combination of strict management and care, and equal emphasis on incentives and constraints, improve the normalized working mechanism for cultivating and selecting outstanding young cadres, and promote the formation of an employment orientation and political environment in which the capable are promoted, the excellent are rewarded, the mediocre are removed, and the inferior are eliminated.
Consolidate the institutional system and strengthen rigid constraints. Institutional advantage is the greatest advantage of a political party and a country. Strengthening the construction of the system of intra-Party laws and regulations is a long-term and fundamental strategy for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, and can fundamentally ensure that the governance and self-supervision of the Party has rules to follow and a basis to rely on. It is necessary to weave a tight institutional cage in all aspects that is compatible with the needs of governing and supervising the Party and matches the various Party building efforts. Deepen the reform of the Party building system, focus on system integration and coordinated efficiency, adhere to the positive interaction between top-level design and grassroots exploration, grasp both the filling of institutional gaps and the improvement of institutional effectiveness; face practical needs, respect grassroots initiative, promptly elevate mature experience into institutional achievements, and promote more precise institutional supply, smoother institutional operation, and more complete institutional systems. Increase the publicity of intra-Party laws and regulations, strengthen study and training on intra-Party laws and regulations, enhance the seriousness and authority of institutions, educate and guide leading cadres to strengthen their awareness of institutions, regulate the exercise of power by "top leaders," improve the mechanism for restricting the exercise of power by leading groups, and consciously plan affairs, manage people, and exercise power in accordance with laws, regulations, and institutions, forming a good atmosphere of respecting, abiding by, and defending institutions. Strengthen supervision over the implementation of institutions, promote the implementation and implementation of various institutions, better transform institutional advantages into the effectiveness of governing and supervising the Party, and promote the in-depth development of full and rigorous self-governance of the Party on the track of laws, regulations, and institutions.
Consolidate the responsibility system and strive for effective implementation. Without clarifying responsibility, implementing responsibility, and pursuing responsibility, full and rigorous self-governance of the Party will inevitably come to nothing. It is necessary to firmly grasp the "ox nose" of the responsibility system for governing and supervising the Party, so that Party organizations at all levels and leading cadres shoulder the political responsibility for governing and supervising the Party on their shoulders, and know their responsibilities, shoulder their responsibilities, and fulfill their responsibilities. Establish and improve the responsibility system by level and category, further clarify the primary responsibility of Party committees (Party groups), the supervision responsibility of discipline inspection commissions, the first responsible person responsibility of Party committee (Party group) secretaries, and the "one post with dual responsibilities" of team members, and ensure that the responsibility for governing and supervising the Party is implemented to individuals and specific matters. Optimize the evaluation and assessment mechanism for responsibility implementation, improve the precise and scientific accountability mechanism, promptly report typical problems, and seriously pursue accountability for those who fail to govern and supervise the Party effectively or have serious problems, so as to promote the implementation of the responsibility for governing and supervising the Party through the proper positioning of responsible subjects, the proper requirements of responsibility, and the proper assessment and accountability.
[The author is the deputy principal (vice president) in charge of daily work of the Party School (School of Administration) of the Shandong Provincial Party Committee and the dean of the Yimeng Cadre College]
Return to TopBy: 本报评论员 兰文飞
To advance self-revolution, it is necessary to strengthen the fundamental basis (固本培元, gu ben pei yuan - "solidify foundation, nourish source") and enhance Party spirit. The Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Party placed the enhancement of Communists' Party spirit at the top of the strategic tasks and major measures for persistently advancing the full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, and made a series of arrangements for enhancing Communists' Party spirit, proposing to uphold placing loyalty to the Party in the prominent position of Party spirit cultivation. This is a profound understanding and grasp of the laws of building a Marxist governing party, and points the direction for Party members and cadres in the new era to strengthen Party spirit cultivation.
Loyalty to the Party is the foremost political quality of Communists and the most basic requirement for Party members and cadres. Party spirit is the cornerstone of Party members' and cadres' standing, career, words, and virtue. If Party spirit is weakened or lost, one will inevitably degenerate and transform, moving to the opposite side of the Party and the people. If one is not loyal to the Party, one has not a shred of Party spirit. Looking at the more than one hundred years of our Party's struggle history, along the way, although we have experienced countless dangers and hardships, we have never been crushed by any difficulty or defeated by any enemy, precisely because of the loyalty of millions upon millions of Party members. At present, a small number of Party members and cadres, including senior cadres, have weak Party spirit, and some have wavering or even lost ideals and convictions. In response to this, it is necessary to persistently enhance Communists' Party spirit, always taking the Party's banner as our banner, the Party's will as our will, and the Party's mission as our mission, always remaining loyal to the Party, loyal to the people, and loyal to Marxism, sincerely loving the Party, always worrying about the Party, firmly protecting the Party, and fully revitalizing the Party.
Loyalty to the Party is not conditional but unconditional, not abstract but concrete. The key to loyalty to the Party in the new era is to profoundly comprehend the decisive significance of the Two Establishments (两个确立), enhance the Four Consciousnesses (四个意识), strengthen the Four Confidences (四个自信), and achieve the Two Upholds (两个维护), always maintaining a high degree of consistency with the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core in thought, politics, and action. At all times and under all circumstances, one must stand firm and reliably in politics, be honest and loyal to the Party, be of one heart and mind with the Party Central Committee, obey the Party's command, and fulfill responsibilities for the Party. Improve political judgment, political comprehension, and political execution, consciously unify thought and action with the Party Central Committee's analysis and judgment of the situation and tasks, and fully and faithfully implement the Party Central Committee's decisions and deployments. Consciously align with the Party Central Committee, align with the Party's theory, line, principles, and policies, and align with the Party Central Committee's decisions and deployments, achieving resolute response to what the Party Central Committee advocates, resolute implementation of what the Party Central Committee decides, and resolute refusal to do what the Party Central Committee prohibits, uniting under the Party's banner into "a piece of hard steel," advancing in unison.
If thought loosens by an inch, action scatters by a foot. Firm ideals and convictions are closely linked to loyalty to the Party. Only with firm ideals and convictions can one be loyal to the Party, and loyalty to the Party is the best interpretation of firm ideals and convictions. A Marxist party is a party organized on the basis of common ideals and convictions. Faith in Marxism and conviction in socialism and communism are the political soul of Communists and the spiritual pillar that enables Communists to withstand any test. Only with firm ideals and convictions can Party members and cadres withstand various tests. Strengthening ideals and convictions requires constant cultivation and refinement, unremittingly strengthening theoretical arming, unrelentingly strengthening Party spirit education, and continuously tempering and undergoing tests in the practice of struggle. The ideals and convictions of Chinese Communists are established on a profound understanding of Marxism and on a profound grasp of the laws of history. It is necessary to strengthen faith in Marxism, conviction in communism, and confidence in socialism with Chinese characteristics, achieving piety and persistence, and profound faith.
Loyalty to the Party must be reflected in actual action, achieving wholeheartedness and consistency, unity of appearance and inner self, unity of knowledge and action, always not changing one's heart, not shifting one's will, and not destroying one's integrity. Strengthening Party spirit cultivation is not a matter of a moment or a single matter, but a major lifelong subject running through the entire lives of Party members and cadres. The level of Party spirit cultivation will not naturally improve with the increase of Party membership years, nor will it naturally improve with the promotion of positions. It requires lifelong effort, strengthening self-cultivation, self-discipline, and self-transformation. This requires Party members and cadres to temper Party spirit in implementing the Party Central Committee's decisions and deployments, completing urgent, difficult, dangerous, and heavy tasks, and responding to major storms and tests, and to hone Party spirit in handling relationships such as right and wrong, public and private, and gain and loss. Speak honest words, do honest things, be honest people, achieving open-mindedness, candor, and consistency between words and deeds.
On the new journey of the new era, Party members and cadres must uphold the Party's nature and purpose, enhance Party consciousness, Party member consciousness, and vanguard consciousness, take strengthening Party spirit cultivation as a lifelong subject, place loyalty to the Party in the prominent position of Party spirit cultivation, always maintain the political character of Communists, temper firm Party spirit in the great practice of governing the Party, revitalizing the Party, and strengthening the Party, courageously overcome the many new situations and new problems faced in full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, and continuously advance the new great project of Party building in the new era.
Return to TopHow to break out of the historical cycle of order and chaos, rise and fall, is a fundamental question that our Party must answer well in its long-term governance. In this regard, Comrade Mao Zedong gave the first answer in the cave dwellings of Yan'an back then: "Let the people supervise the government." Since the 18th National Congress of the Party, we have found the second answer in the practice of full and rigorous self-governance of the Party: "self-revolution." The Party's self-revolution has a strict definition, namely, self-examination and self-correction (刀刃向内, dao ren xiang nei - "blade, edge, towards, inside"), full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, maintaining the Party's advanced nature and purity, and realizing the Party's self-purification, self-improvement, self-renovation, and self-enhancement. For more than 100 years, in the historical process of leading the people in unremitting struggle for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, our Party has always attached great importance to governing and disciplining the Party, has been courageous in upholding truth and correcting errors, and has grown stronger in solving its own problems by relying on its own strength and the support of the people. The century-old Party is full of vitality and is in its prime.
Return to TopBy: 董超
At present, a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation is accelerating, and new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, embodied intelligence, and digital twins are iterating rapidly, profoundly changing the organizational methods and operational models of commerce and reshaping consumption scenarios and experiences. Recently, the Ministry of Commerce and eight other departments issued the "Opinions on Accelerating the Promotion of Commerce through Science and Technology," which takes promoting commerce through science and technology as its main thread and puts forward 18 specific measures centered on empowering the upgrading of commodity consumption through science and technology, promoting the expansion of service consumption through science and technology, smoothing the commercial circulation chain through science and technology, and shaping future commercial scenarios through science and technology, while also optimizing the development environment and strengthening supporting guarantees in six areas: standards systems, infrastructure, safety supervision, R&D and transformation, talent cultivation, and fiscal and financial support. This is the first comprehensive and systematic document issued by China with "promoting commerce through science and technology" as its theme, marking the entry of deep integration between scientific and technological innovation and commercial development into an institutionalized promotion stage, and it is also another important document promoting deep integration of science and technology and commerce following policy deployments such as "artificial intelligence + consumption." It can be said that accelerating the promotion of commerce through science and technology is both an inherent requirement for following the development trend of the new round of technological revolution and cultivating new quality productive forces, and a strategic choice for building a strong domestic market and meeting the people's needs for a better life.
Promoting commerce through science and technology is essentially the coordinated advancement of scientific and technological innovation and commercial development, answering the question of the era of "where is the commercial industry headed" against the backdrop of the new round of technological revolution. General Secretary Xi Jinping has emphasized that developing new quality productive forces is an inherent requirement and an important focal point for promoting high-quality development, and that the achievements of scientific and technological innovation should be promptly applied to specific industries and industrial chains. The commercial industry is a key link connecting production and consumption, an important support for building a strong domestic market, and an important field for the application and implementation of scientific and technological innovation achievements. Looking at the history of commercial development, every major technological revolution has profoundly reshaped commercial forms: steam engines and electric power technology gave rise to modern department stores and chain operations, and information technology gave birth to e-commerce and the platform economy. At present, new technologies such as artificial intelligence are empowering all walks of life (千行百业, qian hang bai ye - "thousand, industry, hundred, industry") with unprecedented breadth, depth, and speed. In 2025, the scale of China's core artificial intelligence industry has exceeded 1.2 trillion yuan, and the application penetration rate of artificial intelligence technology among industrial enterprises above designated size exceeds 30%. The time is ripe for deepening the application of science and technology in the commercial field, and the prospects are having great potential (大有可为, da you ke wei - "greatly, have, can, do"). According to the theory of technological innovation diffusion, disruptive technologies can only be transformed into real productive forces when deeply integrated with specific application scenarios. Commercial scenarios are rich, data-intensive, and provide timely feedback, making them a natural testing ground and efficient transformation channel for scientific and technological achievements to move from the laboratory to the market. Promoting commerce through science and technology means following this law of development and transforming China's rich advantages in commercial scenarios into advantages in technological iteration. From the perspective of supply-demand balance theory, the principal contradiction in the current consumer market has shifted from insufficient aggregate supply to the structural contradiction of supply-demand mismatch. On the one hand, residents' consumption is upgrading from "whether it exists" to "whether it is good," with personalized, quality-oriented, and experience-based demand growing rapidly. On the other hand, the response speed and matching precision of the traditional supply system are clearly lagging behind. Science and technology empowerment can increase the supply of goods and services and improve supply quality from the supply side, enrich consumption scenarios and reduce consumers' decision-making costs from the demand side, and improve operational efficiency and reduce logistics costs from the circulation side, promoting dynamic balance between supply and demand at a higher level. From the perspective of international competition, the world's major economies are all accelerating the commercial application and deployment of technologies such as artificial intelligence, treating this as a key measure to seize the commanding heights of future industrial competition. China possesses the advantages of an ultra-large-scale market and massive consumer data resources, and has the unique conditions to promote deep integration of science and technology and commerce and achieve first-mover breakthroughs. Promoting commerce through science and technology is precisely a strategic move to make full use of these advantages.
Promoting commerce through science and technology is reflected in the systematic reshaping of the supply system for commodity consumption and service consumption. From the perspective of consumption economics, supply innovation is the prerequisite for consumption upgrading, and technological innovation is the core driving force of supply innovation. In the field of commodity consumption, science and technology empowerment is driving the iterative upgrading of supply. New models such as flexible manufacturing, production on demand, and direct user-to-manufacturer connections have turned large-scale personalized customization from a concept into reality. The supply of intelligent goods such as smartphones, wearable devices, and robots is continuously enriched. Time-honored brands are using modern technology to uphold fundamental principles and break new ground, and the quality connotation of commodity consumption is being continuously enriched. Smart homes are advancing from single-device intelligence to whole-home connectivity, the first-launch economy effect is becoming increasingly prominent in the field of intelligent consumption, and innovation achievements are accelerating their journey from the laboratory to the shelves. Business big data from the Ministry of Commerce shows that from January to September this year, sales of smart glasses on key platforms grew by 110 percent, confirming the strong demand for intelligent consumer goods. In the field of service consumption, from January to September this year, retail sales of services grew by 5 percent year on year, faster than the growth rate of retail sales of goods. Service consumption is gradually becoming an important force in consumption growth, and the introduction of science and technology provides a new path for solving long-standing bottlenecks in the service industry such as high labor costs, low standardization, and insufficient supply of quality services. Basic demand services such as housekeeping, catering, and elderly care and childcare are accelerating their digital and intelligent transformation. Upgraded services such as smart education, smart cultural tourism, and smart sports are continuously expanding their supply. New personalized service formats such as robots and virtual digital human companionship are developing rapidly. For example, intelligent housekeeping service platforms promote online traceability of service evaluations and service processes, making services more worry-free and more reliable. Smart elderly care institutions use intelligent wearable devices and human body perception monitoring technology to achieve functions such as health monitoring and emergency rescue, bringing quality health services to more families. New sports consumption models such as immersive and interactive viewing are being accelerated in cultivation to meet the diverse fitness and leisure needs of the public. Artificial intelligence does not simply replace human labor, but rather achieves quality transformation and efficiency transformation in service supply by enhancing service capabilities and expanding service boundaries, fully releasing the enormous potential of service consumption.
The key support for promoting commerce through science and technology lies in smoothing the commercial circulation chain, shaping future commercial scenarios, and promoting the overall leap of the modern commercial system. Circulation efficiency is a key variable in the consumption experience. Promoting intelligent three-dimensional warehouses, intelligent logistics equipment, unmanned delivery and other facilities and equipment, and advancing the intelligent integration of warehousing, distribution, and transportation are clearing the bottlenecks and broken points in commodity circulation. The digital and intelligent upgrading of wholesale and retail and the digital and intelligent transformation of agricultural product wholesale markets are making possible the precise supply of personalized offerings for different customers (千店千面, qian dian qian mian - "thousand, shop, thousand, face") and the efficient collection and distribution of agricultural products. The quality e-commerce cultivation initiative and the networked verification of compulsory product certification are reshaping the trust mechanism of online consumption from both the institutional and technological ends. What deserves even more attention is that science and technology are opening up incremental space for commercial development, cultivating new business formats of commercial intelligent agents, promoting the implementation of embodied intelligence technology in the commercial field, and accelerating the entry of intelligent shopping guides, intelligent operations, and intelligent logistics into real scenarios. Blockchain carbon footprint accounting and green circular commercial ecosystems are making green development a new dimension of commercial competition. Technologies such as virtual reality and digital twins are being integrated and applied in fields such as culture and entertainment, tourism, health, and sports, creating a number of new consumption scenarios integrating commerce, culture, tourism, sports, and health. Practice has already shown gratifying results. Some smart business districts use big data analysis and intelligent marketing platforms to optimize business format layout, with holiday foot traffic growing by more than 10 percent. Some innovation centers have developed intelligent robotic arms to solve the problem of stacking non-standard packages, reducing sorting costs by 50 percent compared with manual labor. In the first half of this year, China's humanoid robot complete machine products exceeded 400 models. From warehousing and logistics to catering and retail and family services, embodied intelligence is accelerating its journey out of the laboratory and into business districts and stores, and the outline of future commerce is becoming increasingly clear. It can be said that every deep combination of science and technology and commerce adds a new fulcrum to the strong domestic market.
To accelerate the promotion of commerce through science and technology, it is necessary to build a sound ecosystem in which technological innovation, market application, and institutional safeguards work in tandem. The breadth and depth of technology application depend on the inclusiveness and standardization of the institutional environment. First, improve the standards system for commercial science and technology and consolidate the digital and intelligent infrastructure foundation of inclusive computing power, high-quality data sets, and trusted data spaces. Second, cultivate and build innovation centers for commercial technology application, create full-chain innovation platforms from technology R&D to scenario verification and achievement transformation oriented toward digitalization, intelligence, and green development, and accelerate the transformation of cutting-edge scientific and technological achievements such as brain-computer interfaces and embodied intelligence into the market. Third, promote work-study integration and order-based, customized training, establish new occupations and new job types such as logistics robot application technicians, and strengthen support for composite talent in commercial science and technology. Fourth, coordinate existing funding channels and guide financial institutions to increase support for the technological transformation of new consumption scenarios and commercial facilities, effectively reducing the financial pressure on business entities in their transformation. At the same time, adhere to the principle of balancing development and regulation, prudently and steadily carry out tiered governance of commercial intelligent agents, implement inclusive and prudent regulation and stress testing and sandbox pilots, and hold the safety bottom line for the application of new technologies so that consumers dare to use, are willing to use, and enjoy using new technologies. What is particularly important is that the vast majority of business entities in the commercial field are small and medium-sized and micro enterprises and individual industrial and commercial households. There are nearly 56 million individual business households in the wholesale and retail and accommodation and catering sectors alone, and they are an important support for stabilizing employment and benefiting people's livelihoods. Promoting commerce through science and technology is a "chorus" in which all types of entities across the industry participate together. Large enterprises build platforms, tackle key technologies, and set examples, while small and medium-sized enterprises use tools, enjoy services, and expand markets. Only by enabling small and medium-sized and micro entities to access digital tools such as intelligent cash registers, customer flow analysis, and inventory management at low cost, and to share inclusive computing power and open data, can the dividends of science and technology be transformed into an overall leap for the entire industry. Only by forming such a sound ecosystem can the momentum of scientific and technological innovation be truly transformed into the driving force of commercial development, reaching every household and every shop, and providing lasting and powerful support for building a strong domestic market and serving the construction of the new development pattern. The curtain has risen on promoting commerce through science and technology. With clear goals and sustained, long-term effort, China's commercial development will surely deliver a splendid answer in the new wave of technological revolution.
(The author is the director of the Institute of Circulation and Consumption Studies at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation under the Ministry of Commerce)
Return to TopBy: 李岚
Recently, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the "Opinions on Developing New Quality Productive Forces," emphasizing the need to "develop new forms such as agricultural factories." In recent years, as industrialization concepts and digital-intelligent technologies have been continuously integrated into agricultural production processes, agricultural factories have become an important vehicle for developing new quality productive forces in agriculture and advancing agricultural modernization.
An agricultural factory is a "high-level form" of facility agriculture characterized by intensive technology and a high degree of control. It refers to a new type of agricultural operation that organizes agricultural production with industrialization concepts and factory-style methods, comprehensively applying modern scientific and technological means such as biotechnology, digital technology, and intelligent equipment to achieve efficient, standardized production of crops. Previously, documents from the central authorities and relevant departments have already made arrangements in this regard. In June 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issued the "Guiding Opinions on Developing Modern Facility Agriculture," which clearly stated the need to "accelerate the development of new forms of facility agriculture such as agricultural factories." In April 2025, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the "Plan for Accelerating the Building of an Agricultural Powerhouse (2024–2035)," which once again emphasized the need to "develop new forms such as agricultural factories."
Why is it necessary to develop agricultural factories? From the perspective of resource constraints, China's per capita cultivated land area is less than 40 percent of the world average, high-quality arable land is becoming increasingly scarce, and with the continued transfer of rural labor, the contradiction of "who will farm the land" is becoming more pronounced. The traditional mode of relying on natural weather conditions for survival (靠天吃饭, kao tian chi fan - "rely on, heaven, eat, rice") can no longer meet the people's demand for high-quality agricultural products. Agricultural factories exchange space for land and technology for resources, and to a certain extent can break through the limitations of natural conditions. Taking the vertical farm in the urban periphery as an example, multi-layer three-dimensional cultivation racks combined with precision supplemental lighting and temperature-humidity control, along with nutrient solution circulation systems that require no manual watering or fertilizing, can achieve continuous multi-crop production of leafy vegetables on limited land, shortening the time to market and increasing output per unit area.
From the perspective of production efficiency, agricultural factories, through the integrated application of technologies such as intelligent environmental control, integrated water and fertilizer management, and agricultural robots, can achieve precise control over the entire production process, with notable results in saving water, fertilizer, and pesticides. Taking intelligent greenhouse tomato production as an example, sensors collect temperature, light, water, and fertilizer data in real time, and the system automatically adjusts irrigation and fertilization strategies, while inspection robots identify pests and diseases. This not only reduces the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers but also improves the stability of fruit quality. More importantly, agricultural factories span multiple fields including biological breeding, intelligent equipment, new materials, and digital information. They not only improve the production efficiency of agriculture itself but also conform to the trend of integration, extend the industrial chain, drive collaborative innovation in upstream and downstream industries, and promote the integrated development of primary, secondary, and tertiary industries.
From the perspective of market demand and supply, consumption upgrading has given rise to robust demand. Consumers' requirements for the quality, safety, and nutrition of agricultural products continue to rise, and the market space for agricultural products with zero pesticide residues, high quality, and traceability is broader. In agricultural factories, when selecting and breeding varieties, there is less need to give excessive consideration to the stress resistance of crop growth; instead, the focus can be placed on the continuous improvement of product quality, taste, and appearance to meet the diverse needs of the people. On the supply side, traditional agriculture is vulnerable to extreme weather, major pests and diseases, and seasonal fluctuations in the market, whereas agricultural factories have controllable temperature, light, water, and fertilizer, stronger capacity to withstand the impact of various adverse factors, and can achieve uninterrupted year-round production, ensuring a stable supply of agricultural products. They also have significant advantages in supply rhythm and in connecting with standardized channels such as supermarkets and e-commerce platforms.
