A campaign launched from the top
From April 2023, the People’s Liberation Army rolled out a thematic education campaign on studying and implementing Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. It proceeded in two batches, from upper levels downward. Xi approved the creation of a PLA education leading group and guidance teams, reviewed the campaign’s opinions and work plans, and inspected units including the Southern Theater Command Navy and the Western Theater Command Air Force. Those decisions and instructions set the framework for the campaign.
The Central Military Commission treated the effort as a matter of overall importance. It held work meetings to mobilize and deploy, organized collective study by CMC members, sent them into field research and group discussions, and kept supervision running through the entire process. Corps-level and above Party committees set up leading groups and coordination mechanisms promptly. They linked theory study, investigation and research, development work, inspection and rectification, and institution building, while coordinating the practical activity ‘study the thought on strengthening the military and make achievements in building a strong military.’
For division, brigade and regiment-level Party committees and grassroots organizations in the second batch, the emphasis shifted. They paid more attention to theoretical grounding, categorized guidance, strengthening the foundation, coordination, and leadership guidance. The two batches connected in sequence and pressed forward in a staggered way. The results were judged in four areas: forging loyalty through study, adding wisdom through study, improving conduct through study, and promoting action through study.
Party members and cadres underwent a comprehensive process of loyalty forging, ideological tempering and Party-spirit baptism. They deepened their understanding of the decisive significance of the ‘two establishments,’ strengthened the ‘Four Consciousnesses,’ the ‘Four Confidences’ and the ‘Two Upholds,’ and implemented the CMC chairman responsibility system. The campaign closed with a stronger commitment to the PLA’s centenary goal and to the tough tasks that goal entails.
Theory first, loyalty at the center
Using the Party’s innovative theory to equip the troops and shape their souls has long been a tradition and a basic experience of the Party and the military. It is also a requirement of a guiding theory that advances with the times, and a guarantee that the people’s army retains vitality and combat strength in the new era.
‘Studying thought’ came first and ran through the campaign. Units studied Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and worked to understand and apply Xi Jinping Thought on strengthening the military. They pushed self-study deeper, focused on forging loyalty, and emphasized turning theory into practice. The stress was on genuine study, genuine understanding, genuine belief and genuine use.
Original texts were central. Units read the report to the 20th Party Congress and the Party Constitution, selected works of Xi, thematic extracts, and the study outline on Xi Jinping Thought on strengthening the military. They followed Xi’s latest important speeches and instructions, and asked Party members and cadres to make study plans, read carefully, and connect reading with work. The aim was systematic understanding, not isolated quotations.
Study had topics, discussion had themes, and research had subjects. Regiment-level and above Party committees and organs generally organized at least seven days of theoretical training. They studied the ‘Six Musts’ worldview and methodology and the ‘Five Persistences’ military worldview and methodology, examined the positions, viewpoints and methods embedded in them, and exchanged cases and lessons on using the Party’s innovative theory to solve real problems. The point was to turn study into firm ideals, tempered Party spirit, and stronger practical work.
Theory followed the mission. It reached border posts on the plateau, cabins on ocean patrols, and positions in deep mountains. Online and offline study connected, in-class and out-of-class learning interacted, and the campaign extended to the end of the organizational chain and into grassroots squads. A theory service program sent to the grassroots reached more than 230,000 officer and soldier visits.
In April 2023, a training class for major generals and above opened at the National Defense University. Participants entered as students and went through a political training model. They worked to integrate the scientific system, core meaning and practical requirements of the theory, and to use a higher level of theoretical understanding to improve political and leadership capacity.
Loyalty training was explicit. The CMC chairman responsibility system became an important part of theoretical grounding. A study plan was issued, a reader on the system was revised and distributed, and learning was pushed toward routine and long-term practice. Units implemented the ‘Several Opinions on Deepening Implementation of the CMC Chairman Responsibility System’ and the ‘Several Provisions on Comprehensively and Thoroughly Implementing the CMC Chairman Responsibility System.’ They organized study by level and kept strengthening political forging. The goal was to improve political judgment, political understanding and political execution, and to ensure that the military listens to Xi’s command, is responsible to Xi, and gives Xi no cause for concern.
Faith was strengthened through focused education. Leading cadres took the podium and gave Party lectures, using their own example to drive study. Party-themed days and Party member demonstration posts kept Party-spirit education active. Visits to revolutionary sites, red bases and hero models, along with immersive ceremonial education, touched participants directly. Party members and cadres came to feel the power of truth and practice, took part in education voluntarily, and sank deeper roots into theory and faith.
Discipline education worked from the ideological source. Regular Party conduct and discipline education, together with case-based warnings, set boundaries. Units organized viewings of educational films such as ‘Advancing Into Deep Water’ and ‘Confession and Warning,’ and conducted warnings that explained morality, discipline, law and responsibility through cases. Discipline secretaries generally gave discipline lectures. The aim was to keep Party members and cadres on the right side of the ideological line, the bottom line of power, the red line of law and discipline, and the boundary of family conduct.