However, the rapid development of agricultural factories also brings new challenges. High upfront investment has led to many projects that "can be built but cannot be maintained," with energy costs, equipment depreciation, and operation and maintenance expenses constituting sustained pressure. The rising complexity of technology has made the shortage of interdisciplinary talent more prominent, with a serious shortfall of practitioners who understand both the laws of agricultural production and possess the ability to operate and maintain intelligent equipment and analyze data. Equipment operation and maintenance and variety adaptation often lag behind the pace of facility construction. Increased systemic security risks have brought more uncertainty to data security, equipment security, and production continuity. How to overcome problems such as high upfront investment, rising technological complexity, and increased systemic security risks has become a practical issue commonly faced by business entities.
To further develop agricultural factories, systematic efforts need to be advanced in the following aspects. First, highlight development in light of local conditions and improve the quality of content supply. Conduct in-depth assessments of resource endowments, climatic conditions, and market consumption capacity, take into account the input-output ratio and relevant resource constraints, transform local industrial foundations into choices of technological routes, design of variety structures, and arrangements of operation models, and build an agricultural factory system that matches the scenarios and fits the market. In particular, it is necessary to avoid one-sided pursuit of technological innovation while neglecting economic feasibility, prevent blindly launching high-end facilities, and ensure that agricultural factories truly become an effective vehicle for promoting high-quality development in agriculture. Second, improve operation and management mechanisms and enhance the capacity for value transformation. Centering on equipment operation and maintenance and the connection between production and sales, and in light of market feedback, continuously optimize production supply, promote the effective linkage of variety selection and breeding, equipment maintenance, order connection, brand cultivation, and derivative processing, transform short-term demonstration effects into sustained investment by business entities and willingness of farmers to participate, and continuously expand long-term industrial value. Third, improve the industry standard system and consolidate the foundation for professionalization. Accelerate the improvement of regulatory systems in areas such as investment feasibility assessment, technical standards, operation management, and safety guarantees, improve mechanisms for vocational training, capacity evaluation, and development support, guide practitioners in agricultural factories to enhance their professional capabilities and technical levels, and better promote the sustainable development of agricultural factories in an orderly and standardized manner.
Return to TopBy: 中央党校（国家行政学院）党的建设教研部
Since the 18th National Congress of the Party, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, with tremendous political courage and a strong sense of responsibility, has directly confronted the severe reality of a period in which the Party's leadership was weakened, hollowed out, and diluted, in which Party management and governance were not strict, not solid, and not effective, and in which some problems within the Party were shocking to behold. It has unswervingly pursued full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, engaged in self-correction through internal scrutiny (刀刃向内, dao ren xiang nei - "blade, towards, inside"), applied severe punishment to restore order, continuously resolved prominent problems, fundamentally reversed the previous state of lax, loose, and soft Party management and governance, halted certain unhealthy tendencies that had long gone unchecked, corrected certain deep-seated and long-standing problems (顽瘴痼疾, wan zhang gu ji - "persistent, miasma, old, disease") that had persisted for many years, eliminated serious hidden dangers existing within the Party, the state, and the military, and made the Party stronger and more capable through revolutionary tempering. In the new era, full and rigorous self-governance of the Party has opened up a new realm of self-revolution for the century-old Party, propelled the cause of the Party and the state to achieve historic accomplishments and undergo historic changes, and enabled the Party and the people to gain the historical initiative in strengthening the Party and strengthening the country.
The Party's overall leadership and the centralized, unified leadership of the Party Central Committee have been markedly strengthened, the Party's unity and solidarity have been further consolidated, and the hearts of the Party, the military, and the people have been highly united.
The Party's leadership is the most essential feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics and the greatest strength of the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics. For a period of time, some localities and departments fell into cognitive misunderstandings and deviations in action on the major issue of upholding the Party's leadership, a matter of matters of principle (大是大非, da shi da fei - "great, is, great, wrong"). The Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core unequivocally proposed upholding and strengthening the Party's overall leadership and promptly corrected prominent problems such as the weakening, hollowing out, and dilution of the Party's leadership. For example, the 19th National Congress of the Party amended the Party Constitution, and the Second Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee proposed recommendations on amending the Constitution, with both the Party Constitution and the general provisions of the Constitution subsequently explicitly stipulating that the leadership of the Communist Party of China is the most essential feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics; the Third Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee deployed the reform of Party and state institutions, building a systematic, complete, scientifically standardized, and efficiently functioning system of Party and state institutional functions on the premise of upholding the Party's overall leadership; the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee emphasized that the Party's leadership system is the fundamental leadership system of our country and occupies a commanding position within the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics; the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee proposed upholding and improving the systems and mechanisms for Party leadership over economic and social development, providing a fundamental guarantee for high-quality development; the Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee summarized the historical experience of the Party's century-long struggle and placed "upholding the Party's leadership" first; and so on. This series of new and major measures has enabled the whole Party to form new understanding in theory, clarifying the inherent logical connections between the Party's leadership and socialism with Chinese characteristics, such as "true essence," "original nature," "native roots," and "fundamental foundation"; provided new safeguards in institutions, forming a series of Party leadership regulations, with the Party's leadership written into relevant laws and constitutions, ensuring that the Party's leadership has a basis in law and regulation. Upholding the Party's leadership first of all means upholding the authority of the Party Central Committee and its centralized, unified leadership. The Party Central Committee has continuously improved the leadership system for major work, formulated and implemented the "Several Provisions of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on Strengthening and Safeguarding the Centralized, Unified Leadership of the Party Central Committee," improved the implementation mechanisms for the Party Central Committee's major decisions and deployments, advanced political supervision in a concrete, precise, and routine manner, and strictly implemented the reporting and request-for-instructions system for major matters. The whole Party's ideological, political, and action consciousness in safeguarding the authority of the Party Central Committee and its centralized, unified leadership has been markedly enhanced, the decisive significance of the Two Establishments (两个确立) has become more deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, the Four Consciousnesses (四个意识) have been continuously strengthened, the Four Confidences (四个自信) have become more firmly established, the Two Upholds (两个维护) have become the common political responsibility and conscious action of the whole Party, and the Party's unity and solidarity have been further consolidated. The leading core role of the Communist Party of China in exercising overall leadership and coordinating the efforts of all sides has been further demonstrated, the judgment, decision-making, and action capabilities of the Party Central Committee have been fully brought into play, the cohesion and centripetal force of the whole Party, the whole military, and the people of all ethnic groups in the country in united struggle have been markedly enhanced, and the advantages of the Party's leadership have been continuously transformed into national governance effectiveness, providing a strong political guarantee for comprehensively advancing the building of a strong country and the great cause of national rejuvenation through Chinese modernization.
The sinicization and modernization of Marxism have achieved a new leap, the Party's theoretical arming has been continuously deepened, and the whole Party's level of Marxism has been further raised.
Ideological development is the foundational development of the Party, and arming the whole Party with the Party's innovative theory is the fundamental task of the Party's ideological development. In response to problems that existed for a period of time among some Party members and cadres, such as loss of ideals and convictions, weak awareness of the Party's purpose, loss of Party spirit, and enslavement of the mind to material things, General Secretary Xi Jinping has always attached importance to building the Party through ideology, emphasizing that "revolutionary ideals are higher than heaven" and that "ideals and convictions are the 'calcium' in the spirit of Communists." For the first time in the Party's history, he proposed the great founding spirit of the Party and continuously enriched and developed the spiritual pedigree of Chinese Communists, made "stay true to the Party's original aspiration and founding mission" an eternal subject of Party building and a lifelong subject for Party members and cadres, and guided the whole Party to properly resolve the master-switch issue of worldview, outlook on life, and values, and to consciously become firm believers and faithful practitioners of the lofty ideal of communism and the common ideal of socialism with Chinese characteristics. The Party has consciously advanced the strengthening of the Party through theory, upheld the Two Integrations, and founded Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, achieving a new leap in the sinicization and modernization of Marxism. Nine intra-Party centralized education campaigns have been successively carried out, guiding Party members and cadres to read original works, study original texts, and comprehend underlying principles, to grasp standpoints, viewpoints, and methods from General Secretary Xi Jinping's original works and classics, and to appreciate the realm and sentiments contained therein. Party schools have actively played their role as the "great crucible" for Party members and cadres to temper their Party spirit. The whole Party's consciousness and firmness in studying and implementing Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era have been markedly enhanced, and the practice of comprehending laws, clarifying directions, learning methods, and increasing wisdom from the Party's innovative theory has become a prevailing trend. The systematic and scholarly research and interpretation of the Party's innovative theory have been continuously deepened, the construction of an autonomous knowledge system for Chinese philosophy and social sciences has become more conscious, and the Project on Marxist Theory Research and Development has been deeply implemented, providing a solid academic foundation for the arming of the whole Party with the Party's innovative theory. The broad masses of Party members and cadres have continuously strengthened their confidence in the path, theory, system, and culture, leading the people of all ethnic groups across the country to become more confident, self-reliant, and self-empowered, and pooling together a more proactive spiritual force for strengthening the Party and strengthening the country.
The Party's organizational line for the new era has been implemented effectively, the organizational functions of Party organizations at all levels and the overall quality of the Party member and cadre contingent have been improved, and the Party's organizational advantages have been fully demonstrated.
The Party's strength comes from its organization. Since the 18th National Congress of the Party, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has continuously deepened its understanding of the laws governing the strengthening of Party organizational development, put forward the Party's organizational line for the new era, and provided the fundamental guidance for doing organizational work well in the new era. In terms of building the organizational system, it has emphasized that the Party's overall leadership and all of the Party's work must be realized through the Party's strong organizational system; emphasized the need to make the Party's organizational system rigorous, give play to the exemplary role of Party organizations in central and state organs, strengthen the functions of local Party committees, coordinate the advancement of the development of primary-level Party organizations in all fields, highlight efforts to strengthen Party building in emerging fields, and strengthen the building of the Party member contingent. In terms of building the cadre contingent, it has emphasized upholding the principle of the Party managing cadres, proposed and implemented the standards for good cadres in the new era, placed political standards first, established a correct orientation for selecting and appointing personnel, insisted on not relying solely on votes, not relying solely on scores, not relying solely on GDP, not relying solely on age, and refrained from engaging in "mass recommendation" and "mass election," thereby correcting the deviations in selecting and appointing personnel that had once existed. It has advanced in an integrated manner the work of selecting, nurturing, managing, and employing cadres, establishing a quality development system featuring source cultivation, follow-up cultivation, and whole-process cultivation; a system for understanding and evaluating personnel featuring routine assessment, categorized assessment, and close-range assessment; a selection and appointment system featuring virtue first, merit-based appointment, and matching people with posts; a strict management system covering thought, work, conduct, and discipline; and a positive incentive system advocating practical work, driving responsibility, and providing encouragement and support. It has grasped the fundamental plan of ensuring successors for the cause, and improved the normalized working mechanism for cultivating and selecting outstanding young cadres. It has upheld the Party's overall leadership over talent work, deepened the reform of the systems and mechanisms for talent development, cultivated and made good use of talent in an all-round way, created an environment that recognizes, cherishes, respects, and employs talent, and profoundly answered the major theoretical and practical questions of why to build a talent-strong country, what a talent-strong country is, and how to build a talent-strong country. The Party's organizational foundation has become more solid, the Party's contingent has continued to grow and its structure has been continuously optimized, the bright red Party flag has flown high on the front lines of the battle against poverty, epidemic prevention and control, emergency rescue and disaster relief, and rural revitalization, the Party's political leadership, ideological guidance, mass organization, and social appeal have been further strengthened, and the Party's organizational advantages have been continuously transformed into development advantages and governance effectiveness, providing a strong organizational guarantee for promoting the cause of the Party and the state to achieve historic accomplishments and undergo historic changes.
The iron discipline of the Central Eight-Point Regulation has gained authority, the correction of the Four Malfeasances and the establishment of new practices have advanced step by step, and the Party's conduct, government conduct, and social atmosphere have taken on an entirely new look.
Starting from grasping work style to advance full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is an important experience in managing, governing, revitalizing, and strengthening the Party in the new era. Marx profoundly pointed out in his youth that "if the mores, freedom, and excellent qualities of an age are damaged or completely decline, while greed, extravagance, and unbridled indulgence prevail and overflow, then that age cannot be called a happy age." The Party's work style bears on the Party's image, bears on popular support, bears on the Party's survival or demise, and determines the success or failure of the cause of the Party and the state. Since the 18th National Congress of the Party, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has started from the problems about which the masses have the strongest complaints, treated the formulation and implementation of the Central Eight-Point Regulation as an act of establishing credibility by moving a wooden post, established iron rules and hard constraints, and strengthened work style development with the spirit of hammering nails. General Secretary Xi Jinping has led by example and set the pace, leading cadres have taken the lead in setting examples for those below, the hedonism and extravagance have been continuously and resolutely curbed, formalism and bureaucracy have been forcefully corrected, problems have been broken through one by one, nodes have been grasped one by one, and persistence has been maintained year after year. The intensity of rectification, the strictness of institutional enforcement, and the duration of persistence have been unprecedented. Certain unhealthy tendencies that had long gone unchecked have been halted, certain deep-seated and long-standing problems that had persisted for many years have been corrected, the Party's conduct and government conduct have taken on an entirely new look, and social customs and popular morality have moved upward and toward goodness. Since the 18th National Congress of the Party, discipline inspection and supervision organs across the country have investigated and dealt with a total of 1.644 million cases of the Four Malfeasances, and criticized, educated, and dealt with 2.257 million people. As of October 2026, the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the National Supervisory Commission has published the summary of nationwide investigations and handling of violations of the spirit of the Central Eight-Point Regulation for 157 consecutive months, releasing a strong signal of putting strictness first and maintaining strictness to the end. A 2025 survey by the National Bureau of Statistics showed that 95.5% of surveyed members of the public affirmed the effectiveness of implementing the spirit of the Central Eight-Point Regulation, and 92.2% of surveyed members of the public were satisfied with the effect of the improvement in Party and government conduct driving the improvement of social atmosphere. Good work style is "capital"; bad work style is "cost." China has a tradition of governing the country through moral transformation and education spanning thousands of years, in which "conduct is formed at the top and customs are transformed below." As long as our Party always maintains an excellent work style, the people will follow and learn from it, positive energy will fill the whole society, and we will surely be able to create the "happy age" that Marx envisioned.
The Party's discipline development has been solidly advanced, discipline and rules have become more stringent, and the roles of education, restraint, guarantee, and encouragement have been increasingly strengthened.
Strengthening discipline development is the fundamental solution for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party. Our Party is a Marxist party organized by revolutionary ideals and iron discipline, and strict discipline is the Party's glorious tradition and unique advantage. Since the 18th National Congress of the Party, in response to prominent problems among some Party members and cadres such as not taking Party rules and discipline to heart, not understanding them, not mastering them, and even treating discipline as a "rubber band," a "paper tiger," or a "scarecrow," the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has incorporated discipline development into the overall layout of Party building, introduced the concept of "Party rules" in terms of content, improved the system of intra-Party laws and regulations in terms of institutions, scientifically explained the relationship between discipline and law in terms of concepts, prioritized the Party's political discipline as the overarching and governing discipline in terms of focus, clarified the "four forms" of supervision and discipline enforcement in terms of standards, and further clarified the authority for disciplinary action in terms of subjects, making discipline truly a high-voltage line with electricity running through it. The Party's discipline and rules have been clearly established and strictly enforced, and the previous state of lax discipline and drifting work style within the Party has markedly improved. Party organizations at all levels have, on the one hand, grasped discipline education, publicizing to the whole Party what the Party's discipline and rules are, what can be done, and what cannot be done, guiding Party members and cadres to correctly handle the relationships between self-discipline and heteronomy, self-cultivation and mind-cultivation, trust and supervision, principle and emotion, and high standards and bottom lines, and truly engraving compliance with rules and discipline in their hearts and internalizing it as a code of speech and conduct used daily without conscious awareness; on the other hand, they have grasped discipline enforcement, carrying the requirement of strictness through the entire process of formulating Party rules, conducting Party discipline education, and supervising discipline enforcement, making iron discipline "grow teeth" and iron rules gain authority, and regulating Party members' and cadres' performance of duties and use of power with strict discipline. More and more Party members and cadres have come to feel that the atmosphere of combining strict management with caring support and combining encouragement with restraint in pursuing work and entrepreneurship has become increasingly strong, and a positive and healthy intra-Party political culture has continued to develop. More and more Party members and cadres have gained full freedom and broad space for pursuing work and entrepreneurship while complying with rules and discipline, our Party has marched forward in unison amid strict discipline, and has demonstrated to the world the image of a confident, firm, and powerful Marxist party.
The fight against corruption has been carried out with unprecedented intensity, with results visible to all, and a path of fighting corruption with Chinese characteristics has been successfully forged.
Adhering to the integrated advancement of not daring to be corrupt, not being able to be corrupt, and not wanting to be corrupt is an important strategy for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party and the basic policy for the fight against corruption. Since the 18th National Congress of the Party, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has incorporated the deepening of the fight against corruption into the overall layout of Party building in the new era and launched an unprecedented fight against corruption, investigating as many as are involved and digging as deep as the cases reach. It has adhered to severe punishment, ensuring that corruption is punished wherever it exists, graft is eliminated wherever it exists, and evil is eradicated completely, focusing on areas where power is concentrated, funds are dense, and resources are abundant, with emphasis on increasing the intensity of investigating and punishing corruption problems involving "top leaders" and young cadres, deeply investigating and carefully uncovering new types of corruption and hidden corruption, increasing the intensity of investigating and handling cross-border corruption cases, deepening cooperation in foreign law enforcement and judicial affairs such as the pursuit of fugitives and recovery of stolen assets, achieving notable results in rectifying corruption problems in key areas and key links, and continuously strengthening the deterrent effect of not daring to be corrupt. It has adhered to precise governance, relying on institutions to control power, revising and implementing the "Regulations of the Communist Party of China on Intra-Party Supervision," improving institutional mechanisms that unify the authorization, exercise, and restriction of power and are clear, transparent, and traceable, cutting off the chains of interest transfer through reform and institutional innovation, confining power within the cage of institutions, and tightening the institutional cage of not being able to be corrupt ever further. It has adhered to effective prevention, deepening integrity education, continuously shaping the ideological character of being clean and upright, the political virtue of serving with integrity, the moral conduct of self-discipline and integrity, and the social atmosphere of advocating integrity and rejecting corruption, with the awareness of integrity and self-discipline and the ability to resist corruption and prevent degeneration among the broad masses of Party members and cadres markedly enhanced, and the ideological consciousness of not wanting to be corrupt continuously improved. It has adhered to integrated advancement, building an anti-corruption work pattern under the Party's overall leadership, improving the anti-corruption work systems and mechanisms featuring centralized, unified leadership of the Party Central Committee, overall command by Party committees at all levels, organization and coordination by discipline inspection commissions and supervisory commissions, efficient coordination among functional departments, and participation and support by the people, and forming a closed-loop mechanism of supervision, case handling, rectification, and governance. Through strengthening the systems concept, the governance of corruption has expanded from case-by-case elimination and focused punishment to systematic rectification and whole-domain governance, the simultaneous investigation and treatment of misconduct and corruption and the promotion of rectification and governance through case analysis have been continuously deepened, and the fight against corruption has achieved an overwhelming victory and been comprehensively consolidated. The people's satisfaction with the development of Party conduct, clean government, and the fight against corruption has continued to improve, and the political and mass foundations for the Party's long-term governance and the country's lasting peace and stability have been further consolidated.
The system of intra-Party laws and regulations has become more complete, the authority and enforcement of institutions have been effectively strengthened, and the level of scientific, institutionalized, and standardized Party management and governance has been markedly improved.
To govern the country, one must first govern the Party; to govern the Party, one must be strict; and to be strict, one must rely on laws and regulations. Since the 18th National Congress of the Party, General Secretary Xi Jinping has creatively proposed "governing the Party according to regulations" and made a series of important expositions on it, promoting the governance of the Party according to regulations to become the basic method of Party management and governance, and achieving major innovations in the concepts, strategies, and practical paths of Party management and governance. Full and rigorous self-governance of the Party started from the formulation and implementation of the Central Eight-Point Regulation, and the implementation of the spirit of the Central Eight-Point Regulation has been written into the Regulations on Disciplinary Action and the Law on Administrative Discipline for Public Officials. The Party Central Committee has convened two national conferences on intra-Party laws and regulations, and formulated and implemented three five-year plans for the formulation of central intra-Party laws and regulations, ensuring the overall advancement and sustained, long-term effort of governing the Party according to regulations. In terms of institutions, a relatively complete system of intra-Party laws and regulations has been formed, building an organic and unified whole with the Party Constitution as the foundation, democratic centralism as the core, central intra-Party laws and regulations such as guidelines and regulations as the main body, and the four major sections of Party organizational regulations, Party leadership regulations, Party self-development regulations, and Party supervision and guarantee regulations interconnected with each other. As of the end of December 2025, there were 3,372 intra-Party laws and regulations currently in effect, including 239 central intra-Party laws and regulations, 253 departmental intra-Party laws and regulations, and 2,880 local intra-Party laws and regulations, of which those newly formulated or revised since the 18th National Congress of the Party account for more than 70%, opening up a new realm of governing the Party according to regulations in the new era. It has adhered to simultaneously establishing rules and regulations and strictly enforcing them, increasing the intensity of institutional enforcement, strictly implementing the responsibility system for the enforcement of intra-Party laws and regulations, promoting leading cadres to take the lead in respecting, studying, observing, and using regulations, and using the "key minority" to demonstrate and lead the "overwhelming majority" in strictly observing systems and rules. It has resolutely resisted the erosion of intra-Party life by the principle of commodity exchange and relationships of personal dependence, adhered to establishing clear rules, and vigorously broken down hidden rules. The institutional awareness and rules awareness of Party organizations at all levels and the broad masses of Party members and cadres have been markedly enhanced, and respecting, observing, and defending institutions has become a common consensus and conscious action of the whole Party. Institutional civilization has been continuously consolidated, providing solid support for advancing the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity.
The awareness of Party organizations at all levels in managing and governing the Party has been continuously strengthened, responsibility implementation has produced visible results, and a joint force of upper-lower linkage and coordinated management by all parties has been formed.
Implementing the political responsibility for managing and governing the Party is the "ox nose" that must be firmly grasped in full and rigorous self-governance of the Party. Leadership is responsibility, and the Party's leadership itself contains the requirements of education, management, and supervision. Practice has fully demonstrated that without clarifying responsibility, without implementing responsibility, and without pursuing accountability, full and rigorous self-governance of the Party cannot be achieved. Since the 18th National Congress of the Party, our Party has gradually formed a responsibility system with clear subjects and clear requirements, clarifying the primary responsibility of Party committees (Party leading groups) for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party around strengthening leadership over Party management and governance, selecting and using good cadres, strengthening supervision and restriction over the exercise of power, and safeguarding the interests of the masses; clarifying the supervisory responsibility of discipline inspection commissions at all levels around efficient supervision, strict discipline enforcement, and precise accountability; clarifying the responsibility of the first responsible person of Party committees (Party leading groups) as secretaries around managing the leadership team well, leading the contingent well, and promoting implementation; clarifying the responsibility of other members of leadership teams for Party management and governance in accordance with the requirements of holding dual responsibilities for one's post (一岗双责, yi gang shuang ze - "one, post, double, responsibility") in conjunction with the division of duties and tasks; and clarifying the specific responsibilities of Party members and cadres around strict self-discipline and mutual supervision, mutual reminding, and mutual assistance, in conjunction with the characteristics of Party members' and cadres' posts and the actual conditions of their work. At the same time, it has treated accountability as a sharp weapon for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, formulated and revised the "Regulations of the Communist Party of China on Accountability," and promoted the implementation of responsibility for Party management and governance through improving precise and scientific accountability mechanisms. In the past, some Party organizations narrowly understood the responsibility for Party management and governance as the responsibility for developing Party conduct and clean government, and even vaguely handed it over to discipline inspection commissions, resulting in prominent problems such as the hollowing out of the primary responsibility of Party committees (Party leading groups), the layer-by-layer diminution of pressure, and the idling and non-implementation of responsibility. Today, "doing Party building well is one's duty, not doing Party building well is dereliction of duty, and doing Party building poorly is incompetence" has become a common consensus, Party organizations at all levels and the broad masses of Party members and cadres have become more conscious in knowing responsibility in their hearts, bearing responsibility on their shoulders, and fulfilling responsibility through their actions, and the sound political situation of the whole Party joining hands to work together on Party management and governance has been continuously consolidated.
The great achievements in managing, governing, revitalizing, and strengthening the Party in the new era and the opening up of a brand-new situation in the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics are fundamentally attributable to the helm-steering and command of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core and to the scientific guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. The new journey is the new Long March of the Party and the people. The longer the Party has been in governance, the longer the period of peace and prosperity, and the more complex the environment, the more necessary it is to strengthen our awareness of potential dangers, remain vigilant in times of peace, and build the Party well and build it strong. We must clearly understand the profound changes taking place in the world situation, the national situation, and the Party's situation, accurately grasp the new situations and new problems facing the Party, work with vigor and determination, strive to become stronger, persistently advance full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, and ensure that the great ship of China's rejuvenation breaks through waves and sails steadily and far.
Return to TopBy: 张步峰
Recently, the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission issued the "Opinions on Investigating and Punishing Illegal and Criminal Acts Endangering Food Safety Strictly in Accordance with the Law," which sets forth requirements for strictly investigating and punishing illegal and criminal acts endangering food safety in accordance with the law, and specifically makes arrangements for improving the mechanism for the coordination of administrative law enforcement and criminal justice. Illegal and criminal acts endangering food safety directly threaten the lives and health of the people, and their governance involves multiple links from farmland to dining table, with different departments participating in regulatory work, and also involves relevant legal branches such as administrative law and criminal law. The coordination of administrative law enforcement and criminal justice is an important mechanism linking administrative regulation with criminal justice, aimed at ensuring that various organs effectively cooperate within their respective statutory authority and enhancing the overall effectiveness of combating illegal and criminal acts endangering food safety.
The coordination of administrative law enforcement and criminal justice, namely the linkage between administrative law enforcement and criminal justice, has a connotation that includes the following two layers. First, it refers to the situation in which administrative law enforcement organs, in the process of investigating and dealing with illegal acts, discover suspected crimes and transfer the cases to judicial organs for handling in accordance with the law, namely forward linkage; second, it refers to the situation in which judicial organs, in handling cases, discover that administrative penalties should be imposed in accordance with the law and promptly transfer the cases to administrative organs for handling, namely reverse linkage, thereby forming a working mechanism in which administrative penalties and criminal punishments are connected in both directions. In the field of food safety, the reason why the coordination of administrative law enforcement and criminal justice is particularly emphasized is, on the one hand, based on the progressive relationship of "quality" and "quantity" between illegality and crime. There are gradient differences between administrative illegality and criminal crime in terms of the degree of infringement of legal interests, subjective malignancy, and social harmfulness. For the same type of act, such as the illegal use of additives or the sale of substandard food, when the harmful consequences, the amount of money involved, subjective malignancy, and other factors reach a certain degree, it may constitute a criminal offense. The crime of producing and selling food that does not meet safety standards and the crime of producing and selling toxic or harmful food are administrative offenses, and elements in their constitutive requirements such as "not meeting safety standards" depend on the "Food Safety Law of the People's Republic of China" (hereinafter referred to as the "Food Safety Law") and relevant standards, catalogs, and other administrative norms for determination. The professional judgments formed in administrative law enforcement are often an important prerequisite for criminal prosecution. On the other hand, the functions of administrative law enforcement and criminal justice each have their own emphases. Administrative law enforcement organs are responsible for daily regulation, continuously discovering leads on illegality through inspections, sampling tests, and monitoring, and have the advantages of being proactive, timely, professional, and broad in coverage; criminal judicial organs impose criminal sanctions on acts that seriously infringe upon the food safety regulatory order and people's health, so as to achieve the purposes of punishment and deterrence, with strong deterrent force. The two, working together in a coordinated manner (有机衔接, you ji xian jie - "organically, connect") and cooperating with each other, can avoid governance vacuums arising from the division of functions and ensure that illegal and criminal acts endangering food safety receive appropriate legal evaluation and accountability. Especially in situations where food safety risks spread quickly, harmful consequences are difficult to restore, and physical evidence involved in cases is perishable and prone to change, it is even more necessary for various organs to respond quickly and cooperate closely in such links as lead discovery, evidence fixation, and risk control.
At present, the coordination of administrative law enforcement and criminal justice is addressed in multiple laws and regulations. For example, the Food Safety Law stipulates that food safety supervision and management departments of people's governments at or above the county level, upon discovering suspected food safety crimes, shall promptly transfer the cases to public security organs in accordance with relevant provisions. The "Measures for the Coordination of Administrative Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice in the Field of Food and Drugs" (hereinafter referred to as the "Measures") stipulates the transfer of suspected criminal cases in the food and drug field and legal supervision, as well as the inspection and identification of items involved in cases. The "Criminal Procedure Law of the People's Republic of China" (hereinafter referred to as the "Criminal Procedure Law") stipulates that for cases in which the people's procuratorate decides not to prosecute, if the person not prosecuted needs to be given administrative penalties, procuratorial opinions shall be submitted and the case transferred to the relevant competent organ for handling. Under the guidance of relevant laws and regulations, China's work on the coordination of administrative law enforcement and criminal justice has achieved remarkable results, but in practice, there are still some problems in the coordination of administrative law enforcement and criminal justice in the field of food safety, and situations such as "cases not being transferred despite their existence" and "substituting administrative penalties for criminal punishment" still exist. In response to the above problems, the basic rules for the coordination of administrative law enforcement and criminal justice should be continuously constructed and improved from the following aspects.
Further clarify the standards for case transfer. Clear, unified, and operable standards for case transfer are the prerequisite for ensuring the efficient operation of the coordination mechanism between administrative law enforcement and criminal justice in the field of food safety. The standards for criminal prosecution of food safety illegal acts are scattered across the "Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China" (hereinafter referred to as the "Criminal Law"), judicial interpretations, and departmental rules. The Measures stipulate that the condition for forward linkage transfer is "suspected of constituting a crime and, in accordance with the law, criminal responsibility needs to be pursued," and this standard needs to be judged in individual cases in light of the constitutive requirements of the specific crime. Normative documents on the coordination of administrative law enforcement and criminal justice in the field of food safety should be formulated to transform conviction and sentencing standards into a "transfer checklist" that is easy for administrative law enforcement personnel to identify, providing clear guidance on key elements such as the amount of money involved, the type and content of toxic or harmful substances, the number of violations, harmful consequences, and subjective knowledge; standardize transfer materials, and clarify the time limits for acceptance, case filing, and feedback on non-filing. For cases that should be transferred but are not, procuratorial organs shall supervise in accordance with the law; for cases that should be filed but are not, case-filing supervision shall be initiated in accordance with the law to prevent "cases not being transferred despite their existence and cases not being filed despite their existence."
Improve the rules for inspection and identification. Food safety cases are highly professional in nature, physical evidence is perishable and prone to change, and inspection and testing reports and expert opinions are often the key to ascertaining the facts. Administrative inspection reports and criminal expert opinions differ in nature, qualification, and procedural requirements, and when the same batch of food has already been sampled and tested in the administrative stage and needs to be re-identified in the criminal stage, this both consumes resources and may miss the opportunity to fix evidence. According to the provisions, when administrative organs transfer suspected criminal cases, they shall attach relevant inspection reports or expert opinions; if public security organs consider that supplementary materials are needed, administrative organs shall provide them promptly. Inspection reports and expert opinions lawfully formed in the administrative stage, after review by public security organs and people's procuratorates and confirmation through courtroom cross-examination by people's courts, can be used as evidence. Relevant judicial interpretations further clarify that for specialized issues that are difficult to determine, such as "sufficient to cause serious food poisoning accidents or other serious foodborne diseases" and "toxic or harmful non-food raw materials," judicial organs may make determinations based on expert opinions, inspection reports, or written opinions organized and issued by relevant administrative departments at or above the municipal level, in combination with other evidence. On this basis, the rules for review, cross-examination, supplementary inspection, and re-determination after administrative professional materials enter criminal proceedings should be further clarified; for new types of additives and foods with complex ingredients, supplementary inspection methods and expert determination mechanisms should be applied in accordance with the law, and the conditions for initiating identification, the requirements for submitting samples, and the rules for bearing costs should be clarified, so as to achieve effective linkage between administrative professional judgments and criminal judicial review.
Refine the rules for evidence conversion. Evidence transfer is an important link in the coordination of administrative law enforcement and criminal justice. Whether the evidentiary materials collected by administrative organs in law enforcement can be reviewed and confirmed in criminal proceedings directly affects the quality of transferred cases. The Criminal Procedure Law stipulates that physical evidence, documentary evidence, audio-visual materials, electronic data, and other materials collected by administrative organs in the course of administrative law enforcement and case investigation can be used as evidence in criminal proceedings, and Article 27 of the "Administrative Penalty Law of the People's Republic of China" requires that administrative penalty enforcement organs and judicial organs shall strengthen coordination and cooperation, improve the case transfer system, and strengthen the handover and reception linkage of evidentiary materials. In specific application, physical evidence and testimonial evidence should be distinguished, and the review methods and conversion paths should be determined separately: for objective evidence such as physical evidence, documentary evidence, and electronic data, the focus of review should be on the subject of evidence collection, procedures, sources, and the chain of custody, and after lawful review and confirmation, it can be used as the basis for deciding a case; for testimonial evidence such as statements of the parties and witness testimony, in principle, investigative organs shall recollect it in accordance with the law, and if materials formed in the administrative stage truly need to be used, reasons shall be explained and strict review shall be conducted. At the same time, full-process records of law enforcement should be promoted, and on-site inspections, sampling, and sealing should be standardized, so that evidence formed in the administrative stage meets the requirements of criminal proceedings.
Further strengthen information sharing. Under new business formats such as fresh food e-commerce, food delivery, and livestream e-commerce, the links of production, warehousing, logistics, and sales are dispersed, and cross-regional and cross-departmental crimes are increasing, while regulatory data, testing data, investigation information, and supervision information belong to different systems; if there is a lack of effective communication, the opportunity to dig deeper into upstream and downstream leads may be missed. At the same time, new types of illegal additives are constantly appearing while the update of the catalog of illegal additives has not kept pace, which also puts criminal law application in a predicament of insufficient basis. The construction of information communication and sharing platforms should be strengthened, adhering to unified standards, graded authorization, and safety and controllability, so as to achieve interconnection and interoperability of data on administrative penalties, sampling and testing monitoring, case transfer, case filing, prosecution and trial, and subsequent penalties. On this basis, big data legal supervision models should be used to conduct comparative analysis of abnormal situations such as re-offending within a short period after punishment, multiple penalties without transfer, and the same subject violating the law in multiple places, so as to promptly discover leads and promote the transformation of governance from post-hoc investigation to pre-prevention.
Improve the reverse linkage mechanism. For a long time, the coordination of administrative law enforcement and criminal justice has been dominated by forward linkage. In recent years, reverse linkage has also received high attention. Article 37 of the Criminal Law, which provides that those exempted from criminal punishment may be given administrative penalties by the competent department, provides a substantive law basis for reverse linkage. The "Guidelines for Procuratorial Organs' Reverse Linkage Work in the Coordination of Administrative Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice" of the Supreme People's Procuratorate clarifies that the work of reverse linkage in the coordination of administrative law enforcement and criminal justice shall adhere to strict legality, objectivity and fairness, and proportionality of punishment to the offense. On this basis, the obligations of administrative organs to review, handle, and provide feedback on reverse-transferred cases should be further clarified, and the offsetting of fines and criminal fines, and administrative detention and prison terms, should be implemented in accordance with the law, so as to prevent duplicate evaluation and achieve two-way linkage and seamless connection.
In order to ensure the effective operation of the above rules, it is necessary to continuously strengthen the supporting safeguards for the coordination of administrative law enforcement and criminal justice. On the one hand, taking the revision of the Food Safety Law as an opportunity, accelerate the improvement of food safety laws, regulations, and supporting norms, promptly respond to regulatory issues brought by new business formats and new technologies, and unify the application of law through the issuance of guiding cases, typical cases, and other means. On the other hand, strengthen supervision and restraint to ensure the quality of linkage. Procuratorial organs should take the coordination of administrative law enforcement and criminal justice as one of the key points of legal supervision, comprehensively use individual case supervision, similar case supervision, and special supervision to correct problems such as non-transfer, non-filing, and non-punishment, and seriously pursue accountability for dereliction of duty and misconduct in accordance with the law; administrative organs and judicial organs should also, in response to risk hazards exposed by cases, promptly issue public security reminder letters, judicial suggestion letters, and procuratorial suggestion letters, promote the improvement of whole-chain regulation, and promote the transformation of the coordination of administrative law enforcement and criminal justice from institutional requirements into case-handling practice and governance effectiveness, so as to safeguard the people's "safety on the tip of the tongue" with a tighter line of defense under the rule of law.
Return to TopBy: 张宁
Mass participation in grassroots public affairs presupposes a full understanding of the true situation relevant to the issues at hand. How community public spaces are renovated, how village collective projects are arranged, and how community service resources are used all depend on factual judgment and balancing of interests. Whether information is sufficient, easy to understand, and timely directly affects the quality of the people's expression of opinions, deliberation, and oversight. The "Opinions on Strengthening Deliberation and Consultation in Urban and Rural Communities" treats "advancing information disclosure" as a precondition for consultation, requiring "full protection of the people's rights to know, to participate, to express, and to oversee." The newly revised Organic Law of the Villagers' Committees of the People's Republic of China and Organic Law of the Urban Residents' Committees of the People's Republic of China make the disclosure of resolutions and implementation results statutory links in grassroots deliberation and decision-making. To develop grassroots democracy, it is necessary to continuously improve the information disclosure mechanism around the needs of mass participation, so that the people can express themselves rationally and participate effectively on the basis of full understanding of the actual situation, thereby better gathering collective wisdom (汇集民智, hui ji min zhi - "gather, collect; people's, wisdom") and building consensus.
Around the needs of deliberation, provide information helpful for judgment. Information disclosure should correspond to the matters the people need to discuss and decide. On the one hand, disclose the basic facts, basis, and impact surrounding the issue. To participate in a public affair, the people need to know not only what is proposed to be done, but also why it is being done, what feasible options exist, and what impact different choices will bring. To improve the quality of disclosure, it is necessary to provide the necessary facts, conditions, and comparative basis around the issue, giving full support for the people's discussion and judgment. For example, when discussing the renovation of public spaces in old residential communities, basic information such as the current use of the spaces, residents' usage patterns, and available funds should be clearly explained, and the specific impact of options such as adding parking spaces, preserving activity areas, and improving access conditions should be set out. Only when the pros and cons are clearly explained can residents compare options in light of their actual circumstances and discuss how to balance different needs. The disclosed content should not only explain expected benefits, but also clearly state cost burdens, maintenance responsibilities, and possible inconveniences, so that the balancing of interests is built on a foundation of sufficient information.
On the other hand, information disclosure should also pay attention to the connections between pieces of information. Content concerning the same public affair, such as budgets, designs, and management arrangements, should be easy for the people to consult side by side, reducing the burden of searching back and forth across different documents and platforms. For key data affecting judgment, the sources and statistical calibers should be explained, and existing facts should be clearly distinguished from projected circumstances, and preliminary estimates from actual expenditures. Only when information is truthful, complete, and mutually corroborating can the people identify problems, raise questions, and improve plans, making information disclosure a genuine important foundation for enhancing the quality of public decision-making.
Emphasize plain-language explanation to help the people understand the actual impact. Information disclosure must be something the people can understand and judge. Engineering drawings, budget tables, and technical reports are highly specialized; directly publishing raw materials does not mean the people can fully understand their relationship to their own interests. On the basis of retaining complete materials and channels for inquiry, concise explanations, plan comparisons, on-site briefings, and other means should be used to connect specialized information with the people's daily lives, so that people with different knowledge backgrounds all possess the basic conditions for participating in discussion. For example, when discussing the renovation of community activity spaces, the locations of facilities, access routes, and scope of use can be marked on floor plans, combined with on-site explanations of the specific impact of different arrangements on the lives of surrounding residents. Budget costs should also be explained according to the stages of construction, use, and subsequent maintenance. The closer these explanations are to actual usage scenarios, the easier it is for residents to spot possible problems in entrance and exit placement, facility layout, and other aspects, and to put forward suggestions that professional designs may not have fully considered. At the same time, a clear distinction should be drawn between technical requirements that must be met and specific arrangements that can be negotiated. Provided safety requirements are met, matters such as how public spaces are allocated and how facilities are configured should all fully heed the people's opinions. For questions the people care about that the relevant materials do not clearly address, facts and explanations should be supplemented in a timely manner and disclosed simultaneously to other participants. Considering the actual needs of the elderly and other groups, the disclosure of paper materials and on-site consultation should be combined, so that information is truly accessible, understandable, and usable, reducing participation gaps caused by differences in information capacity.
Grasp the timing of disclosure and leave time for full participation. Information disclosure should attend not only to content but also to timing. The same piece of information, disclosed at different times, may have completely different practical effects on mass participation. The people need time to understand the situation, communicate with one another, and compare options, and thereby form relatively mature opinions. When organizing grassroots deliberation and consultation, issues and related materials should be disclosed in advance according to the complexity of the matter and the scope of its impact, avoiding information released too late, insufficient time for soliciting opinions, or requiring the people to make judgments before they have fully understood the situation.
At the same time, the focus of information disclosure should differ according to the stage at which the relevant plan is taking shape. At the stage when the issue is raised, the problems to be solved and the basic conditions can first be disclosed, allowing the people to participate in discussing possible solutions. After an initial plan is formed, the specific arrangements and their basis should then be disclosed, making it easier for the people to compare, question, and improve. In particular, for matters such as the layout of public facilities and the arrangement of collective projects, necessary information should be disclosed while the plan still has room for adjustment, so that the people's opinions can genuinely enter into the plan design. The more timely the disclosure, the more conducive it is to identifying overlooked impacts early and reducing the cost of subsequent adjustments.
In addition, when important content affecting the people's vital interests is adjusted, the changes and their reasons should be explained in a timely manner, and necessary time should be left for re-understanding the situation and raising opinions. Where representatives participate in deliberation, conditions should also be created for representatives to consult the people's opinions with materials in hand, and then promptly reflect the people's opinions. For matters with a broad scope of impact, arrangements for reviewing materials, on-site inspection, and centralized briefings can be made in light of actual circumstances.
Continuously disclose progress to provide a basis for mass oversight. The judgments the people form in deliberation need to be tested through subsequent implementation. After a decision is formed through grassroots deliberation, the final result and its main basis should be disclosed in a timely manner, with necessary explanations of what adjustments were made to preliminary opinions and how the people's opinions influenced the final choice, so that the people can understand the connection between discussion and decision. After entering the implementation stage, progress and changes should be continuously disclosed around the matters the people care about, so that the information grasped in earlier discussions can be cross-checked against actual implementation.
For example, for the renovation of public facilities, the actual scope of construction, use of funds, and completion status can be disclosed around the originally planned construction content. When cost increases, schedule adjustments, or facility changes occur, the reasons and their impact should be explained, making it easier for the people to judge whether the adjustments are necessary and reasonable. The project names, cost categories, and statistical calibers in disclosed materials should be kept as consistent as possible; where adjustment is truly necessary, the correspondence between before and after should be explained. Only when information is clear, continuous, and comparable can the people promptly identify deviations in implementation, enabling oversight to be built on a reliable factual basis. In addition, in evaluating the effectiveness of information disclosure, one cannot look only at whether information was released as required; more importantly, one must look at whether it genuinely supports mass participation — that is, whether the people can find the information they need, understand the main arrangements, and on that basis raise opinions and conduct oversight. For questions the people repeatedly ask, the methods of explanation and disclosure should be improved in a timely manner. Only by closely linking information disclosure with the people's actual needs can the gap between "already disclosed" and "truly informed" be narrowed, the pertinence and effectiveness of disclosure work be continuously enhanced, and grassroots discussion of public affairs become better grounded, decision-making more thorough, and implementation more standardized and forceful.
Return to TopBy: 白皓
In his "Explanation on the 'Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Several Major Issues Concerning Persistently Advancing Full and Rigorous Self-Governance of the Party,'" General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is a systematic project, and that it is necessary to plan and advance the Party's political construction, ideological construction, organizational construction, work style construction, discipline construction, institutional construction, and the fight against corruption as an organic whole, with efforts focused on improving the system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party. Improving the system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is an effective path for continuously advancing the great new project of Party building in the new era, and is a long-term strategy for persistently advancing full and rigorous self-governance of the Party. It aims to use systematic thinking and scientific methods to ensure that the governance and self-supervision of the Party covers all content, all objects, the full chain of responsibility, and the complete integration of institutions, so as to promote greater organic linkage, integrated aggregation, and coordinated synergy among the various measures for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party.
Fully Understanding the Era Value of Improving the System for Full and Rigorous Self-Governance of the Party
The system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is a dynamic system with rich connotations, complete functions, scientific standards, and efficient operation. Implementing the core essence of full and rigorous self-governance of the Party in the practice of governing and supervising the Party inevitably requires improving the system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party at a higher level. Since the 20th National Congress of the Party, full and rigorous self-governance of the Party has developed in the direction of systematization. The Party Central Committee has taken improving the system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party as an important starting point, placing greater emphasis on using the concepts of governance, the notions of system, and dialectical thinking to govern, supervise, and build the Party, so that all work of full and rigorous self-governance of the Party better reflects the characteristics of the times, grasps the laws of development, and is full of creativity.