The deeper the study, the clearer the understanding; the clearer the understanding, the firmer the belief. Party members and cadres threw themselves into the campaign, studying with feeling, faith and mission, and putting themselves, their duties and their work into the process. The campaign sought to uphold the banner of the great thought and bring the entire military into a stronger unity under new historical conditions.
Research as a way to break deadlocks
At the start of the new-year training, Party committee members of an aviation division under the Eastern Theater Command Air Force split up to follow training and flights. They carried questions with them: What bottlenecks appear when new aircraft are modified and fielded? What support problems arise during transition deployments and training? What contradictions exist in education and management when units operate dispersed? They worked alongside grassroots commanders and specialist backbones to diagnose the causes and find responses.
Investigation and research were treated as a basic skill for all work. The campaign made extensive research a major way to use the Party’s innovative theory to study new situations and solve new problems, and to use deeper research to remove obstacles in combat, construction and readiness.
Party committee members went to the front line to feel the pulse. Units had live problems and soldiers had real ideas. Going down to seek advice became a visible feature of the campaign. Leading cadres focused on urgent readiness needs, urgent combat needs and urgent troop concerns. They used a five-character method—deep, solid, detailed, accurate and effective—and went to major task fronts, grassroots companies, academies and research institutes, and new-domain and new-quality forces. They sorted problems, screened difficulties, thought through typical cases, and pooled ideas in candid discussion. The purpose was to grasp the real situation and aim at the true target.
Style mattered. Units were told to ‘go into the contradictions and head straight for weak spots’ and to ‘listen less to work reports and let soldiers speak more.’ They looked at both the ‘high buildings’ and the ‘shaded alleys.’ A single table was commonly used to coordinate research topics, timing and personnel, avoiding clustered, multi-headed and repeated research. Discussions were not scripted, and opinions were not polished before collection. The standard was light footsteps and deep footprints.
Discussion and innovation followed. Meetings and exchanges continued across barracks. Party committee members answered selected topics; upper and lower levels addressed the same question; experts offered collective diagnosis; departments coordinated their efforts. A atmosphere of pooling wisdom and attacking hard problems took shape. Measures to clear blockages in implementation and new mechanisms to improve work routines entered readiness practice and construction guidance.
The purpose of research was to solve problems and convert results. Units pushed research results into practice with lists, and made ‘whether the problem is solved, whether the situation has changed, and whether capability has been formed’ rigid evaluation standards. They improved regular return visits, rectification supervision and evaluation feedback. With the persistence of driving a nail, they carried out proposed measures one by one. Through joint efforts from top to bottom, they made breakthroughs in filling combat-power shortcomings, supporting combat talent, and clearing obstructions in system operation. Combat, construction and readiness levels and governance efficiency rose.
Helping troops and solving difficulties was part of the work. Research had to listen to soldiers, and breaking bottlenecks had to address soldiers’ worries. Units started from the issues grassroots units watched most, the problems most prominent in actual work, and the concerns soldiers raised most strongly. They followed the method of ‘open a small opening and dig a deep well.’ They established a mechanism under which ‘when grassroots have expectations, organs act promptly,’ and carried out ‘Party committee warm-hearted practical projects.’ For urgent and difficult issues, they explained doubts, responded to demands, and followed through without letting go. Lists of practical matters were turned into soldiers’ satisfaction reports.
Units studied and borrowed from the ‘Pujiang Experience’ and the ‘four down to grassroots’ approach, and improved the work of cadres who spend time as ordinary soldiers in companies. Staff organs strictly observed the ‘five togethers’ with troops, recalled the ‘beginning of soldier life,’ understood soldiers’ feelings, and responded to soldiers’ worries. They left experience at the grassroots and brought problems back to the organs. Many organ staff said that the grassroots mirror helped them find the blockages in policy execution and work implementation, and identify the point where organ work and unit reality meet.
Rectification with a hard edge
Problems are the voice of the times and point the direction of work. The campaign’s depth depended on finding and solving prominent problems, and its effectiveness was ultimately judged by how well those problems were solved. Inspection and rectification became an important measure of success. Units studied, compared, inspected and rectified as they went, using the spirit and methods of rectification to correct unhealthy trends, foster new conduct, dig out root causes and remove them. Soldiers were meant to feel concrete results and a new atmosphere.
Units turned the blade inward. They asked why some problems stayed on the books for a long time without being written off, and why similar problems occurred repeatedly in different units. Across units and fields, they reviewed problems identified by superior inspections and supervision, patrols, audits, self-checks and grassroots feedback. They drew inferences, dug from surface to root, and prescribed measures. A single ledger was formed for strict and thorough correction.