An inherent requirement for promoting the systematic upgrading of Party governance and self-supervision. The progression from "strict governance of the Party," to "full and rigorous self-governance of the Party," and then to "improving the system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party" is a systematic upgrading of governance logic. This evolutionary process is closely connected to the profound changes in the historical position of our Party. Since the 18th National Congress of the Party, the Party Central Committee started with the formulation and implementation of the Central Eight-Point Regulation as the breakthrough, promoted the achievement of an overwhelming victory in the fight against corruption and its comprehensive consolidation, and delivered a set of "combined punches" for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party. Achieving systematization is an inevitable result of the development of full and rigorous self-governance of the Party to a certain stage. Party building in the new era is a systematic project led by the Party's political construction, with all other Party building efforts exerting force in the same direction and in a comprehensive manner. It involves multiple subjects, numerous governance contents, and a wide range of covered levels. Only by adhering to overall planning and coordinated advancement can governance synergy be formed. Improving the system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is not a simple superposition of various Party building tasks, but a dynamic optimization aimed at complete elements, complete functions, scientific standards, and efficient operation. Through the construction and improvement of the system, we must effectively integrate the forces of all aspects of Party building, link up all elements, and connect all links, so as to achieve a systematic leap from individual breakthroughs to comprehensive governance and continuously enhance the systematic nature, overall nature, and synergy of full and rigorous self-governance of the Party.
A key move to enhance the Party's long-term governance capability. The Communist Party of China, as the world's largest governing party with major global influence and a long history of successful governance, has remained full of vitality after more than a hundred years. An important reason lies in its consistent adherence to the principle that the Party must govern itself with strict discipline and conduct full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, and its high attention to its own construction. How to break out of the historical cycle of rise and fall, chaos and order, and achieve long-term governance is a major question that our Party always needs to answer and solve. Comrade Mao Zedong gave the first answer, which is to let the people supervise the government. General Secretary Xi Jinping gave the second answer, which is self-revolution. Improving the system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is an effective path for deeply advancing the Party's self-revolution. Improving the system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party means transforming the Party's leadership advantages and organizational advantages into governance effectiveness for long-term governance, consolidating the ideological foundation with theoretical arming, ensuring the Party Central Committee's decisions and deployments are carried through to the end with a tight organization, preventing the alienation of power with precise supervision, strengthening rigid constraints with institutional norms, and effectively transmitting pressure with a closed loop of responsibility. Only in this way can we maintain stability and achieve long-term progress amid high winds and rough waves, even stormy seas, maintain the whole Party's unified thinking, unified will, and unified action, and build a solid foundation for long-term governance.
An inherent requirement for further deepening reform comprehensively and advancing Chinese modernization. Comprehensively advancing the great cause of building a strong country and national rejuvenation through Chinese modernization is the central task of the Party and the state on the new journey of the new era. The connotation of Chinese modernization is very rich, which determines that further deepening reform comprehensively is also all-encompassing. There is no ready-made model for Chinese modernization to copy, and every step of further deepening reform comprehensively faces risks and challenges. The Party's governance capability and leadership level directly determine the effectiveness of state governance. At present, the once-in-a-century changes in the world are accelerating, and China's development has entered a critical period of consolidating the foundation and exerting full efforts for basically realizing socialist modernization. Strategic opportunities and risk challenges coexist, uncertain and unpredictable factors increase, a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation is developing in depth, and the tasks of reform, development, and stability are arduous and heavy. This places new and higher demands on the Party's leadership of modernization, its ability to manage complex situations, and its advancement of national governance. Facing the increasingly complex internal and external environment, it is necessary to give full play to the Party's core leadership role in commanding the overall situation and coordinating all parties, run the Party's leadership through all aspects and the entire process of reform, improve the Party's ability and level in leading economic and social development, and ensure that reform always advances along the correct political direction. Improving the system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party is conducive to giving full play to the political guidance and political guarantee role of full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, is conducive to improving and optimizing the Party's leadership methods, making state governance more stable, efficient, and sustainable, effectively implementing the strategic deployments for further deepening reform comprehensively, and providing a strong guarantee for advancing Chinese modernization.
Accurately Grasping the Focal Points for Improving the System for Full and Rigorous Self-Governance of the Party
When presiding over the 15th collective study session of the Political Bureau of the 20th Central Committee, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized that the whole Party must forever maintain the sobriety and firmness of "taking the examination," take improving the system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party as an effective path, continuously advance the great new project of Party building in the new era, and clearly proposed improving the five systems of organization, education, supervision, institutions, and responsibility, pointing out the path for improving the system for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party.
Build a strong organizational system to ensure strength and effectiveness. A tight organizational system is where the Party's advantages and strength lie. Only when the Party's organizational system is tight, and the political and organizational functions of Party organizations at all levels are fully brought into play, can the major strategic deployments of the Party Central Committee be precisely transmitted to the grassroots level, can the Party's leadership be like the body commanding the arms and the arms commanding the fingers, and can full and rigorous self-governance of the Party continue to advance in depth. It is necessary to systematically advance the construction of Party organizations at all levels and in all fields, strengthen the political and organizational functions of Party organizations, and ensure that the implementation of the Party's line, principles, policies, and the Party Central Committee's decisions and deployments is coordinated at all levels and precise and efficient. Uphold the authority and centralized, unified leadership of the Party Central Committee, improve the mechanism for implementing the Party Central Committee's major decisions and deployments and General Secretary Xi Jinping's important instructions and approvals, and ensure that the Party Central Committee's orders are unimpeded and prohibitions are observed. Uphold and improve the Party building leadership system and organizational management system, improve the through-connection mechanism for conveying and implementing superior deployments, reporting grassroots situations upward, and jointly solving contradictions and problems, and promote comprehensive progress and comprehensive excellence of Party organizations at all levels. Adhere to the clear orientation of focusing great efforts on the grassroots, continuously rectify weak and lax grassroots Party organizations, classify and improve the Party building management system and responsibility system for emerging fields, strengthen Party building in new economic organizations, new social organizations, and new employment groups, and promote comprehensive excellence of Party organizations at all levels and in all fields. Innovate the forms of setting up Party organizations and their activity methods, and use Internet technology and information-based means to carry out Party building work. Comprehensively strengthen the building of the Party member team, the selection, training, and education of grassroots Party organization leaders, improve the quality of Party member development, and build platforms and carriers for Party members to play a vanguard and exemplary role.
Improve the education system to consolidate the ideological foundation. Strengthening ideological education is about solving fundamental problems for leading cadres such as ideals and convictions, Party spirit cultivation, and awareness of purpose. If leading cadres waver in their ideals and convictions, have weak Party spirit cultivation, and have a weak awareness of purpose, their political stance will deviate and their actions will cross the line. Therefore, mastering scientific theory and consolidating the ideological foundation provide solid support for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party. Unswervingly use Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era to consolidate the soul and strengthen the heart, improve the mechanism for regular training, especially basic training, adhere to the combination of centralized education and regular education, improve the quality evaluation and dynamic optimization mechanism for theoretical training in Party schools (schools of administration) and cadre colleges, and continuously cultivate the "mind science" of Communists. Give full play to the important role of Party schools (schools of administration) as the "great furnace" for tempering Party spirit, continuously strengthen and improve ideological and political work under the new situation, especially deeply study and implement Xi Jinping's thought on Party building, take learning, comprehending, and applying the Party's innovative theories as the fundamental path for strengthening Party spirit cultivation, and guide Party members and cadres to read original works, study original texts, and comprehend principles in a targeted and effective manner. Carry forward the fine style of study of integrating theory with practice, continuously innovate methods and approaches, implement systems such as the "first agenda" and the study of the theoretical study center group of Party committees (Party groups), and effectively promote the use of learning to cast the soul, learning to increase wisdom, learning to rectify work style, and learning to promote work. Strengthen research on full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, deepen understanding of the laws of Party building in the new era, and strengthen the construction of the discipline system, academic system, and discourse system of "the study of the history and Party building of the Communist Party of China."
Optimize the supervision system and focus on regular and strict management. Strict management and supervision are important guarantees for the correct operation of power. To integrate supervision into the entire process of governing and supervising the Party, it is necessary to promote the forward shift of the supervision gate, discover, remind, and warn about various problems early, and prevent minor problems from developing into major ones. It is necessary to closely monitor and analyze and judge new trends in the Party's conditions and work style, and achieve systematic governance and addressing both symptoms and root causes. Adhere to grasping Party spirit, work style, and discipline together, connect the rectification of work style, strict discipline, and the fight against corruption, promote the normalization and long-term effectiveness of work style construction, treat the Central Eight-Point Regulation as a long-term effective iron rule and a hard constraint, continuously deepen the rectification of the Four Malfeasances, and effectively prevent and rectify deviations in the view of political achievements. Improve the Party member management mechanism, strictly control the entry gate, consolidate the ideological gate, and strictly abide by the discipline gate, so that the team remains full of vitality. Improve the mechanism for strict management and supervision of cadres, strengthen all-round management and regular supervision, highlight supervision over "top leaders" and leading groups, and strengthen constraints on key links in the operation of power. Innovate the mechanism for integrity publicity and education, and give play to the exemplary and leading role of diligent and honest models and the warning and deterrence role of cases of discipline and law violations. Adhere to the combination of strict management and care, and equal emphasis on incentives and constraints, improve the normalized working mechanism for cultivating and selecting outstanding young cadres, and promote the formation of an employment orientation and political environment in which the capable are promoted, the excellent are rewarded, the mediocre are removed, and the inferior are eliminated.
Consolidate the institutional system and strengthen rigid constraints. Institutional advantage is the greatest advantage of a political party and a country. Strengthening the construction of the system of intra-Party laws and regulations is a long-term and fundamental strategy for full and rigorous self-governance of the Party, and can fundamentally ensure that the governance and self-supervision of the Party has rules to follow and a basis to rely on. It is necessary to weave a tight institutional cage in all aspects that is compatible with the needs of governing and supervising the Party and matches the various Party building efforts. Deepen the reform of the Party building system, focus on system integration and coordinated efficiency, adhere to the positive interaction between top-level design and grassroots exploration, grasp both the filling of institutional gaps and the improvement of institutional effectiveness; face practical needs, respect grassroots initiative, promptly elevate mature experience into institutional achievements, and promote more precise institutional supply, smoother institutional operation, and more complete institutional systems. Increase the publicity of intra-Party laws and regulations, strengthen study and training on intra-Party laws and regulations, enhance the seriousness and authority of institutions, educate and guide leading cadres to strengthen their awareness of institutions, regulate the exercise of power by "top leaders," improve the mechanism for restricting the exercise of power by leading groups, and consciously plan affairs, manage people, and exercise power in accordance with laws, regulations, and institutions, forming a good atmosphere of respecting, abiding by, and defending institutions. Strengthen supervision over the implementation of institutions, promote the implementation and implementation of various institutions, better transform institutional advantages into the effectiveness of governing and supervising the Party, and promote the in-depth development of full and rigorous self-governance of the Party on the track of laws, regulations, and institutions.
Consolidate the responsibility system and strive for effective implementation. Without clarifying responsibility, implementing responsibility, and pursuing responsibility, full and rigorous self-governance of the Party will inevitably come to nothing. It is necessary to firmly grasp the "ox nose" of the responsibility system for governing and supervising the Party, so that Party organizations at all levels and leading cadres shoulder the political responsibility for governing and supervising the Party on their shoulders, and know their responsibilities, shoulder their responsibilities, and fulfill their responsibilities. Establish and improve the responsibility system by level and category, further clarify the primary responsibility of Party committees (Party groups), the supervision responsibility of discipline inspection commissions, the first responsible person responsibility of Party committee (Party group) secretaries, and the "one post with dual responsibilities" of team members, and ensure that the responsibility for governing and supervising the Party is implemented to individuals and specific matters. Optimize the evaluation and assessment mechanism for responsibility implementation, improve the precise and scientific accountability mechanism, promptly report typical problems, and seriously pursue accountability for those who fail to govern and supervise the Party effectively or have serious problems, so as to promote the implementation of the responsibility for governing and supervising the Party through the proper positioning of responsible subjects, the proper requirements of responsibility, and the proper assessment and accountability.
[The author is the deputy principal (vice president) in charge of daily work of the Party School (School of Administration) of the Shandong Provincial Party Committee and the dean of the Yimeng Cadre College]
Return to TopBy: 中国医药集团有限公司党委书记、董事长 白忠泉
General Secretary Xi Jinping delivered an important speech at the 2026 National Conference on Health and Wellness, taking as his starting point the strategic overall situation of building a strong country and realizing national rejuvenation, clarifying the path of health development with Chinese characteristics, systematically mapping out the blueprint for building a Healthy China during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, and emphasizing that building a Healthy China that is balanced, inclusive, high-quality, and efficient should possess strong health management capacity, disease prevention and control capacity, medical service capacity, medical insurance support capacity, pharmaceutical innovation capacity, and talent cultivation capacity, providing fundamental guidance and an action guide for the high-quality development of health and wellness endeavors and the pharmaceutical and health industries in the new era. China National Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Sinopharm) adheres to the guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, thoroughly implements the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping's important instructions on the work of central enterprises, always having a broad mind and a sense of responsibility for the nation (胸怀大者, xiong huai da zhe - "embrace, big, things"), regards serving the building of a Healthy China as a major political task, fully leverages its role as the national team and main force of the industry, focuses on strengthening the "six major capacities," promotes deepening reform and transformational development, and with solid work and tangible results shoulders the mission and responsibility of safeguarding the people's life and health.
Strengthen health management capacity and enrich the supply of health services across the full life cycle. Relying on its complete pharmaceutical and health industry chain, Sinopharm coordinates medical, health, and elderly care resources around "the elderly and the young," enriches the supply of health services across the full life cycle, and safeguards the people's diverse medical and health needs.
Ensure the stable supply of vaccines under the national immunization program, providing nearly 300 million doses of vaccination vaccines to eligible children nationwide each year, effectively reducing the risk of key infectious diseases among children, building a solid immune protection barrier for infants and young children, and safeguarding their healthy growth. Promote the expansion and sinking of high-quality medical resources. All types of medical institutions under the Group uphold their public welfare attributes, closely adhere to the mission and responsibility that central enterprises running hospitals are an important component of the public medical system, and provide differentiated medical and health services focused on specialty departments, primary-level diagnosis and treatment, and full-cycle health management. Using compact medical consortia and medical communities as carriers, the Group opens up the full chain of services from online consultations to home follow-up visits, effectively narrowing the gap between urban and rural medical services and providing diversified, high-quality medical security for grassroots residents. Implement the national strategy of actively responding to population aging, serve the development of the silver economy, and lay out 54 medical and elderly care bases in 18 provinces and autonomous regions across the country, creating the distinctive "Sinopharm Senior University" scenario, carrying out health management services such as traditional Chinese medicine services, healing classes, and medicine and food sharing the same source (药食同源, yao shi tong yuan - "medicine, food, same, origin"), and effectively enhancing the sense of gain and happiness of the elderly population. Explore health management service models with Sinopharm characteristics, precisely align with the trend of rising public health awareness and personalized demand, strengthen the coordinated linkage of retail, medical, and elderly care segments, and promote the extension of business toward prevention, diagnosis and treatment, elderly care, and even comprehensive health management.
Strengthen disease prevention and control capacity and fulfill the responsibility of "putting the people first and life first." Sinopharm possesses a sound modern pharmaceutical industry system, coordinates emergency response with routine prevention, and builds a solid barrier for national prevention and control of major infectious diseases and public health security.
Strengthen vaccine supply and innovation, building the vaccine production and supply system with the most complete product line, the largest production capacity, and stable and controllable quality in China, producing more than 50 vaccine products and supplying 80% of vaccines under the national immunization program, significantly reducing the incidence of measles, pertussis, diphtheria, tetanus, and hepatitis B in China, and ensuring the smooth implementation of the national immunization program. Advance original vaccine innovation. The world's first and highest-valency hexavalent rotavirus vaccine has been launched, achieving a leapfrog lead, and was successfully selected as one of the "Ten Landmark Achievements of Original Technology Sources of Central Enterprises," safeguarding the healthy growth of infants and young children with Sinopharm craftsmanship. Accelerate the R&D and layout of non-immunization program vaccines. Ten vaccines, including those for mpox and herpes zoster, have entered the clinical stage, helping the country enhance its capacity to respond to emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases and continuously consolidating the population's immune barrier. Promote the inheritance and innovation of traditional Chinese medicine, building a complete chain from the cultivation of authentic medicinal herbs and the excavation of classic prescriptions to industrialization, fully leveraging the unique advantage of traditional Chinese medicine in preventing diseases before they occur (治未病, zhi wei bing - "treat, not, illness"), with products such as Huoxiang Zhengqi Oral Liquid and Jizhi Syrup becoming commonly stocked medicines for the people.
Strengthen medical service capacity and consolidate the bottom-line guarantee function of the "national medicine network." Sinopharm leverages its advantages in the pharmaceutical and medical device distribution network, firmly grasps routine supply guarantees and emergency bottom-line support, and provides strong guarantees for the smooth operation of medical institutions at all levels and for the convenience of the people in seeking medical treatment and purchasing medicines nearby.
Fulfill the political responsibility of central medical material reserves, temper the emergency supply response capacity, and at critical moments be able to "dispatch supplies, ensure supply, and be reliable." In emergencies such as natural disasters and major public health incidents, the Group completes the assembly and dispatch of medical materials at the first opportunity, building a solid bottom-line defense line for emergency medical material supply. Leverage the unique advantage of the deep and extensive distribution network, building 7 hub centers, 280 prefecture- and city-level centers, and more than 600 warehousing outlets nationwide, covering more than 98% of prefecture-level administrative regions, breaking through logistics distribution bottlenecks in alpine, border, and other regions, ensuring that medicines and devices are delivered promptly to primary-level medical institutions and remote areas, and effectively improving the accessibility of medical material supply. Improve the convenience of medical treatment for the people. More than 8,000 retail pharmacies nationwide sink the pharmaceutical and device supply chain down to the front line of urban and rural communities, routinely carry out convenient health consultation services, and open up the "last kilometer" of the people seeking medical treatment and using medicines. Explore intelligent medical application systems, developing and applying intelligent triage and guidance systems in affiliated medical institutions to provide patients with one-stop service (一站式, yi zhan shi - "one, station, style") for medical treatment, effectively improving patient medical treatment efficiency and satisfaction. Improve the rare disease drug guarantee system, fulfill the social responsibility of central enterprises, and in the face of the reality that rare disease patient groups are small and medication needs are dispersed, leverage the advantages of the international platform and supply chain coordination, actively introduce a variety of clinically urgently needed rare disease "life-saving drugs," significantly reduce the medication burden, and light up the light of life for rare disease patients.
Strengthen medical insurance support capacity and help the coordinated governance of "medical treatment, medical insurance, and pharmaceuticals" go deeper and more solid. Sinopharm proactively serves the reform of the pharmaceutical and health system, adheres to the bottom line of compliant operations, actively promotes the digitalization and intelligentization of the pharmaceutical and device supply system, and safeguards the steady and sound development of health and wellness endeavors.
Adhere to strict compliance control, continuously deepen special governance of standardized operations, resolutely rectify violations such as pay-for-prescription sales and false trade, purify the business ecosystem, and maintain fair competition order. Embed compliance control into the entire chain of pharmaceutical and device procurement, warehousing, distribution, and in-hospital services, carry out penetrating supervision and information-based risk early warning for key businesses, and prevent compliance risks at the source. Simultaneously implement AI-assisted prescription review intelligent agents, covering 508 specialty drugs with a review accuracy rate exceeding 90%, promoting the shift of prescription review from post-hoc verification to pre-warning, and standardizing diagnosis, treatment, and prescribing behavior. Promote the transformation and upgrading of distribution services, build an intelligent distribution system platform, improve the turnover efficiency of pharmaceuticals and devices, reduce supply chain operating costs, and transform from traditional distributors to "smart supply chain and data service partners." Promote SPD in-hospital consumables supply chain management and hospital centralized distribution projects, help medical institutions achieve refined management of in-hospital materials, reduce unreasonable use of consumables, and safeguard the medical insurance "money bag." Support full-chain drug traceability, actively respond to the national requirements for full-chain collection and application of drug traceability codes, take the lead in piloting, participate in rule research, and set a good industry example, promote the deepened application of the drug "one-code-through" within medical institutions, open up the full-link traceability chain, and strictly prevent risks such as drug resale and false transactions.
Strengthen pharmaceutical innovation capacity and promote the deep integration of scientific and technological innovation and industrial innovation. Sinopharm places scientific and technological innovation at a key position in the overall development situation, continuously increases investment in scientific research and innovation, opens up the closed loop of "production, education, research, and application," strives to build an original technology source in the pharmaceutical field, and cultivates new momentum for development.
Deepen the reform of the innovation system, establish the Group's Science and Technology Innovation Research Institute, coordinate internal and external innovation resources, promote deep connectivity among R&D, production, and marketing links, and achieve precise alignment of research projects with market demand. Promote product iteration and comprehensive quality upgrading, increase investment in R&D and process improvement, with 126 chemical drug specifications passing the consistency evaluation of generic drug quality and efficacy, ranking among the top in the industry in the number of passed evaluations. Take the lead in formulating 238 national standards for traditional Chinese medicine formula granules, accounting for 60% of the published national standards. Strive to produce more high-quality pharmaceutical products that the people can use and afford, establishing the brand impression of "buy good medicines, find Sinopharm." Carry out tackling of key core technologies, take the lead in undertaking the construction of 2 national key laboratories, build 36 national-level strategic science and technology innovation platforms and 85 provincial- and ministerial-level R&D institutions, focus on the urgent needs of the people such as major epidemics, chronic diseases, and rare diseases, accelerate the tackling of innovative drugs, new vaccines, high-end medical devices, and modern traditional Chinese medicine technologies, with a batch of heavyweight innovative drugs such as the first domestically produced subcutaneous human immunoglobulin successively launched, and more than 30 new drugs under development, including the world's first CD81 target drug, entering the clinical stage, continuously improving the level of original innovation and achievement transformation, and ensuring the safety, autonomy, and controllability of the national pharmaceutical production and supply chain. Forward-looking layout of strategic frontier tracks, leveraging the advantages of central enterprises' patient capital and long-term capital, planning and laying out around cell and gene therapy, synthetic biology, new vaccines, targeted innovative drugs, and high-end biological products. Comprehensively embrace "AI+" technology, integrating it into core R&D links such as target discovery, drug screening, and clinical trials, optimizing R&D models, shortening R&D cycles, and reducing R&D costs.
Strengthen talent cultivation capacity and cultivate a high-quality, composite pharmaceutical and health talent team. Sinopharm adheres to the principles of the Party managing cadres and the Party managing talent, and strives to forge a pharmaceutical and health talent team that is politically sound, professionally excellent, and responsible and capable.
Precisely introduce and cultivate diverse talent. Focusing on key areas such as biomedicine, clinical medicine, and scientific research tackling, the Group introduces and cultivates strategic scientists, leading scientific and technological talents, and highly skilled industrial talents, having introduced more than 40 high-level talents at home and abroad in the past three years. Vigorously promote the spirit of craftsmanship, cultivate 11 "great craftsmen of the country" in the industry system, build distinctive labor skills competition brands such as traditional Chinese medicine and chemical analysis, organize key personnel to participate in national-level skills competitions, and consolidate the foundation of industrial innovation talent. Firmly grasp the selection, cultivation, and reserve of cadres, establish a correct orientation for selecting and employing people, continuously optimize the age and professional structure of leadership teams at all levels, and enrich composite cadres who possess both pharmaceutical professional literacy and business management capabilities. Implement the "Sinopharm Future 235 Plan" to promote young cadres to grow their abilities and take on major responsibilities. Establish a reserve pool of young cadres, relying on secondment and rotation and frontline post training to accelerate the growth and development of young cadres. Adhere to strict Party governance and strict enterprise management, promote full and rigorous self-governance of the Party with a strict tone, promote and guide Party members and cadres to establish and practice a correct view of political achievements, firmly compact the responsibility for Party conduct and clean government construction, and strengthen supervision focusing on high-risk areas such as procurement and marketing. Routinely carry out medical ethics and professional conduct education, guide medical practitioners to abide by professional ethics, adhere to clean medical practice, and take the lead in maintaining a clean and honest atmosphere (风清气正, feng qing qi zheng - "wind, clear, air, upright") in the industry ecosystem.
Looking toward the 15th Five-Year Plan period, Sinopharm will continue to raise its political positioning, adhere to the people-centered development philosophy, firmly grasp the responsibility positioning of serving the national strategy and safeguarding people's livelihood needs, consciously place the Group's reform and development and industrial layout under the overall consideration of the Healthy China construction, bravely shoulder responsibilities, accelerate innovation, improve services, and hold the bottom line, and with tangible results in safeguarding the people's health, contribute Sinopharm's strength to achieving decisive progress in the construction of a Healthy China.
Return to TopHousing is essential to people's livelihood and carries the fervent expectations of hundreds of millions of people for a better life. At present, China's housing development is shifting from "having a place to live" to "living well," and a profound transformation centered on housing quality is accelerating. In this industry transition, the Party committee of China Railway Real Estate Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as China Railway Real Estate) has established the construction of "China Railway Good Housing" as its "No. 1 Project," running the Party's leadership through the entire process of enterprise reform and development and the cultivation of new quality productive forces. The product concept of "China Railway Good Housing" was first proposed in 2022, and in 2025 the "China Railway Good Housing Construction White Paper 2025" was officially released, completing the process from the germination of the concept to the formation of a system in nearly four years. The results of China Railway Real Estate's implementation of "good housing" construction have been realized in multiple locations and have received recognition. In March 2026, China Railway Real Estate ranked 16th in the "2026 TOP 500 Real Estate Development Enterprises by Comprehensive Strength."
Strengthen political guidance and keep the strategic direction on course. The Party committee of China Railway Real Estate effectively exercises its leadership role of "setting the direction, managing the overall situation, and ensuring implementation," deeply integrating the construction of "China Railway Good Housing" into the national strategic deployment for developing new quality productive forces and promoting enterprise transformation and upgrading.
At the organizational level, a leading group for the research, development, and construction of "China Railway Good Housing" was established, headed by the main leader of the company's Party committee, and affiliated units simultaneously set up working groups, building an organizational system with unified leadership by the Party committee and responsibilities pressed down level by level. The construction goals of "good housing" and the results of cultivating new quality productive forces are incorporated into the annual key Party-building tasks and the "dual assessment" of business performance, ensuring that decisions and deployments are implemented in place.
At the strategic level, the Party committee takes the lead in systematically studying and judging industry development trends, issuing the guiding "China Railway Good Housing Research, Development, and Construction Plan" and the "Residential Product System Version 3.0," clearly proposing the construction of a development and operation system characterized by the "Four Goods and Twelve Excellences" and driven by low-carbon intelligent construction to stimulate new quality productive forces. "China Railway Good Housing" is incorporated into the key content of the enterprise's 15th Five-Year Plan, and a mechanism for quarterly special advancement by Party committee members and front-line supervision is established, ensuring that the strategic blueprint is transformed into construction drawings and real-world results.
At the research level, adhering to a problem-oriented approach, Party committee members carry out annual research topics around "good housing" construction, conduct the Party-building themed practical activity of "Creating Prosperity through Innovation, Building the Enterprise through Quality," and the "China Railway Good Housing" brand offering advice and suggestions campaign, unswervingly shaping the "China Railway Good Housing" brand; organize Party-member backbone teams to form special research groups, conduct in-depth research on fourth-generation residential benchmarks in Fuzhou, Changsha, Chengdu, and other places, and the resulting "China Railway Real Estate Intelligent Ecological Residential Research" report creatively proposes a "new courtyard model," effectively solving the pain points of complex structure, high cost, and poor privacy in vertical greening ecological residences; systematically summarize the experience of 27 prefabricated projects and put forward the concept of "full prefabrication" and a series of measures to reduce costs and increase efficiency.
Build a standard system and promote the implementation of quality. "Good housing" is not an abstract concept but a set of standard systems that are quantifiable, verifiable, and replicable. Centering on the four major characteristics of "safety, comfort, greenness, and intelligence," China Railway Real Estate has built the core framework of the "Four Goods and Twelve Excellences"—covering the four major dimensions of good design, good quality, good environment, and good service, with three categories of specific standards under each dimension, totaling 12 categories of quantifiable and verifiable indicators.
On the basis of the "Four Goods and Twelve Excellences," China Railway Real Estate has further built a "1+N" standard system—"1" is the Group's unified quality baseline, and "N" is regional characteristic standards. The Beijing region focuses on intelligence and age-friendliness for all ages, the Shanghai region emphasizes technology and customization, the Shenzhen region is closely tied to high density and space utilization, the Chengdu region highlights the synergy between products and services, and the Xi'an region is grounded in historical culture and ecological endowments. The management and control system in which the Group sets standards and strategy and regions implement and execute has found a balance between scaled replication and personalized customization.
In 2025, the "Residential Product System Version 3.0" released by China Railway Real Estate preliminarily constructed a modular standard system containing 17 first-level modules, 109 second-level modules, and 378 third-level modules.
Drive the innovation engine and forge core momentum. New quality productive forces are generated by revolutionary technological breakthroughs, innovative allocation of production factors, and deep industrial transformation and upgrading. The Party committee of China Railway Real Estate transforms the Party's political and organizational advantages into momentum for scientific and technological innovation and industrial innovation, continuously tackling key problems around "safety, comfort, greenness, and intelligence."
In the green and low-carbon field, the Guiyang China Railway Yue Shan Hu Zhen Cang project takes the "vertical ecological community" as its core concept and successfully overcame 12 technical difficulties including three-dimensional irrigation and root puncture prevention; through BIM forward design, it achieved a high usable area ratio of 92% to 98% and a 330% improvement in lighting efficiency; it innovatively built a trinity ecological matrix of "vertical forest + sponge community + photovoltaic-storage-charging-flexibility." In the smart community field, the Shanghai China Railway·World Expo Cloud Realm project has created a benchmark for smart communities, using the "Angel's Eye" to intelligently safeguard children's safety, utilizing a high-altitude object trajectory analysis system to ensure community tranquility, and achieving whole-house smart voice and remote control.
In the fourth-generation residential field, the Xi'an China Railway·Yun Xiu Qu Jiang project has carried out comprehensive product innovation, creating product highlights such as dual-U panoramic cabin products and sky gardens, achieving a usable area ratio of over 130% across the entire product line. The China Railway Yue Yun Fu project in the same city achieved a usable area ratio of approximately 140% through multiple gift modules such as bay windows, balconies, terraces, and double-height spaces. In the health and elderly care field, China Railway Real Estate relies on the China Railway International Eco-City to pilot first, regularly holding health lectures, senior yoga, outings, shopping, and other activities, becoming a representative institution of high-end brand elderly care in Guiyang; building the Sun Valley 5G health care community, based on China Unicom's 5G network, applying multiple intelligent Internet of Things technologies, combined with a health management service platform, collecting users' blood pressure, blood sugar, heart rate, and other data through wearable devices and small household devices, forming electronic health records, and realizing remote health consultation and the formulation of personalized exercise, diet, and rehabilitation plans; the China Railway Great Health·Wo Shan Health Care Valley project pioneered a trinity health care operation model integrating home, community, and institution, integrating eight business formats including a secondary specialized hospital, community health service center, and all-age health care club, fully realizing a new pattern of major health services in which the young are nurtured, the young are entertained, the middle-aged are delighted, and the elderly are supported.
Build a solid quality foundation and strengthen full-cycle management and control. China Railway Real Estate regards excellent quality as the lifeline of the enterprise and has built a full-chain quality management and control system from design to delivery.
The Rongdong E cluster and Xiongdong A unit resettlement housing projects in Xiong'an New Area are landmark practices of China Railway Real Estate's agency construction capability. The total construction area of the two clusters is nearly 4 million square meters, covering nearly 19,000 resettlement housing units and multiple primary and secondary schools and community supporting facilities. After winning the bid in early 2020, overall completion was achieved in only 21 months, and full delivery was realized in 22 months. Through 9 rounds of centralized delivery, all 18,967 resettlement housing units achieved "zero delay and zero rejection," with a 100% acceptance rate for housing handover, and all residences met the two-star standard for green buildings, successively winning 15 provincial and municipal quality project awards including the "Xiong'an Quality Cup." The Beijing Shunyi Yinghuayuan property rights replacement project has a total construction area of 1.109 million square meters, planning 79 residential buildings and 28 supporting facilities, resettling 4,319 households, and by the end of 2025, property rights certificates were centrally issued to more than 2,000 households.
In terms of quality management and control mechanisms, China Railway Real Estate has built a three-dimensional quality management system of "top-level design—process management and control—technical support," releasing the "Three-Year Action Plan for Quality Improvement" and the "Engineering Management and Control Guidelines." An intelligent engineering supervision system has been established, realizing digital, penetrating management of key scenarios such as supervision duty performance and model acceptance. A catalog covering 37 items of new technologies, processes, materials, and equipment and 12 categories of standardized manuals including the "Ten Hard Rules for Leakage Prevention" have been released, forming a lean construction toolkit covering all specialties.
In supply chain construction, a trinity strategy of "benchmarking—database building—centralized procurement" has been implemented to build a solid quality foundation from the source. By benchmarking against advanced industry standards, a resource database of 6 major categories of high-quality construction suppliers has been established, strictly controlling the supplier admission gate; centralized procurement of key materials and equipment has been promoted, with a coverage rate exceeding 85%, realizing intensive allocation of high-quality resources, ensuring the stability of product quality through the certainty of the supply chain, and effectively enhancing product value.
(Party Committee of China Railway Real Estate Group Co., Ltd.)
Return to TopUpholding the Party's leadership and strengthening Party building are the "root" and "soul" of state-owned enterprises. On June 15, 2026, the National Party Building Work Symposium was held in Beijing, and the meeting made arrangements for studying and implementing Xi Jinping's Thought on Party Building. Since the Hainan Free Trade Port began independent customs operations, power supply security and energy transition have faced entirely new opportunities and challenges. Thoroughly studying and implementing Xi Jinping's Thought on Party Building, deeply grasping the core essence of the Fourteen Commitments (十四个坚持), promoting the transformation of the Party's political advantages and organizational advantages into development advantages, and leading and guaranteeing the enterprise's high-quality development with high-quality Party building — this is the era-defining proposition that China Huadian Corporation Hainan Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Huadian Hainan Company) must answer well.
Supporting the "Five Directions for Strengthening." The Party's political building is the Party's fundamental building and determines the direction and effectiveness of Party building. For state-owned enterprises, the key to realizing the transformation of political advantages into development advantages lies in improving political judgment, political comprehension, and political execution, and organically integrating the enterprise's development strategy into the overall situation of the Party's and the nation's undertakings. The Party Committee of Huadian Hainan Company, focusing on the overall national strategic situation and anchoring the direction of green and low-carbon development, has advanced agricultural-solar complementarity, fishery-solar complementarity, and other new energy projects in light of local conditions across 14 cities and counties, taking the lead in achieving 100% clean energy installed capacity. Entering the period of the 15th Five-Year Plan, Huadian Hainan Company is systematically optimizing its industrial layout, closely following Hainan's "Five Directions for Strengthening" strategy: strengthening "strengthening through seeds" by supplying green electricity to relevant enterprises in Sanya and providing carbon footprint traceability services; expanding "strengthening through the sea" by steadily advancing offshore wind power and exploring the utilization of marine new energy such as wave energy; anchoring "strengthening through space" by providing hydrogen energy and green electricity guarantees for the Free Trade Port's space launch activities; deepening "strengthening through green development" by steadily delivering green electricity to Hainan to help transform the energy structure; and consolidating "strengthening through digitalization" by providing integrated energy services to digital industry users and empowering the digital economy.
Building strong organizations to lay a solid foundation. A rigorous organizational system is where the Party's strengths and power lie. The Party Committee of Huadian Hainan Company adheres to "building Party branches on projects," promoting the extension of Party organizations to the front lines of business and their deep integration with development. At the organizational structure level, a special work team for improving project quality, directly managed by the Party Committee, has been established to coordinate professional forces in planning, engineering, finance, and market development, precisely matching user needs. At the emergency support level, Party member commando teams hold the front line of operations and maintenance and the smart centralized control hub, relying on a new energy smart management platform based on "cloud deployment + intelligent algorithms + visualized large screens" to build an operations and maintenance model of "remote centralized control, tiered diagnosis, unmanned duty, and minimal staffing," effectively transforming organizational effectiveness into a solid barrier for power supply security. At the same time, facing emerging business forms such as hydrogen energy and integrated energy services, the company leverages the organizational resource advantages of the group system to promote the implementation in Hainan of the full hydrogen energy industry chain of Huadian Kerong, the transmission and distribution equipment and professional teams of Guodian Nanjing Automation, and national-level key scientific research projects of Huadian Electric Power Research Institute, providing guarantees for seizing new tracks and cultivating new momentum.
Talent support to build momentum for the future. Talent is the first resource. The Party Committee of Huadian Hainan Company thoroughly implements the Party's organizational line for the new era, attaches equal importance to political standards and professional competence, and improves the full-chain mechanism of "selecting, cultivating, managing, and employing" talent. It innovatively implements the "Hundred Craftsmen" integrated introduction project, breaking through enterprise boundaries to gather technical backbone from inside and outside the system to strengthen the front lines of project construction; deepens industry-university-research cooperation with universities such as North China Electric Power University and scientific research institutes, builds practical training platforms based on ongoing projects and frontier topics, and cultivates composite talents in a tiered and categorized manner. In 2026, one Party member of the company was awarded the title of "Outstanding Communist Party Member of Hainan Province," and two Party members and one Party branch received commendations from the Hainan Provincial State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission under the "Two Excellences and One Advanced" program. Adhering to the two-way cultivation mechanism, and relying on the "Free Trade Port Practice Post," Party member vanguard teams, service teams, and commando teams, the company guides Party members to shoulder heavy burdens, take the lead, and charge at the front in major tasks, effectively transforming Party building advantages into development momentum for breaking through difficulties, and accelerating the company's transformation and upgrading from traditional power generation to new business forms such as integrated energy services and carbon finance.
Integrated mutual reinforcement to improve effectiveness. Adhere to planning, deploying, implementing, and inspecting Party building work and business work together. The Party Committee of Huadian Hainan Company has upgraded and built the "Free Trade Port Heart Power" brand, innovatively carried out the "unity of knowledge and action" learning and discussion mechanism, organically combining theoretical study with work review, problem analysis, and experience exchange, expanding coverage from Party members to all employees, further consolidating ideological consensus and strengthening collaborative execution capabilities. The results of the deep integration of Party building and business have been demonstrated in multiple dimensions: completing Hainan Province's first green electricity transaction, guaranteeing green electricity supply for the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference, donating 10,000 green electricity certificates to the 6th Asian Beach Games to offset the event's carbon emissions, providing traceable clean energy with green certificates to users in the seed industry and digital industry, helping enterprises respond to international carbon tariff requirements, and leading and guaranteeing the enterprise's high-quality development with high-quality Party building.
Serving the people with an initial commitment to expand the landscape. The Party Committee of Huadian Hainan Company has always practiced the corporate mission of "dedicating clean energy and creating a better life." In photovoltaic project construction, it has innovatively explored the three-dimensional composite utilization model of "generating electricity above the panels, planting below the panels, and aquaculture between the panels," organically integrating agricultural planting, aquaculture, and new energy development, driving farmers to obtain land rent and labor income, and achieving co-construction between enterprise and locality with mutual benefit and win-win results. Facing the new stage of the Free Trade Port's independent customs operations, it has carried out zero-carbon themed publicity in Sanya Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City to promote the popularization of green development concepts; connected with Baisha Li Autonomous County and Qiongzhong Li and Miao Autonomous County, deeply explored characteristic agricultural resources, and promoted the listing and sale of local high-quality rural revitalization products on Huadian's e-commerce platform. From power supply security during major festivals to serving national strategic industries such as space launches and rural revitalization, Huadian Hainan Company has always defined its development positioning in fulfilling political and social responsibilities.
Looking to the future, the Party Committee of Huadian Hainan Company will unswervingly uphold the Party's overall leadership, use political building to steer the direction of development, use organizational system building to gather joint forces for tackling difficulties, use the deep integration of Party building and business to expand the path of advantage transformation, deeply cultivate the wind, solar, storage, and hydrogen multi-clean-energy fields, fully implement Hainan's "Five Directions for Strengthening" strategic deployment, continuously transform the Party's political and organizational advantages into strong momentum for green, low-carbon, high-quality development, and contribute Huadian Hainan's strength to the great cause of building a strong country and the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
(Party Committee of China Huadian Corporation Hainan Co., Ltd.)
Return to TopBy: 季栋梁
Every local writer has a piece of land they have cultivated deeply. Around Xihaigu, I have written for decades, producing full-length novels such as Notes from Shangzhuang, The Brocade Record, Haiyuan Book, The Banpo Anecdotes, Running for Life, and The Spring of Wild Wheat Mounds, as well as numerous novellas and short stories. I have written about suffering, about pathos, about helplessness, about cries, about perseverance, about resistance. I know well the confusion and pain of the elders and fellow villagers on this land, and I also know their dreams and hopes. I have grown increasingly attached to the mortal world of endurance, tenacity, and survival against the wind in which I have lived, and I hope to use words to preserve the gradually fading local landscapes, customs, traditions, history, and culture — that is the foundation of my emotional sustenance.
Writing Notes on Xihaigu came as a surprise, yet it was entirely within reason.
In August 1949, the Pingliang Prefectural Committee of Gansu Province established a "Xihaigu Bandit-Suppression and Special-Agent-Cleansing Work Committee" composed of the county party secretaries of Xiji, Haiyuan, and Guyuan. The name Xihaigu originated from this. As an administrative division, Xihaigu appeared in October 1953, when Gansu Province established the Xihaigu Hui Autonomous Region under the Pingliang Special District, governing the three counties of Xiji, Haiyuan, and Guyuan. In November 1955, it was renamed the Guyuan Hui Autonomous Prefecture. As an administrative division, the name Xihaigu existed for barely two years before sinking into the depths of history.
Xihaigu lies in a zone where agrarian culture and nomadic culture clashed and merged. It was a necessary passage on ancient routes such as the Silk Road and the Xiaoguan Road. Its important geographical position made it a strategically vital location that many militaries will fight for (兵家必争, bing jia bi zheng - "soldier, house, must, contend"), and the wars and battlefields recorded in military histories are everywhere to be seen. Cities, forts, passes, camps, and stockades — the historical sites bear a scene of widespread warfare or chaos (遍地狼烟, bian di lang yan - "everywhere, ground, wolf, smoke"). The ancients wrote hundreds upon hundreds of poems: "Gradually I feel the wind and sand darken, as I am about to reach Xiaoguan. Children can probe for fire, women know how to sew flags. The rivers have few fish-bearing egrets, the forests many arrow-struck elk. Briefly come to this land of warhorses, I dare not labor over poetry." (Tang Dynasty, Li Changfu, "Climbing Lintao, Gazing at Xiaoguan"). Walk into a village, and you may walk into a stretch of distant history and hear its distant echoes.
Successive dynasties never gave up managing Xihaigu. During the Warring States period, Wushi County and Chaona County were established; the Western Han established Anding Commandery; the Northern Wei established Gaoping Town; the Northern Zhou changed it to Yuan Prefecture; the Yuan established the Anxi Prince's Mansion; the Ming established Guyuan Garrison; the Qing elevated it to a directly administered prefecture... The First Emperor of Qin offered sacrifices to the waters at Chaona Lake; Emperor Wu of Han toured Anding Commandery six times; Emperor Taizong of Tang viewed the horse herds at Yuan Prefecture; Genghis Khan spent his summers at Mount Liupan... The Warring States Qin Great Wall, Xiaoguan, the Seven Passes of Yuan Prefecture, the Anxi Prince's Mansion, the Nine Border Towns... Hence the people of Xihaigu proudly say: "In history, Xihaigu was a great place."
Yet, although successive dynasties managed it for thousands of years, Xihaigu was poor for thousands of years. Opening volume after volume of historical records, one sees natural disasters, man-made calamities, war, banditry, and flight; a withered economy, a closed-off society, and a hard-pressed livelihood... By the end of the Qing Dynasty, Xihaigu was already a vast area of scorched, barren land (赤地千里, chi di qian li - "red, ground, thousand, li") and a place where most houses are deserted (十室九空, shi shi jiu kong - "ten, room, nine, empty"). Zuo Zongtang, passing through Xihaigu, sighed in a memorial to the throne that its "bitter barrenness was the most severe under heaven." The United Nations Development Programme defined it as one of the world's "most unsuitable regions for human habitation." Looking back at this land weathered by so much hardship, its history is like a black-and-white documentary — gray and heavy.
As the saying goes: "In life, two things matter: food and clothing." I lived in Xihaigu for more than 30 years, and from my earliest memories, people were struggling almost entirely for food and clothing. "A man lives seventy autumns, all for a single mouthful of food." Xihaigu sayings about eating: "If you don't lick the bowl, you go half hungry"; "Save a handful a day, in three years buy a horse"; "A cat eating paste — always scratching at its mouth"; "They say they're raising sheep, but they're waiting for the sheep to die" — meaning that while a sheep is alive you can't eat it; only when it dies can you eat it. "Tear the skin off the steamed bun, the dog tears the skin off the face." When making offerings at the New Year, because there was no white flour, people could only wrap a layer of white dough around a black-flour bun. The children would tear off the bun's skin to eat, and so this proverb arose. "Xihaigu has three treasures: potatoes, potatoes, and potatoes." "In the morning we eat roasted potatoes, at noon boiled potatoes, in the evening steamed potatoes — see how our life goes, three meals a day, never the same twice." Humorous, isn't it? And how helpless. My childhood dream was to become a person who "ate from the grain ration," so that I would "have a wheat harvest every month," completely escaping the precarious life of depending on heaven for food. As for clothing — "no new clothes in ten years." New clothes, once made, would first have patches of old cloth sewn onto the places most prone to wear — the seat and the fronts of the thighs — with dense rings of stitching, so that the seat looked like a target for shooting practice. The patches on several key spots were made of leather. Tanned sheepskin is softer than flour, smooth as silk. It rather calls to mind British hunting jackets and suits. "For food, rely on broomcorn millet; for clothing, rely on hides." Fortunately, there was the sheepskin coat: "Worn by day, used as a cover by night, worn fur-side-out when it's cloudy or rainy, hung on the wall to dry when lice bite, and sold for cash when money runs out!" "A goatskin coat covers the backside — with what heart can one sing songs!"
In 1982, the state launched the "Sanxi Poverty Alleviation and Development Plan," opening the prelude to China's regional, systematic, organized, and large-scale "development-oriented" poverty alleviation. "Sanxi" refers to Hexi and Dingxi in Gansu and Xihaigu in Ningxia. Xihaigu emerged from history. The primary and core task of "Sanxi" poverty alleviation was to solve people's food and clothing problems.
In March 1994, the State Council promulgated the National Seven-Year Priority Poverty Alleviation Program. Nine "state-level poor counties (districts)" in Ningxia — Xiji County, Haiyuan County (later placed under Zhongwei City), Guyuan County (today's Yuanzhou District), Pengyang County, Jingyuan County, Longde County, Tongxin County, Yanchi County, and Hongsibu District — were included in the "poverty alleviation priority program," covering the entire Xihaigu poverty-stricken area. The Outline of China's Rural Poverty Alleviation and Development (2011–2020), issued at the end of 2011, included the Liupan Mountain area among the country's 14 contiguous destitute areas, making Xihaigu the main battlefield and core zone of Ningxia's battle against poverty.
In the words of the people of Xihaigu: the root of poverty runs deep; a life so bitter that even planted in a vat of honey it wouldn't turn sweet. Type Xihaigu into the internet, and immediately "China's poorest place" appears — without even a "one of." The "honor" of "China's crown of poverty" is steeped in memories of bitterness and distress. Anyone who went to Xihaigu in those years would be having a wide range of conflicting emotions (百感交集, bai gan jiao ji - "hundred, feeling, intersect, mix") and sigh with the lament that its "bitter barrenness was the most severe under heaven."
As the battle against poverty and the march toward moderate prosperity advanced with force, and as the process of entering a moderately prosperous society was launched, Ningxia made a public commitment to the people: to complete the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects by 2020, in step with the rest of the country. Ningxia's plain areas belong to the Yellow River basin — no problem there. But Xihaigu left people rather doubtful. I set out for Xihaigu.
From resettlement camps to ecological migration, from returning farmland to forest to closing hillsides for grazing, from small-watershed management to high-standard farmland, from renovating dilapidated houses and cave dwellings to new homes for farmers on the frontier, from "Sanxi" poverty alleviation to the Fujian-Ningxia collaboration... The poverty alleviation campaign brought changing rapidly and remarkably every day (日新月异, ri xin yue yi - "day, new, month, different") changes to Xihaigu. In particular, the Yellow River-lifting irrigation project, through continuous expansion and technological upgrading, lifted the Yellow River five or six hundred meters and sent life-giving water there, thoroughly resolving the choking shortcoming of "nine droughts in ten years" that had constrained Xihaigu's development. Xihaigu, which once depended on heaven for food, has also become part of the "Yellow River basin." Nourished by Yellow River water, its modernization is surging forward. Specialty plantings that benefit both ecology and economy — peonies, quinoa, marigolds, yellowhorn, rapeseed, peonies again — have made this land thriving and full of vitality (欣欣向荣, xin xin xiang rong - "flourishing, towards, prosperous"). Walking across the land of Xihaigu, one sees villages finding a new way or hope after a setback (柳暗花明, liu an hua ming - "willow, dark, flower, bright"), terraced fields arranged in an aesthetically pleasing, irregular way (错落有致, cuo luo you zhi - "scattered, fall, have, order") — picturesque as poetry — and the cattle songs and sheep bleats rising and falling in succession (此起彼伏, ci qi bi fu - "this, rise, that, fall") across the mountains and rivers, rendering the transformation of the landscape, the victory of the ecology, the rise of industry, and the beauty of the fields. One feels the tenacity and gentleness in the very bones of the Loess Plateau. There is no doubt that Xihaigu will enter a moderately prosperous society in step with the rest of the country. Having written about this land all along, how could I miss this world-stirring transformation of the era? I would write one, two full-length novels. But as I walked deeper and deeper, I suddenly decided to first write a work of nonfiction. Xihaigu's escape from poverty and march to moderate prosperity touches the most fundamental transformation at the very depths of Xihaigu's life, manifesting the historical depth of China's poverty alleviation and interpreting that the times are destiny. Only through nonfiction writing could this epic historical transformation be presented with greater truth.
I set aside the novel I was writing and began work on Notes on Xihaigu.
Moving from fiction writing to nonfiction writing, I felt somewhat at a loss at first. There are many writers on the theme of the battle against poverty, and quite a few write from the top down: decisions, measures, advancement, struggle, investment, stages, results, achievements... Writing that way is easy enough. I lived and worked in Xihaigu for more than 30 years. Later I left this land and worked as a journalist, and then entered a government research department, returning to Xihaigu several times each year to interview and investigate. I have a deeper, broader, and more official understanding of the entire process of the battle against poverty, from decision-making to implementation, and a comprehensive accumulation of materials — anything missing would be within easy reach. However, I thought that the ultimate touchstone of Xihaigu's escape from poverty and march to moderate prosperity is the ordinary people at the bottom — whether they have truly benefited. And as for reportage literature, it must not only "report" but also be "literature": it must not only be written but also move people. How could I write this epic-themed work with solidity and weight, with delicacy and plainness, so that it is moving and gives off the fragrance of the soil? How could I pay solemn respect and deep love to the land of my hometown?
After a period of reflection, I decided to enter from a small angle and write from the bottom up. Original-ecology writing was undoubtedly the most fitting choice. Original-ecology writing requires rich, truthful, and vivid details — that is the key to a work moving people's hearts. When I write a work, I first weigh how many details I possess before deciding whether to put pen to paper. Rich details allow me to write naturally and fluently. Especially for nonfiction writing, materials, introductions, and strategies others can give you, but details no one can give you. They cannot be fabricated or imagined, nor can they be obtained through arranged interviews. One must sink down, go deep into the daily life of the writing subjects to capture and experience them — three meals a day, a word or two, a smile or a frown, a joy or a rage... Details are hidden in people's daily life of this kind. One must let the subjects of the writing remain entirely in their daily state while writing about them, truthfully reproducing, enriching, and fleshing out the core of this transformation of the era, adding to the work's weight, historical sense, and depth.
Therefore, I adopted atypical interviews and refused arranged interviews, because in arranged interviews, the process, villages, people, stories — even the narration and language — are all packaged and standardized. In my interviews, I went about alone, going deeper, deeper, and deeper still — bumping into, colliding with, discovering, capturing, feeling, gathering, distilling... I began writing in 2018 and conducted more than 40 interviews over two years, without disturbing any level of government, without a single arranged interview. The people, stories, and details I interviewed and wrote about in the book were all encountered and collided with during my walks across this land. When the writing went poorly and stalled, I would go to Xihaigu, to bump and collide — a scene, a phrase, the collision of a word could open up all the channels of my writing. Original-ecology writing is more time-consuming and laborious than broad-brush writing, but for a work of nonfiction it is extremely valuable. It fills the work with the smoke of daily life and the smell of the soil. Only the most down-to-earth details, stories, words, and people can avoid the essential sense of disconnection — even falseness — between the people, stories, and language when they are narrated.
I have been writing fiction for decades. Unlike fiction, as a witness, observer, and writer of Xihaigu's practice of escaping poverty and achieving prosperity, I feared writing something untrue and being mocked — even scolded — by my fellow villagers; I feared writing something not delicate enough, unable to give off the fragrance of the soil. Therefore, I was extremely cautious. Writing Notes on Xihaigu came as a surprise, but it had to be written within reason.
(The author is Vice Chairman of the Ningxia Writers Association and winner of the Ninth Lu Xun Literature Prize.)
Return to TopBy: 李颖
As the frontline of China's reform and opening up, Shenzhen has written a magnificent epic of transformation from a small fishing village into an international metropolis. In 2020, at the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, General Secretary Xi Jinping described Shenzhen as "a miracle in the history of world development created by the Chinese people." In 2025, on the occasion of the 45th anniversary of the establishment of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, China Media Group's first original boutique short-drama collection, Miracle, uses the format of "anthology drama + micro-short drama" to present the extraordinary and magnificent (波澜壮阔, bo lan zhuang kuo - "wave, surge, magnificent, vast") development journey of Shenzhen since the reform and opening up. The short-drama collection Miracle consists of 24 episodes in total, made up of 15 independent unit stories, including: Breaking Through the Southern Pass, Niu Niu, Late-Night Food Stalls, First Reunion, Mangrove Years, Faint Light, Market Opening, The City's Piano, Love Song 1999, Jungle Adventure, Matter of Top Priority, The Impossible Order, Vertical Life, The AI Era, and Wing Chun. The series has aired on CCTV-1, CCTV-8, and platforms such as Tencent, with cumulative viewership of 496 million person-times and a cumulative audience of 160 million people. It ranks first on Tencent Video's reality drama chart for TV series and on Maoyan's short-drama popularity chart, with topic readership across the internet exceeding 2 billion, and it received the "Annual Outstanding Micro-Short Drama" honor at the 31st Shanghai TV Festival Magnolia Forum.
In the past, film and television works depicting and promoting a city's development history often adopted a comprehensive, zero-focus narrative approach — that is, based on a grand perspective and chronological order, comprehensively presenting every period and every aspect of a city's development and change. Although comprehensive and objective, the bystander's perspective and slow narrative pace have increasingly failed to satisfy audiences' needs for deep immersion and rapid viewing. The short-drama collection Miracle uses more than 1,000 real stories collected through a global solicitation as its blueprint, breaking down the Shenzhen miracle into 15 extraordinary stories of striving forged by ordinary people. Among them, Breaking Through the Southern Pass uses the growth story of a novice "building runner" to showcase the grassroots strength and hardware power of Huaqiangbei, China's largest electronics distribution center; The City's Piano uses the story of a couple participating in the construction of the Guomao Building to bear witness to the "one floor in three days" Shenzhen speed; Mangrove Years uses the struggle, transformation, and growth of a mangrove development salesman to reflect Shenzhen's shift from rapid economic development to a development philosophy of harmonious coexistence between humanity and nature; The AI Era uses the amusing stories of a robot family housekeeper to showcase Shenzhen's robotics industry ecosystem... The 15 stories are independent, brief, and fast-paced, better suited to the "short, fast, punchy" viewing habits. At the same time, by reflecting the development and change of a great era through the life changes of ordinary, small figures, they make Shenzhen's development journey across the economy, culture, ecology, technology, governance, and other fields more three-dimensional, real, and tangible. In particular, the frequent use of time-space montage, tilt-shift, and macro photography to present the diachronic evolution of famous landmarks such as Shenzhen Bay, the Guomao Building, and Lianhua Hill fully highlights the Shenzhen miracle through contrasts between old and new and visual impact. The restoration and presentation of historical details such as Hong Kong-style clothing, pagers, food stalls, and the "infrastructure maniac," "jumping into the sea to start a business," and "night-school study" phenomena evoke viewers' nostalgia and collective memory, enabling them to see through the prism of Shenzhen the development and changes of China since the reform and opening up and the vivid picture across all fields, refracting the Chinese miracle from the Shenzhen miracle.
What is rare and precious (难能可贵, nan neng ke gui - "difficult, to be able, can, precious") is that the short-drama collection Miracle defines ordinary people as the protagonists and heroes of the era, unifying individual destiny with the development of the city and the country. The series attributes the extraordinary Shenzhen miracle and Chinese miracle to every ordinary person who strives, fully expressing tribute to and praise for the power of individual striving. As mentioned in Faint Light: the true miracle is people like us — beams of faint light; however weak, as long as we come together, we are enough to light up the entire city. Whether it is the "dream chasers" in Late-Night Food Stalls — street vendors, white-collar workers, taxi drivers, and others from people from all walks of life and all parts of the country (五湖四海, wu hu si hai - "five lakes, four seas") — or the "building runner" in Breaking Through the Southern Pass, the infrastructure workers in The City's Piano, the entrepreneurs and cleaners in Vertical Life... every ordinary person's striving is forging Shenzhen's extraordinary miracle. To enhance emotional impact, the short-drama collection Miracle skillfully frames its stories in a vivid human world full of the flavor of everyday life and the warmth of the mundane, prominently presenting the choices, struggles, and growth on ordinary people's paths of striving, as well as the warmth and healing brought by love, family affection, and friendship — such as the novice "building runner" who, just entering the profession, is initially ostracized by peers and scolded by merchants due to unfamiliarity with routes, feeling frustrated and helpless, and the heartwarming moments of entrepreneurs from other places helping each other, encouraging each other, and getting through difficulties together. Real situations, similar experiences, and shared feelings allow viewers to see themselves on the road of striving in the characters on screen. Focusing on the people, praising the people, and responding to the people — this is precisely the main reason the short-drama collection Miracle has received widespread acclaim.
Looking further, the short-drama collection Miracle also strives to reveal the intrinsic driving forces behind creating miracles from the countless real stories of ordinary people forging the extraordinary. Through varied styles such as suspense, youth, romance, nostalgia, and comedy, as well as narrative techniques including time-space travel, multi-line narration, and suspense-building, it keeps the plot full of aesthetic interest and artistic tension, firmly holding viewers' attention on the delicate ideological transformations and spiritual support that ordinary people experience when facing and overcoming difficulties. Within the everyday life philosophy of ordinary individuals, it completes the visual presentation of the special economic zone spirit and the spirit of reform and opening up, inspiring viewers through deeper-level spiritual resonance and cultural identity to integrate the special economic zone spirit and the spirit of reform and opening up into their own self-development and striving, coalescing a joint force of striving on the new journey of Chinese modernization. Market Opening records the hardship and difficulty experienced when the first opening bell of New China's capital market rang in Shenzhen; persisting in opening the market amid the "tug-of-war" among multiple forces is a vivid expression of emancipating the mind, daring to venture, daring to try, and daring to be the first to do something (敢为人先, gan wei ren xian - "dare, for, person, first"); the entrepreneurs in Vertical Life and Faint Light who fail repeatedly and fight again after each defeat are typical representatives of the spirit of unswerving and persistent (坚持不懈, jian chi bu xie - "persist, not, slack") hard work and down-to-earth effort; in The Impossible Order, assistance to special groups and coordinated cooperation with foreign manufacturers embody the striving spirit and chivalrous ethos of openness and inclusiveness, helping each other in times of need (守望相助, shou wang xiang zhu - "watch, hope, mutually, help"), and helping those in danger or distress (扶危助困, fu wei zhu kun - "assist, danger, help, hardship"). At the same time, against the backdrop of micro-short dramas having become one of the "three new exports" of cultural going-global, the short-drama collection Miracle conducts cinematic explorations of topics of common global concern — individual subjectivity, technology and ethics, ecology and development, efficiency and fairness, and the spirit of humanitarianism — reflecting a clear proposition of bridging cultural differences, enhancing value identification, and promoting international communication, which helps better tell China's story and spread the Chinese spirit to the world.
General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: "Literature and art can only develop and prosper by taking root in real life and keeping pace with the trends of the times; they can only be full of vitality by conforming to the people's will and reflecting the people's concerns." The outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan proposes developing new cultural business forms such as micro-short dramas. The short-drama collection Miracle uses the micro-short drama form that is popular and well-received by the public (喜闻乐见, xi wen le jian - "happy, hear, enjoy, see") to tell the story of ordinary people forging the extraordinary Shenzhen miracle and Chinese miracle. This series not only possesses the fast pace and strong plot characteristics of short dramas, but also features prominent themes, well-rounded characters, rigorous narration, and profound conception, truly achieving depth within brevity and refinement within compactness, providing a classic model for micro-short dramas to write the spirit of the times and promote the main theme. In addition, the series' new models of script co-creation, participatory communication, and cultural-tourism integration also provide ideas for promoting the flourishing development of new mass literature and art.
Return to TopBy: 陈庆修
When I was a graduate student at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, I studied under Mr. Jiang Long. He was a renowned physical chemist in our country, and his teaching, imparting knowledge, and resolving doubts (传道授业解惑, chuan dao shou ye jie huo - "pass on the way, teach the profession, solve doubts, clarify confusion") need hardly be elaborated upon. What truly took deep root in my heart, however, was a casual gesture of his. That matter was very small—so small that it could easily be overlooked.
One autumn that year, I accompanied him to an international conference on colloid and interface science in another city. In the corridor outside the conference hall, scholars from various countries were holding the latest issues of foreign-language journals, chatting with great enthusiasm. After a brief midday rest, I went to the lounge to invite him to enter the hall together. As I pushed open the door, the scene before me left me stunned: he, an academician, was holding an ordinary high school chemistry textbook, wearing a pair of reading glasses, reading with rapt attention, and at the points that struck a chord, a smile would ripple across the corners of his mouth.
In my impression, an academician's desk ought to be piled high with foreign-language journals and cutting-edge monographs. Perhaps my astonishment was written all over my face, for he looked up, smiled, and closed the book, as if recommending a treasure: "This textbook is compiled extremely well. It can help one see the road one has traveled and inspire thinking—never underestimate it." On the way to the conference hall, he added another remark: "You might think about this: most of the difficult problems that now trap you have their roots hidden in these pages."
At that time, I could not fully grasp the weight of these words. Some words cannot be understood at the moment because one has not yet reached the place where they are needed; truly comprehending them came only many years later.
In our line of work, we are always pushed along by the tide of "seeking novelty," and new journals and literature grow thicker year by year. As time goes on, one can easily fall into a misconception: feeling that basic theory is not worth delving into deeply, as if these principles are understood by everyone. But "everyone knows" and "everyone truly understands" have always been two different things. A simple sentence in a textbook like "structure determines properties"—when experiments run into anomalous data and research hits a dead end, it is often precisely this sentence that pulls one back to the right direction.
The "road one has traveled" that Mr. Jiang spoke of, upon careful savoring, contains two layers of profundity.
One layer is the road of knowledge. The conclusions sketched in a few strokes in textbooks may, behind them, hold truths that humanity groped for hundreds of years before daring to write down. The periodic law of elements, chemical bonds, oxidation-reduction—the birth of each concept embodies the trial and error and hesitation of countless predecessors. If one merely takes them as ready-made answers to be copied, scholarship becomes shallow; if one treats established conclusions as questions and re-derives them anew, then cognition gains depth. Only with this depth can one distinguish which "innovations" are truly taking a step forward and which are merely old theories wearing a new shell. Fixating only on the fads of the moment leaves one unsteady underfoot. In research, what is frightening is never slow progress, but walking down a path one does not truly understand.
The other layer is the road of conducting oneself and pursuing scholarship. Having already reached such a height, Mr. Jiang was still willing to lower his posture during breaks in the conference and quietly study an introductory reader. This teaching by example carries more weight than any words. From this I came to understand: those who have truly mastered scholarship never fear returning to the starting point. Returning to the starting point is by no means a retreat; rather, it is watering the roots of the great tree of learning. He spoke little, but his actions remained consistent throughout (始终如一, shi zhong ru yi - "always, as, like, one"). Many of Mr. Jiang's accomplishments were precisely cultivated from these seemingly simple foundations. Even with remarkable achievements (成就斐然, cheng jiu fei ran - "achievement, outstanding, brilliant"), he always sought answers from the fundamentals. Only now have I fully understood his well-intentioned design: if one only looks up at the heights and chases hot topics, unable to see the road beneath one's feet, then no matter how ingenious one's experimental designs, one cannot build a stable edifice of scholarship.
Mr. Jiang's lectures, his revisions of manuscripts, and his instruction in professional knowledge and research methods were all deliberate teachings. But that scene in the lounge—he had no intention of teaching; he was simply reading the textbook in his hands with calm composure. It was precisely this unintentional moment that gave me the most precious lesson. The most powerful part of education often lies not on the podium, but in the details students happen to encounter: the teacher need not speak; every word and deed already reveals the principles he upholds.
It has been nearly four years since Mr. Jiang passed away. Yet whenever I feel bewildered amid the ever-growing piles of literature, that image always surfaces in my mind: an elderly man with a head of white hair, a thin textbook spread open on his knees, reading with utter concentration. I often tell this story to the younger generation: truly superior scholarship never hangs in midair; it is rooted in the most fundamental principles. Having traveled ten thousand li, never forget the road you have come.
Return to TopBy: 倪志宇
"Scientific and technological innovation and science popularization are the two wings for achieving innovative development, and science popularization must be placed in a position equally important as scientific and technological innovation. Without a general improvement in the scientific literacy of the whole people, it will be difficult to build a vast high-quality innovation workforce, and difficult to achieve rapid transformation of scientific and technological achievements." This important exposition by General Secretary Xi Jinping profoundly reveals the foundational, long-term, and strategic position of scientific literacy development in the overall national development landscape. Building a world leader in science and technology requires both top-tier scientific and technological innovation capabilities and a social soil enriched with citizens' scientific literacy. Standing at a new historical starting point, accelerating the improvement of the scientific literacy of the whole people is both a foundational project benefiting people's livelihoods and a strategic proposition concerning the nation's long-term development.
General Secretary Xi Jinping attaches great importance to science popularization and scientific literacy development, which is centrally embodied in the important exposition of the "two wings being equally important." The "hard strength" of scientific and technological innovation and the "soft strength" of scientific literacy have different attributes. Scientific and technological innovation is a "frontier breakthrough," directly driving technological progress and industrial transformation and solving "bottleneck" problems; scientific literacy is "soil cultivation," reserving talent and fostering a social atmosphere for scientific and technological innovation. In terms of their role in economic and social development, scientific and technological innovation focuses on material construction, while scientific literacy focuses on cultural construction; scientific and technological innovation provides explosive force, while scientific literacy provides sustained force; scientific and technological innovation shapes peaks, while scientific literacy forges plateaus. The important exposition of the "two wings being equally important" scientifically and accurately elucidates the foundational, long-term, and strategic role of science popularization and scientific literacy development.
In recent years, China's scientific literacy development has achieved notable results. The results of the 2025 survey on the scientific literacy of Chinese citizens show that the proportion of Chinese citizens with scientific literacy has reached 16.74%, exceeding the development target of 15% for the 14th Five-Year Plan period, and the problem of unbalanced and inadequate development has been further improved. At the same time, it must also be noted that although the quality of development continues to improve, scientific literacy development still faces deep-seated structural contradictions, prominently manifested as "three insufficient transformations."
In terms of connotation, the transformation from knowledge dissemination to value guidance is insufficient. As the public's level of education generally improves, scientific literacy development is transitioning from "scale expansion" to "connotation leap." However, the positioning of scientific literacy development as "knowledge catch-up" has not yet been forcefully reversed, the role of value guidance is insufficiently exerted, the guiding role over scientific interest, ideological concepts, ideals and beliefs, and so on is inadequate, and the value concepts of truth-seeking, questioning, rationality, and inclusiveness contained in the scientific spirit have not yet been fully integrated into the cognitive framework and lifestyle of the whole society.
In terms of means, the transformation from flood irrigation to precision drip irrigation is insufficient. With the rapid development of modern information technology, the channels and methods by which the public obtains information have increased, and the scientific interests, cognitive starting points, and acceptance habits of groups with different ages, occupations, and educational backgrounds differ greatly. The disconnection between unified supply and diverse demand still exists to a certain extent, causing high-quality resources to often flow to groups that are "easiest to reach" rather than those "most in need of reaching." In particular, precision measures targeting groups such as young people and leading cadres are insufficient, and the foundational supporting role of scientific literacy development remains inadequate.
In terms of carriers, the transformation from one-way output to interactive service is insufficient. At present, the landscape of knowledge production and dissemination has undergone profound changes; the public is no longer satisfied with one-way reception but is increasingly participating in scientific dialogue and knowledge co-construction. At present, scientific literacy development still mainly relies on "delivery" in terms of dissemination methods, and traditional carriers such as books, television, and display boards neglect the subjectivity and creativity of the public. Immersive experiences, participatory experiments, interactive scenarios, and other carriers have not yet become mainstream, making it difficult to stimulate the audience's deep interest.
To solve the above problems, scientific literacy development must be treated as an important measure of "investing in people." Adhering to the close integration of investing in things and investing in people is an important development concept for the 15th Five-Year Plan period. Improving the scientific literacy of the whole people is both an inevitable requirement for promoting the comprehensive development of people and a key support for consolidating the foundation of a strong nation in science and technology.
First, strengthen value guidance and actively cultivate an innovation culture. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that we must adhere to cultivating an innovation culture, inherit the innovative genes of China's excellent traditional culture, create a good environment that encourages exploration and tolerates failure, and make advocating science and pursuing innovation becoming a widespread trend (蔚然成风, wei ran cheng feng - "become, naturally, form, wind") throughout society. It is necessary to deeply publicize General Secretary Xi Jinping's series of new ideas, new viewpoints, and new conclusions on scientific and technological innovation, publicize the historic achievements made in China's scientific and technological undertakings since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, transform the public's sense of scientific and technological gains into heartfelt innovative confidence, and make high-level self-reliance and strength in science and technology a common vision of the whole people. Vigorously promote the scientific spirit, enhance public scientific understanding, transmit scientific ideas, concepts, and ways of behaving, and strengthen the construction of an innovation culture featuring rational questioning, courageous innovation, seeking truth and being pragmatic, and tolerating failure.
Second, assist science and technology governance and improve the efficiency of the scientific and technological innovation system. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that we must strengthen the construction of the science and technology governance system and governance capacity, and promote science and technology to be upward and good, safe and controllable, and beneficial to the people. It is necessary to strengthen scientific literacy education for leading cadres, establish and practice a correct view of political achievements, improve scientific decision-making capacity, and create a good development environment for scientific and technological undertakings. Incorporate scientific and technological ethics and public participation in science into the important content of scientific literacy development, so that awareness of scientific and technological ethics is internalized into universal social cognition and behavioral norms. Vigorously promote the spirit of scientists, continuously promote the spirit of scientists entering campuses, enterprises, and research institutes, give play to the exemplary and leading role of "Role Models of the Times" and "Most Beautiful Scientific and Technological Workers" in the scientific and technological field, and create a clean and upright scientific research ecology.
Third, activate innovation factors and promote the development of new quality productive forces. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that we must promote the deep integration of scientific and technological innovation and industrial innovation. It is necessary to strive to forge a high-quality workforce that matches the construction of a strong nation in science and technology, providing active and sustained talent momentum for the development of new quality productive forces. Supply high-quality science popularization resources around fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum science and technology, life sciences, and material sciences, strengthen scenario-based and interactive science popularization experiences, expand new scenarios and new business forms such as science popularization study tours and science popularization tourism, and transform frontier science and technology into science popularization content that the public can understand and industry can apply. Strengthen scientific literacy services for the scientific and technological community, the business community, the investment community, and management departments, break through cognitive barriers, build a "common language," help all parties grasp trends, identify risks, and match demands, and improve the transformation rate of scientific and technological achievements.
Fourth, adhere to fostering virtue through education and serve the cultivation of reserve scientific and technological talent. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that attention must be paid to discovering and cultivating young people's interest and specialties, scientific literacy, and experimental ability, and attracting more young people with research potential to devote themselves to scientific and technological undertakings. It is necessary to continuously promote the innovative development of youth science and technology education, integrate the spirit of scientists and the scientific spirit into classroom teaching and extracurricular practical activities, develop interactive and heuristic high-quality science and technology education resources, enhance the influence and coverage of activities such as the "Elite Program" and "University Science Camps," extensively carry out activities such as Science Night, ideological and political lessons in science and technology museums, and science popularization lectures, better stimulate young people's scientific interest, tap research potential, and forge young people's lofty aspirations to serve the country through science and technology.
Fifth, deepen international cooperation and strive for the right to speak in international science and technology culture. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that we must deeply participate in global science and technology governance, extensively publicize Chinese propositions and Chinese solutions, and enhance the right to speak and influence in the formulation of international rules. It is necessary to improve the narrative capacity of scientific and technological people-to-people and cultural exchanges, tell well the story of China promoting science and technology for the people and improving public scientific literacy, demonstrate the image of a major country full of scientific spirit, innovative vitality, and social rationality, and enhance the influence and recognition of the "Chinese solutions" for science and technology governance. Relying on platforms such as the World Organization for Public Understanding of Science, actively lead and participate in international scientific literacy exchanges and cooperation, continuously promote "small yet beautiful" cooperation projects such as the joint construction of "Science Spaces," the "Belt and Road" Youth Science and Technology Innovation Partnership Program, and the promotion of "Science and Technology Backyards," expand the "circle of friends" for scientific and technological exchanges, and assist the overall national diplomacy.
(The author is a member of the Party Leadership Group and Secretary of the Secretariat of the China Association for Science and Technology)
Return to TopBy: 公丕明
As the primary carrier through which artificial intelligence interfaces with the physical world, embodied intelligence breaks through the application boundaries of traditional digital intelligence and achieves dynamic interaction with real environments. It is a key track for cultivating new quality productive forces and reshaping production models. China attaches great importance to the development of the embodied intelligence industry, incorporating it into the category of key future industries for cultivation under the national 15th Five-Year Plan, and making deployments for it in the government work reports for two consecutive years, 2025 and 2026. This provides policy support for embodied intelligence to leap from technological exploration to industrial cultivation. At present, global industrial competition is becoming increasingly fierce, and China's embodied intelligence industry is in a critical window period for technological breakthroughs and ecosystem cultivation. It is necessary to seize opportunities, make rational arrangements, and promote high-quality development of the industry.
Relying on a complete industrial system, an ultra-large-scale market, and sustained policy empowerment, China's embodied intelligence industry is developing with strong momentum, with industrial scale and innovation strength steadily rising. The iteration of core technologies is accelerating, and humanoid robots and industrial intelligent agents are gradually being commercially applied on a small scale. The capital market is highly enthusiastic; data from industry monitoring institutions show that in the first half of 2026, industry financing reached approximately 93.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5 times. Business entities continue to grow; data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology show that in 2025, there were more than 140 domestic humanoid robot complete-machine enterprises, releasing more than 330 products. The "2026 Humanoid Robot Industry Development Report" shows that in the first half of 2026, China's humanoid robot shipments accounted for 97% of the global total. Industrial supporting facilities continue to improve; data show that as of the end of 2025, the overall domestic localization rate of core components for humanoid robots has exceeded 75%. The "Embodied Intelligence Training Ground Research Report (2026)" released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology shows that as of the end of June 2026, more than 70 embodied intelligence training grounds have been built and put into operation nationwide, helping products transition from prototype models to engineering implementation and laying a solid foundation for industrial scale-up.
Looking globally, major economies have all made embodied intelligence a main track for future industrial competition, with obvious differences in their respective development paths and comparative advantages. The United States focuses on underlying original innovation, relying on university research resources and mature venture capital, with outstanding strength in foundational large models and high-fidelity simulation, but its manufacturing base is relatively weak, industrial scenario supply is insufficient, and hardware landing and iteration are limited. The European Union has built a regulatory framework through the Artificial Intelligence Act and is refining its work in hardware fields such as precision transmission and safety control, but faces practical pressures such as insufficient investment scale, market fragmentation, and lagging commercial deployment. In comparison, China has forged a distinctive path of policy guidance combined with market drive and technological innovation linked to the real economy. Relying on a complete industrial system and massive real-world scenarios, it has formed differentiated competitive advantages characterized by fast iteration, strong synergy, and prominent economies of scale.
Amid the boom, cool-headed reflection is especially needed. Behind the industry's heat, it must be clearly recognized that China's embodied intelligence still has a considerable gap from mature industrialized and large-scale application. First, there are still shortcomings in core technologies; the performance of components such as high-end sensors and precision reducers is not up to international first-class standards, the generalization capability of embodied large models is insufficient, the match between simulation environments and real-world operating conditions is not high, and the phenomenon of "looks good in demonstrations, hard to implement on the ground" is relatively common. Second, the industrial ecosystem is not yet sound; the standards system is still in its infancy, there is a lack of unified norms for hardware interfaces, communication protocols, and safety certification, technology routes are scattered, homogeneous competition is emerging, and upstream-downstream coordination mechanisms need improvement. Third, commercial implementation is quite difficult; most products are still in the pilot demonstration stage, reliability is insufficient, application demand is fragmented and customized, and it is difficult to form a replicable and scalable commercial model. Fourth, support for key factors is insufficient; high-quality real-machine data is severely lacking. Currently, compliant data from real physical interaction scenarios in China amounts to only 500,000 hours, while the data needed for robot commercial implementation reaches tens of millions of hours, a gap of more than 99%. The talent gap is also large, with some R&D positions in short supply (供不应求, gong bu ying qiu - "supply, not, meet, demand"), and the talent cultivation system is struggling to keep pace with the pace of industrial explosion. Facing these challenges, it is necessary to adhere to a problem-oriented approach, implement precise policies, and guide the industry to shed superficial heat and strengthen its core.
Strengthen research on key core technologies and build a solid foundation for an autonomous and controllable industry. Innovation is the primary driving force for development. Leverage the advantages of the new system for mobilizing resources nationwide, target the "bottleneck" links, and increase investment in basic research and frontier technology. Support "chain leader" enterprises in taking the lead, jointly establishing innovation consortia with universities and research institutes, building common technology platforms, and concentrating efforts on overcoming key technologies such as high-end sensors, precision actuators, and real-time operating systems. Lay out pilot-scale testing and verification platforms, improve the systems for product performance testing, reliability verification, and safety inspection, open up the transformation channel from laboratory to production line, and convert technological capabilities into tangible industrial competitiveness.
Accelerate the construction of the standards system and build a collaborative and symbiotic industrial ecosystem. Standards are an important cornerstone for integrated industrial development. Accelerate the implementation of the "Humanoid Robot and Embodied Intelligence Standards System (2026 Edition)" and break down ecosystem barriers between different manufacturers. Implement a gradient cultivation initiative for high-quality enterprises, support specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative small and medium-sized enterprises in deepening their work in supporting links, and promote connection and integration between "chain leader" enterprises and supporting enterprises. Establish cross-regional coordination mechanisms, form industrial alliances in industrial highlands such as the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, explore benefit-sharing mechanisms, promote deep coupling of software and hardware, algorithms, and application scenarios, and avoid redundant construction and low-end involution. Improve productive service support, enhance supporting capabilities such as industrial design, testing and certification, and technical consulting, and optimize the industrial ecosystem in an all-round way.
Adhere to scenario-driven empowerment and steadily advance commercial implementation. Real scenarios are both the "touchstone" for technology and the "booster" for commercial transformation. Sort out and release application scenario lists, make good use of policy tools such as "open competition for projects" and "first purchase, first use," and lower market access thresholds. Make good use of the special action for real-scenario training of humanoid robots and embodied intelligence, rely on real production and life scenarios to force product iteration, and use real-machine data to feed back into algorithm optimization. Rationally grasp the pace of development, abandon the impetuous mentality of rushing headlong into action, prioritize pilot implementation in vertical fields with clear demand and quantifiable value, rely on continuous scenario polishing, and cultivate profitable business models. Support enterprises in actively connecting with the global innovation network, participating in the formulation of international rules and standards, deepening international technological exchanges and industrial cooperation, and continuously enhancing international competitiveness and voice.
Activate the potential of key factors and consolidate the underlying support for industrial development. Data and talent are the two key factors for the development of embodied intelligence. Innovate data supply models, open up the closed loop of real-machine deployment, collection and annotation, annotation feedback, and model iteration, establish systems related to data classification and grading, rights confirmation, circulation, and security governance, build industry-trusted data spaces and scenario data platforms, and, on the premise of ensuring security and privacy, activate multi-scenario data resources to provide high-quality data for model iteration. Deepen the integration of industry and education, promote universities and vocational schools in optimizing interdisciplinary curricula, jointly build practical training bases, and cultivate composite engineering talent; actively introduce high-end overseas talent, gather cross-disciplinary research and engineering strength, and provide intellectual support for the long-term development of the industry.
Return to TopBy: 刘勇
Many people open short-video platforms intending to watch for just a few minutes, yet often lose track of time while scrolling. Attributing this solely to insufficient self-control cannot fully explain the phenomenon. Personalized recommendations have penetrated deeply into daily life; algorithms continuously learn users' interests and preferences and push content more likely to attract attention. How does the brain learn from the environment which information is worth attending to and which behaviors are rewarding, and how does it respond to this filtered, continuously presented information? How does sustained short-video viewing in turn affect viewing behavior and usage habits? To understand this phenomenon, one must see two interacting processes: the platform updates recommendations based on behaviors such as viewing duration, likes, comments, shares, and skips; and human attention and behavioral choices also change with reward cues. Short videos are presented continuously by the system, and users do not need to explicitly choose each item, so sustained viewing may stem from genuine interest, or it may be driven by inertia, curiosity, and anticipation of the next item. The better the platform becomes at predicting what content will keep people watching, the more necessary it is to discern whether viewing behavior truly reflects volition and whether short-term engagement meets long-term needs.
Why do we always want to watch one more
The dopamine system may be involved. In the classical reinforcement learning framework, the transient activity of some dopamine neurons is related to reward prediction error. When actual outcomes are better or worse than expected, the brain updates its judgment of reward value and adjusts subsequent behavioral choices.
Short videos happen to provide an environment with rapid feedback and a certain degree of uncertainty about the next item. Each swipe cannot fully predict what will appear next, yet from time to time one encounters videos that happen to match one's interests. When a particular swipe brings an experience that exceeds expectations, the brain updates its judgment of the value of continuing to swipe. Over a long period of time (久而久之, jiu er jiu zhi - "long time, long, long time"), what attracts people is no longer just any specific piece of content; the very act of constantly seeking the next item may itself gradually become a habit.
Personalized recommendations make this process easier to sustain: users' dwell time, likes, and skips all influence subsequent recommendations, and new content in turn continues to influence users' attention and choices. The two processes interact, forming a continuous loop of "viewing—feedback—re-recommendation." Such loops do not in themselves necessarily lead to problematic use, but when rapid feedback, the uncertainty of the next item, and personalized matching are superimposed over a long period, sustained viewing may be driven more by immediate feedback and behavioral habits.
What clues does brain imaging technology provide
What kind of technology can actually capture brain changes during short-video viewing? A recent functional magnetic resonance imaging study took 29 healthy university students as subjects, having them watch both personalized recommended short videos from their own accounts and non-personalized recommended videos aimed at new users, while simultaneously using behavioral scales to score and assess participants on dimensions such as compulsive use, withdrawal, tolerance, and time management. The study focused on how different brain regions coordinate. Results showed that when viewing personalized short videos, the overall functional connectivity strength of regions such as the caudate nucleus, thalamus, and frontal lobe increased; these regions are involved in multiple functions including reward processing, attention, action selection, and self-related processing. Further analysis found that brain regions showing altered consistency of signal activity during personalized video viewing overlapped spatially to a certain degree with the distribution map of dopamine D2 receptors, with the bilateral dorsal caudate nucleus being particularly prominent. This finding provides suggestive clues for understanding dopamine-related mechanisms, but correlation does not equal causation. The dorsal caudate nucleus belongs to the striatum and is closely related to action selection, habit learning, and motivational regulation. Using the dorsal caudate nucleus as the center for whole-brain functional connectivity analysis, it was found that the weaker its connectivity with certain visual regions during video viewing, the more pronounced the participants' tendency toward short-video overuse tended to be, especially reflected in the "tolerance" dimension—that is, the need for more or fresher stimulation to obtain satisfaction similar to that experienced in the past.
Why do weaker connections and higher tolerance appear simultaneously? One possible explanation is that the dorsal caudate nucleus participates in the integration of reward information and sensory input, and regulates attention and action accordingly. When its coordination with visual regions weakens, it may become more difficult for a person to disengage from highly attractive content. In a short-video environment characterized by rapid switching and dense stimulation, this state may manifest as a tendency to continuously seek newer, more intense stimulation.
These changes in activity consistency among brain regions suggest that short-video viewing involves the joint participation of multiple systems including reward, attention, visual processing, and behavioral regulation, and exhibits pronounced individualized characteristics. This provides neural clues that can be further tracked for understanding why, when faced with similar content, some people are more likely to maintain long viewing sessions while others are more likely to disengage. However, the sample sizes of such studies are relatively small, the results still need to be replicated and verified by more research, and it is not appropriate to directly derive general conclusions.
From behavioral signals to real needs
These scientific clues also raise a difficulty in current recommendation systems: platforms can accurately record user behavior, but it is very difficult to judge users' true intentions based on these behaviors alone. Behaviors such as viewing duration, likes, comments, shares, and skips are important bases for algorithms to infer user interests and preferences, but the same behavior may be driven by different motivations and experiences. How to accurately understand people's true intentions and longer-term needs from quantifiable behavioral signals is a problem that recommendation systems must always face.
Current mainstream recommendation systems do not rely solely on viewing duration but also integrate factors such as viewing completion rate, interaction, satisfaction, content quality, and safety. But multi-indicator recommendation does not mean that user needs can be fully reconstructed. A person watching 10 more seconds may do so because of liking, or because of confusion; watching continuously for half an hour may yield valuable information, or the person may have already been ready to rest but extended usage time through one swipe after another. These behaviors can be recorded and calculated, but the subjective experience may not be the same.
Recommendation systems also need to make trade-offs among multiple objectives. Viewing duration, activity level, satisfaction, and long-term usage experience do not always move in sync; certain content may increase short-term retention but may not bring a better long-term experience. The more precise the recommendation, the more necessary it is to coordinate the relationships among these objectives, avoiding the simple equation of content that more readily promotes sustained viewing with content that better meets users' long-term needs.
Letting precise recommendations better serve people
Personalized recommendation has clear application value. Faced with massive amounts of information, it can reduce search costs and enable users to find interesting and helpful content more quickly. Brain science research suggests that people's viewing responses exhibit pronounced context-dependence and individual differences. In the same content environment, different people's brain network responses are not entirely the same, and the coordination patterns of reward, attention, and visual processing systems in the same person also change across different viewing states. When evaluating recommendation effectiveness, whether content matches interest is only one aspect; its impact on attention allocation, usage rhythm, and autonomous choice should also be included in observation.
China's current Provisions on the Administration of Algorithmic Recommendations in Internet Information Services require algorithm recommendation service providers to regularly review, evaluate, and verify algorithm mechanisms, models, data, and application results, prohibit the establishment of algorithm models that induce user addiction or excessive consumption in violation of laws, regulations, or ethics and morality, and provide users with options that do not target their personal characteristics, or convenient options to turn off algorithm recommendation services. The key to governance is not just whether these option functions exist, but whether, after users adjust interest preferences, reduce similar recommendations, set usage duration limits, or pause viewing, subsequent recommendations can continuously respond to these explicit intentions. Platforms should enrich the supply of quality content, increase recommendation diversity, reduce repeated pushing of similar content, and make personalized recommendations balance content value with users' autonomous choice.
Measures to prevent overuse also need effectiveness testing. In addition to rest reminders and usage duration management, methods of self-awareness emphasized in mindfulness training could also be explored and borrowed to help users pay attention to their viewing state and enhance active regulation of habitual usage behavior. Whether different recommendation methods, usage reminders, and autonomous settings can truly improve usage rhythm still requires long-term observation combining real behavior, psychological measurement, and brain science research. Brain science can provide objective clues for understanding the impact of digital environments on attention and behavioral regulation, and can also help evaluate the actual effectiveness of different intervention measures.
In sum, although algorithms can identify users' interests and predict user behavior with increasing precision, people's real needs cannot be fully characterized by behavioral indicators such as clicks and dwell time alone. Brain science research shows that, faced with the same short-video environment, different individuals' brain functional network responses in reward, attention, visual processing, and other domains differ, and also change with context. Continuously scrolling through videos is influenced both by content push patterns and by the individual's own neural responses. Therefore, evaluating recommendation systems should not pursue precision alone; more importantly, it must examine whether the system can safeguard users' usage rhythm and capacity for autonomous choice. A mature recommendation system should balance content-matching efficiency, respond to users' explicit requests to reduce recommendations, adjust preferences, pause viewing, and end viewing, ensure quality content supply and positive value guidance, and enable algorithmic technology to protect people's space for autonomous choice while meeting users' information needs.
(The author is Deputy Dean of the School of Artificial Intelligence at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications)
Return to TopBy: 吴莹
A complete community refers to a residential community that, within a comfortable walking distance for residents, has well-developed basic public service facilities, sound convenience-oriented commercial service facilities, complete municipal supporting infrastructure, ample public activity space, full-coverage property management, and sound community management mechanisms, and in which residents have a strong sense of belonging and identification. In 2020, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and 12 other departments jointly issued the Opinions on Carrying Out the Action to Address Shortcomings in Urban Residential Community Construction. On the basis of the nationwide pilot programs and the promotion of typical case experience in 2023, documents including the Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Promoting High-Quality Urban Development and the 15th Five-Year Plan for Urban Renewal all explicitly call for "accelerating the construction of complete communities," marking that complete community construction has entered a new stage of region-wide advancement and quality and efficiency improvement.
Complete community construction carries multiple values spanning people's livelihoods, urban development, social governance, and the economy, and is an important pillar for promoting high-quality urban development. In terms of livelihood services, complete communities can focus on building a 15-minute convenience living circle, coordinate and optimize the layout of comprehensive service facilities, and allocate elderly care, childcare, medical care, and other service resources nearby, better meeting the upgrading of the people's housing needs from "having a place to live" to "living comfortably and happily," and continuously enhancing the convenience and sense of happiness of residents' daily lives. In terms of urban development, complete communities can follow the trend of urban development transitioning from incremental expansion to stock renewal, take the community as the smallest basic unit of the city, systematically address shortcomings in municipal supporting facilities and public space, finely optimize the living environment, promote urban renewal in a thorough and solid manner, and continuously improve the quality of urban space. In terms of social governance, the complete community is an important spatial carrier for shifting the focus of governance downward. Relying on the everyday scenarios of the community, it builds platforms for consultation and interaction, brings neighbors closer, and pools the strength of multiple parties, laying a solid foundation for building a community of social governance featuring joint contribution, joint governance, and shared benefits. In terms of economic development, complete communities facilitate the clustered development of convenience-oriented business formats such as community commerce, convenience services, and elderly care and childcare, give rise to new scenarios and new tracks for community services, can effectively leverage social investment and absorb local employment, and continuously unleash the economic efficiency of the community economy that is close to residents' needs.
By the time the complete community construction pilot program concluded in 2025, the 106 pilot communities nationwide had completed a cumulative investment of 10.379 billion yuan, benefiting 1.0885 million residents. During the construction process, complete community construction also gave rise to multiple institutional innovations. For example, Beijing emphasizes Party building leadership and area-wide coordination. In response to the situation where individual old residential communities lack sufficient resources, it achieves integrated and sustainable operation of "construction, operation, and investment" through means such as communities joining forces, complementing each other's strengths (优势互补, youshi hubu - "advantage, complement"), flexible reuse, and demolishing walls to merge compounds. Zhejiang Province achieves iterative upgrading "from community to neighborhood, from neighborhood to urban district" through cross-district joint construction and integrated operation. However, this process has also exposed some problems and challenges. First, the adaptability of supply needs improvement, and the connection between standardized configuration and differentiated demand still needs to be better aligned. In complete community construction, various construction indicator systems have been issued from the national to the local level, but different communities differ in resident structure, land conditions, resource endowments, and cultural heritage, and residents' demands for infrastructure and public services vary in emphasis, making it difficult for unified configuration standards to fully match diverse and realistic needs. Second, the long-term operation system still needs to be consolidated, and there is considerable pressure on the sustainable operation of public service facilities. Supporting facilities such as elderly care stations, community canteens, and childcare points have a public welfare attribute, and service pricing is subject to certain constraints. After government investment completes renovation and construction, operating entities are prone to facing pressure to balance revenue and expenditure. In some areas, community canteens have experienced declining subsidies and rising labor and food costs, resulting in operational pressure and difficulty sustaining operations. Third, the pattern of diversified coordination is still being cultivated, and the balance of participation by all parties needs to be strengthened. Improving community governance mechanisms is an important part of complete community construction. In the process of advancing construction tasks, the cultivation of autonomous space can easily lag behind relatively. In some scenarios, residents' enthusiasm for active participation is not high, the practical effectiveness of consultation and deliberation is insufficient, and there is still considerable room for improvement in mobilizing and integrating social forces. In the face of the above challenges, the construction path needs to be further optimized from multiple aspects.
Shift from standard configuration to needs identification, and establish implementation units that are people-centered and measured by daily life. Under the guidance of top-level design and construction standards, upgrade the facility list into a flexible structure of "basic requirements + differentiated needs" to resolve the mismatch between standardized construction and differentiated needs. First, consolidate the national bottom-line standard and safeguard the basic guarantee of public services. Based on the nationwide unified bottom line for people's livelihood guarantees, clarify mandatory supporting requirements around core matters such as care for the elderly and children, basic medical and health services, daily convenience services, and the safety of the living environment, ensuring that all communities can reach the threshold of basic services and safeguarding the livelihood bottom line of complete community construction. Second, grant local governments flexible space and optimize supply configuration in light of local conditions. All localities should avoid mechanically applying unified indicators. Instead, they should flexibly determine facility scale, layout, and grade in light of realistic conditions such as the age structure of the population under their jurisdiction, residents' travel habits, consumption levels, resource endowments, and historical context, achieving configuration according to needs and in light of local conditions. At the same time, complete communities should be incorporated into the overall urban spatial planning for coordinated advancement, avoiding the problem of individual communities being exquisitely renovated while the overall layout of the area remains disorderly. Third, optimize the logic of spatial planning and coordinate facility layout with real living circles. Delineate the 15-minute walking living circle strictly according to the existing road network, and abandon the configuration model of applying the same standard indiscriminately (一刀切, yi dao qie - "one, knife, cut") based solely on population size. Incorporate experience-oriented indicators such as facility utilization rates, resident satisfaction, walking accessibility time, and coverage ratios for special groups into scheme design and post-evaluation, closely arrange public space and service resources around residents' daily travel and life trajectories, and truly implement a people-centered approach throughout the entire spatial planning process.
Shift from construction delivery to operation-first, and incorporate sustainable operation planning into project approval conditions. At the planning and approval stage of complete community construction, include operating entities, operating costs, full life-cycle cost estimates, and exit plans as essential elements in the project proposal and as approval conditions, resolving the problem of facilities that can be built but cannot be maintained. First, enrich diversified operating entities and innovate market-based cooperation models. Actively learn from the mature practices of pilot programs in various localities, and promote practical experience such as the integrated "construction, operation, and investment" model in Haidian District, Beijing, third-party operation under Party building leadership in Ningbo, unified operation by state-owned enterprises, and merchants as "community partners," broaden the channels for operation implementation, enhance the flexibility of entity selection, widely guide social forces to participate in the supply of community services, and consolidate the carrier support for the stable operation of services. Second, implement a classified supply and pricing mechanism and build a cost-balancing framework. Implement differentiated policies for community supporting facilities according to service attributes, dividing them into purely public welfare categories fully underwritten by the government, micro-profit public welfare categories with multi-party cost sharing, and market-oriented for-profit categories with independent operation, forming a differentiated payment mechanism. Promote "fat and lean pairing" packaged operation, using revenue from commercial operations to subsidize public welfare services and alleviate the revenue-expenditure pressure on public welfare projects. Third, broaden long-term funding channels and improve full-cycle funding guarantees. Explore the establishment of community micro-funds, develop policy-oriented special credit products for community service scenarios, build a diversified funding support system, lengthen the funding supply cycle, and provide stable and sustainable financial support for the continuous operation and maintenance of community public facilities.
Shift from administrative drive to diversified co-governance, and build a daily life community with trust and warmth. The construction of complete communities requires not only improving hardware facilities and enhancing the accessibility of basic public services, but more importantly, transforming residents from "service recipients" into "co-producers," building a community of social governance featuring joint contribution, joint governance, and shared benefits, and resolving the problem of insufficient participation. In terms of participation content, move residents' participation in complete community construction forward to the proposal stage, and implement deliberation and decision by the people for important matters such as spatial renovation and facility changes. In terms of participation channels, extensively establish residents' deliberation councils, provide institutionalized channels and standardized training for residents to participate in grassroots deliberation and consultation, and improve the quality of residents' participation in decision-making. In terms of participation methods, cultivate community self-organizations and "community partners," promote the transformation of community interest groups from entertainment-oriented organizations to governance-oriented organizations, and achieve organized participation in community public affairs. While focusing on special groups such as the elderly and children, also establish communication links with young and middle-aged residents and tenants through stakeholder mobilization and other means, enhancing the shared sense of belonging of all types of residents.
Return to TopBy: 赵玉峰
Over-age workers refer to workers who have exceeded the statutory retirement age and who are subject to the labor management of their employing units and engage in remunerated labor. The Interim Provisions on the Protection of Basic Rights and Interests of Over-Age Workers (hereinafter referred to as the Interim Provisions), which take effect on July 1, 2026, constitute China's first special protection system targeting the silver-haired employment group, filling a long-standing institutional gap in the field of labor protection. For some time now, China's population aging has continued to deepen, the silver-haired economy has flourished, and more and more elderly people have chosen to return to the labor force, leveraging their experience and expertise to achieve achieving meaningful contributions in old age (老有所为, lao you suo wei - "old, have, what, do"). Against this backdrop, regulating the order of over-age employment and strengthening the protection of over-age workers' rights and interests is both a practical path to revitalizing elderly human resources and tapping the silver-haired demographic dividend, and an inherent requirement for stabilizing the employment market, improving people's livelihood and well-being, and advancing the modernization of grassroots social governance.
At present, China's system for protecting the rights and interests of over-age workers is being continuously improved, phased results have been achieved in silver-haired employment governance, many localities have formed replicable governance experience in practice, and the coverage of institutional protection has been steadily expanded. First, the institutional protection framework has basically taken shape. For a long time, over-age employment has faced governance difficulties such as ambiguous legal definitions and absent protection bases, and when over-age workers suffered rights infringements such as wage arrears and work-related injuries, they often found themselves in a predicament of having no basis for rights defense and no channel for protection. After the formal implementation of the Interim Provisions, this situation has been effectively reversed, with the scope of application, rights boundaries, and protection standards clarified, providing an institutional protective umbrella for the silver-haired employment group. Second, the scope of rights protection has continued to expand. The Interim Provisions comprehensively incorporates basic rights and interests such as labor remuneration, rest and leave, occupational safety and health, and work-related injury protection into the scope of protection, gradually narrowing the gap in rights protection between over-age workers and on-post employees. In some regions, in grassroots case-handling, work-related injury determinations and wage arrears disputes involving rehired cleaning, security, and logistics personnel have been supported in accordance with the law, breaking the old inertia of "no work-related injury protection once over age." Third, channels for rights defense and relief have become smoother. The Interim Provisions promote the inclusion of over-age employment disputes in the labor inspection, mediation, and arbitration system, streamlining dispute handling procedures and changing the previous situation in which most over-age labor disputes could only be resolved through civil litigation. Relying on rapid handling mechanisms, localities have innovated working models, and many wage arrears cases have achieved efficient mediation and resolution, effectively reducing the time and economic costs of workers' rights defense and enhancing the efficiency of front-end conflict resolution.
It must also be noted that, as the scale of over-age workers continues to grow and flexible employment scenarios become increasingly diverse, the protection of over-age workers' rights and interests still faces many practical challenges, and the governance task remains arduous. First, the legal definition of employment is still not clear. In some regions, administrative law enforcement and judicial adjudication standards have not been fully unified, and there are differences in the criteria for determining whether over-age employment constitutes a labor relationship or a service relationship. At the grassroots level, there remains inertial thinking that simply draws a line by age and holds that those over age are not within the scope of labor protection. Some workers who have reached retirement age but have not yet received pension insurance benefits face difficulties in rights defense after suffering infringement. Second, enterprise employment management is not sufficiently standardized. Small and micro enterprises and the life-services industry are concentrated areas of over-age employment, where phenomena such as oral employment agreements, failure to sign written agreements, arbitrary wage deductions, and deliberate evasion of work-related injury compensation liability occur from time to time. Over-age workers often have weaker information-acquisition capabilities and are in a relatively disadvantaged position in labor-capital relations, making their occupational safety and remuneration rights vulnerable to infringement. Third, the long-term supervision mechanism is still imperfect. Routine inspections, special law enforcement, and legal publicity efforts targeting over-age employment are relatively weak. Some over-age workers lack awareness of evidence preservation and lawful rights defense, infringement leads are discovered late, post-hoc rectification has weak binding force, and industry employment chaos is difficult to resolve at its root. In the face of the above challenges, it is necessary to continue deepening systematic governance and promote the effective implementation of the system for protecting over-age workers' rights and interests.
Improve the institutional and regulatory system and unify and standardize law enforcement and judicial standards. Consolidating the foundation of the rule of law is the fundamental prerequisite for doing a good job in protecting the rights and interests of over-age workers. Taking the implementation of the Interim Provisions as an opportunity, refine supporting implementation mechanisms, unify enforcement standards, and continuously eliminate institutional blind spots. First, improve supporting implementation rules. All localities should, based on their local employment structures and the characteristics of silver-haired employment, study and introduce supporting implementation rules, precisely refine the criteria for identifying over-age workers, employment management norms, work-related injury acceptance conditions, and remuneration calculation standards, and transform macro-level institutional provisions into implementable, operable, and verifiable specific work norms. Second, unify administrative law enforcement and judicial adjudication standards. Promote the establishment of a regularized joint consultation mechanism among human resources and social security departments, labor arbitration bodies, and people's courts, regularly release typical cases, unify applicable adjudication standards, resolutely prevent "different judgments for the same case and different handling of similar disputes," and abandon the simplistic practice of excluding the scope of labor protection solely on the basis of age. Third, dynamically sort out institutional bottlenecks and difficulties. Focus on new employment scenarios such as short-term employment, cross-unit rehiring, and flexible employment, continuously fill institutional gaps, and build a legal protection system for over-age employment covering all scenarios and all processes, so that all types of silver-haired workers have having legal basis for action (有法可依, you fa ke yi - "have, law, can, rely") in employment and having established rules to follow (有规可循, you gui ke xun - "have, rule, can, follow") in rights defense.
Consolidate enterprises' primary responsibility and comprehensively standardize daily employment management. Employing units are the primary responsible subjects for protecting the rights and interests of over-age workers and must continuously standardize their employment practices to reduce the occurrence of infringement at its source. First, comprehensively implement the written employment agreement system. Urge all types of employing units to sign standardized written employment agreements when recruiting over-age workers, clearly stipulating core terms such as job position, working hours, labor remuneration, overtime standards, rest and leave, work-related injury liability, and contract termination conditions, put an end to ambiguous employment, and fix the rights and obligations of both parties in contractual form. Second, strengthen enterprises' obligations for production safety and labor protection. Employing units must fully consider the physical function characteristics of the elderly group, scientifically set positions, reasonably control labor intensity, carry out routine safety production training and on-site hazard inspections, fully implement labor protection measures, strictly prohibit arranging over-age workers to engage in high-risk post operations or excessive labor, and build a solid line of defense for labor safety. Third, strengthen routine supervision and inspection. Human resources and social security departments should regularly organize special rectification actions for over-age employment, focusing on investigating illegal acts such as wage arrears, refusal to compensate for work-related injuries, forced overtime, and failure to implement rest and leave. Administrative penalties should be imposed on non-compliant enterprises in accordance with the law, and dishonest exposure and public disclosure should be carried out, using rigid supervision and restraint to force enterprises to employ workers in a standardized and law-abiding manner.
Optimize the supply of rights defense services and build a diversified collaborative governance pattern. Enhancing service guarantee capacity and mobilizing multiple governance forces to work in concert are key levers for consolidating the effectiveness of protecting over-age workers' rights and interests. First, carry out routine, precise legal publicity services. For key groups such as security guards, cleaners, domestic workers, and rehired retired technical personnel, carry out scenario-based, down-to-earth legal publicity, clearly explaining labor rights, rights defense procedures, evidence preservation methods, and dispute handling channels, enhance over-age workers' awareness of the rule of law and self-protection capabilities, and guide workers to defend their rights rationally and in accordance with the law when infringed. Second, improve the diversified dispute resolution mechanism. Improve the linkage procedures among mediation, arbitration, labor inspection, and litigation, open fast-track channels for handling over-age labor disputes, simplify case acceptance procedures, compress processing time limits, promote the nearby and efficient resolution of labor-capital conflicts, and effectively reduce the time and economic costs of rights defense for the people. Third, build a multi-party collaborative co-governance system. Coordinate the supervisory forces of human resources and social security departments, market regulation departments, and various industry competent authorities, link with communities and industry associations to carry out routine supervision and guidance, keep open online and offline social supervision and reporting channels, and gradually form a three-dimensional governance pattern of government supervision, enterprise self-discipline, social oversight, and workers' proactive rights defense, continuously safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of silver-haired workers and better realizing achieving meaningful contributions in old age and ensuring workers receive adequate protection (劳有所保, lao you suo bao - "labor, have, what, protect").
Return to TopBy: 孙涛
Famous historical and cultural cities (towns, villages) and historic buildings are living testimony to the continuous inheritance of Chinese civilization. The recently issued "15th Five-Year Plan for the Protection and Inheritance of Famous Historical and Cultural Cities (Towns, Villages) and Historic Buildings" proposes strengthening historical and cultural protection in urban and rural construction, and promoting the effective protection and living inheritance of famous historical and cultural cities, historic districts, towns, and villages. Coordinately advancing protection, inheritance, and utilization, carrying out orderly restoration of historic buildings, renovating and upgrading traditional features, while balancing improvement of people's livelihoods with cultural empowerment, can promote the organic integration of historical remains into modern life, achieve the sustainable protection and scientific utilization of historical and cultural resources, enrich the cultural heritage of cities, enhance the public's cultural identity, and empower high-quality development in urban and rural areas.
After years of inheritance and development, China has achieved remarkable results in strengthening historical and cultural protection in urban and rural construction. First, the system for protecting historical features has been continuously improved, and historical remains have been placed under orderly management and protection. China has built a multi-level, multi-element urban and rural historical and cultural protection and inheritance system. By the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the country had 143 national famous historical and cultural cities, 799 famous historical and cultural towns and villages at the China level, and 8,155 traditional Chinese villages, with more than 1,300 historic districts delineated and 68,900 historic buildings identified. Through resource surveys, plaque-based protection, and surveying and mapping for archival purposes, the requirement that "old city areas must no longer be demolished" has been implemented, rescue restoration has been carried out, and the layout of historic urban areas, street patterns, and traditional features have been systematically safeguarded, with the level of standardized management and protection of various historical remains significantly improved. Second, shortcomings in the living environment have been gradually addressed, and the livability of old city areas has been steadily enhanced. Localities have combined protection and improvement projects, coordinated feature protection with livelihood improvement, promoted the renewal and improvement of municipal facilities in historic districts and traditional villages, and carried out livability retrofitting of residential historic buildings. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the country carried out protection, renewal, and restoration of approximately 200 historic districts and 10,000 historic buildings, benefiting more than 12 million residents. At the same time, fire protection, drainage, and public service facilities have been supplemented, hidden safety hazards in buildings have been eliminated, historic spaces have been made compatible with modern living needs, and the sense of fulfillment of residents in old city areas has continued to grow. Third, paths for activating and utilizing historical resources have been continuously broadened, and the economic and social vitality of districts and streets has continued to recover. Adhering to the principle of promoting protection through utilization, pilot projects for the protection and utilization of historic buildings have been carried out in more than 70 cities, and 58 historic districts and 10 old streets have become national-level tourism and leisure streets. Traditional Chinese villages receive 530 million tourist visits annually, and diverse business forms such as study tours, cultural and creative industries, and homestays have been cultivated on the basis of historical remains, promoting deep integration of culture, commerce, and tourism. Historic buildings have been used in fields such as intangible cultural heritage exhibition and public services, driving entrepreneurship and employment, achieving mutual promotion and common progress among heritage protection, cultural dissemination, and economic development, and the vibrant atmosphere of old streets, ancient towns, and villages continues to be rekindled.
Along with the deepening advancement of urban renewal and the profound adjustment of urban and rural development patterns, the work of strengthening historical and cultural protection in urban and rural construction faces multiple intertwined contradictions between protection and development. On the one hand, the adaptability of protection technologies is insufficient, and there is a structural conflict between the interruption of traditional craftsmanship and modern renovation standards. The ranks of traditional construction craftsmen face a shortage of successors (后继乏人, hou ji fa ren - "after, follow, lack, people"), and regional restoration techniques face the risk of a break in transmission. Current modern construction standards for fire protection, seismic resistance, and other areas are incompatible with the spatial characteristics of old buildings, and the supply of technical solutions that balance the authenticity of historical features with safety and livability is insufficient, causing some restoration projects to easily fall into the dilemma of either mechanically copying modern techniques or excessively restoring antiquity, which constrains the improvement of quality and efficiency in protection projects. On the other hand, the inertia of population loss is difficult to reverse, and community maintenance and living inheritance lack long-term carriers. Affected by factors such as living conditions and public services, original residents of some historic urban areas continue to move out, resulting in a phenomenon where material remains are well preserved but communities are hollowed out. Existing policies focus more on the restoration of the building itself, with few measures for maintaining neighborhood social networks and stabilizing local communities, limited channels for resident participation in protection, and a somewhat weakened social foundation for living inheritance. In addition, the path of value transformation is singular, and the mechanisms for value stratification and benefit distribution of cultural resources are imbalanced. Many localities rely excessively on tourism development, with insufficient exploration of the value of cultural resources and insufficient public-welfare and socialized utilization. Some localities have not yet established a scientific system for stratified assessment of heritage value, and the mechanism for distributing the external value-added benefits generated by protection is not sound, so original residents and property owners have not yet fully shared in the dividends of development, and a virtuous cycle pattern remains to be improved. In the face of the above challenges, there is an urgent need to make overall plans and implement systematic measures, to break through bottlenecks such as technical adaptation, population retention, and value transformation, to strengthen the protection and inheritance of historical culture in urban and rural construction, and to promote the improvement of quality and efficiency in protection work.
Improve the technical guarantee mechanism for flexible restoration of historic buildings. Implement the requirement of "small-scale, gradual micro-renovation," resolve the practical contradictions of interrupted traditional craftsmanship and weak adaptability of current construction standards, and build a technical support system that balances the authenticity of historical features, safety and resilience, and modern livability. First, improve the supply of flexible restoration technical standards. Based on the spatial characteristics of historic buildings, and on the premise of strictly adhering to the bottom line of core feature elements, refine differentiated implementation guidelines for fire protection, seismic resistance, disaster prevention and mitigation, avoid simply applying standards for new buildings, provide compliant and feasible technical paths for restoration and renovation, and resolve the problem of standard conflicts. Second, consolidate the talent support foundation for traditional craftsmanship. Make good use of the national database of traditional building craftsmen, expand the coverage of craftsman cultivation and training, promote the inheritance of traditional construction techniques, implement the system of local craftsmen participating in restoration projects, organically combine traditional craftsmanship with modern restoration technology, and fill the gap in professional construction capacity. Third, strengthen the empowerment of digital technology throughout the entire process of management. Promote full coverage of surveying, mapping, and archival filing of historic buildings, establish closed-loop management of restoration plan technical review, process monitoring, and completion archival filing, promote the building inspection and assessment mechanism, preserve complete records of the restoration process through digital documentation, and enhance the scientific and refined level of flexible restoration.
Build a support system for the long-term retention of residents in old city areas. Practice the people-centered development philosophy, establish a protection implementation mechanism with residents as the main body, solve the problem of endogenous population loss in historic urban areas, consolidate the community foundation for living inheritance, and achieve coordinated progress in heritage protection and livelihood improvement. First, fill the hardware shortcomings of the living environment in historic urban areas. In conjunction with protection and improvement projects for famous historical and cultural cities, update municipal pipe networks, fire protection and security, and public service facilities in the manner of "fine embroidery-style patching," carry out livability improvement retrofitting of residential historic buildings, and improve living conditions without destroying the traditional layout and features, to meet the modern living needs of the masses. Second, improve institutional channels for resident participation in protection. Improve mechanisms for information disclosure, public opinion consultation, and resident deliberation, take public opinion as an important basis for project decision-making, simplify approval procedures for residents' self-initiated restoration, encourage residents to participate in environmental improvement, safeguard the public's right to know, right to participate, and right to supervise, and stimulate endogenous protection motivation. Third, improve supporting policy tools for retaining people and retaining residence. Comprehensively apply policies such as fiscal awards and subsidies, restoration subsidies, and optimization of public housing, balance the practical demands of property owners and original residents, explore diversified resettlement and assistance models, retain local communities and neighborhood social networks, prevent the disconnection between the protection of material remains and the living inheritance of society, and achieve the symbiotic development of people, cities, and culture.
Create a new pattern of diversified activation and operation of historical resources. Closely adhere to the principle of "protection first, inheritance priority, reasonable utilization," adhere to promoting protection through utilization, solve the problems of singular value transformation paths and imbalanced benefit distribution, promote the creative transformation and innovative development of historical and cultural resources, and build a co-construction and co-sharing activation and operation model. First, establish a system for stratified assessment of heritage resource value. Classify and sort out the cultural value of historic urban areas, districts, and buildings, scientifically delineate protection bottom lines and "positive and negative lists" for utilization, distinguish resources of public welfare nature from those of industrial nature, avoid homogeneous cultural tourism development, prevent excessive commercialization, and expand diverse application scenarios such as public cultural services, intangible cultural heritage transmission, and community services. Second, innovate a collaborative operation model with multiple entities. Guide social capital to participate in protection and utilization in a regulated and orderly manner, promote cooperative operation models led by the government with property owners and social forces, support the priority use of historic buildings for public cultural supply, enrich scenarios such as cultural and creative industries, study tours, and traditional business forms, broaden activation paths, and stimulate the endogenous economic vitality of districts, towns, and villages. Third, improve the mechanism of benefit feedback and benefit sharing. Improve the institutional design for property owners and original residents to share in the value-added benefits of protection, promote the feedback of part of the benefits from activation and utilization into the daily management, protection, and restoration of historical remains, open up the closed loop of "protection—utilization—feedback to protection," enable local people to share in the development dividends of cultural resources, and form a sustainable virtuous cycle pattern.
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