Self-revolution was applied to ideological roots. Regiment-level and above Party committees held high-quality special democratic life meetings. They used criticism and self-criticism, examined themselves deeply, and analyzed typical cases. Grassroots Party organizations held special organizational life meetings. Everyone underwent a political checkup and cleaned the political dust from their thinking.
Problems on the list were corrected immediately where possible and fully where required. Units set rectification goals, measures, deadlines and responsibilities, and used dynamic write-offs. For problems that could not be solved at once, they set near-, medium- and long-term targets, publicized them to the troops, and accepted soldier supervision. Rectification was pushed to the edges and the bottom.
Upper and lower levels pulled together. For prominent problems that soldiers raised strongly and that had gone unsolved for a long time, special rectification plans were made. Engineering-style management and project-based progress were used. For problems that ‘appear at the grassroots but have roots above’ and cannot be solved by grassroots units alone, a coordination mechanism was established. Corps-level and above Party committees and organs took the lead in claiming responsibility and solving them together, forming a closed loop of systematic treatment.
Institution building aimed at the long run. Units combined ‘immediate correction’ with ‘long-term establishment,’ and made institution building part of the whole campaign. Good practices and experience were fixed in rules in a timely way. Recurring problems were addressed by checking institutional gaps. The goal was to ‘improve one system and solve one class of problems.’
With an eye to improving the system of comprehensive strict Party governance and tightening political responsibility for running the Party, documents were issued, including opinions on comprehensively strengthening PLA Party building around the centenary goal and a trial indicator system for evaluating Party committees’ implementation of comprehensive strict Party governance responsibility. Long-term mechanisms were set up for managing power, warning of risks and tracing accountability. Units persisted in building according to law and the outline, strengthened scientific and precise assistance, and worked to build frontline command posts, frontline battle fortresses and frontline leadership teams. Grassroots Party organizations were the focus, and their construction drove other grassroots work. Tendency problems were addressed and the foundation of unit construction was consolidated.
The depth and solidity of the campaign showed in the force of rectification. Party organizations at all levels went toward problems, studied with problems in mind, and corrected against problems. They regularly ‘published the bills’ and ‘passed the sieve,’ using the solution of each problem to push work forward, ensure rectification took effect, and clear problems to the bottom.
Readiness and the people
The power of theory appears only in practice, and study is tested by practical results. The enthusiasm generated by the campaign was converted into a mission commitment to dare to fight and be good at fighting. Units trained hard on the front lines of exercises and drills, stood guard at the forefront of military struggle preparation, and demonstrated the campaign’s results through real combat preparation.
Combat planning and practical skills were tightened. In one Army unit, a sudden realistic training alert unfolded late at night. A leader of the unit said that turning campaign results into combat power had to be shown in high-level unit readiness. Since 2023, realistic training, cross-theater base training, mission-subject training and joint exercises and training with foreign militaries were conducted intensively. The entire military was driven by a desire to strengthen training and preparation and raise winning capability.
Under Xi Jinping Thought on strengthening the military, the people’s army carried out major tasks in border defense struggles, maritime rights protection, and counterterrorism and stability maintenance. Deterrence and combat capability rose markedly. With a tenacious fighting spirit and practical action, the military firmly defended national sovereignty, security and development interests. The use of military power made new progress.
Assistance and building focused on grassroots governance. The foundation of combat power lies at the grassroots. Units studied Xi’s important expositions on grassroots construction, explored standardized construction and operation models for battalion-level units, and deepened joint building of the ‘three major organizations’ at the grassroots. They strengthened the awareness and ability to build according to the outline and worked hard to consolidate the base for winning battles.
Assistance was differentiated by unit type, task, foundation and environment. Units strengthened the political and organizational functions of grassroots Party organizations, followed up by helping build Party branches, helping secretaries and helping key backbones. Measures were tailored to different situations, following the principle of ‘one key opens one lock,’ so that grassroots units could improve their own capacity to build.
Party building led grassroots governance. Units studied and applied the ‘Ten Million Project’ experience and the new-era ‘Fengqiao Experience,’ used case analysis to examine tendency problems at the grassroots, and pushed for effective solutions to accumulated problems.
The campaign also tested the commitment to putting the people first. In 2023, Chinese warships sailed urgently to Sudan to evacuate Chinese personnel. On the open ocean, the operation once again put into practice the idea of ‘people first, mission必达.’ From the Libya evacuation in 2011 and the Yemen evacuation in 2015 to the Sudan operation, practice has shown that the people’s army remains a heroic force the Party and the people can fully trust.
In the deep winter of 2023, a 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck Jishishan County in Linxia Prefecture, Gansu. The people’s army followed orders and went all out. Party members and backbones fought at the front line of disaster relief, giving affected people warmth and a sense of security.
‘Practicing the purpose and benefiting the people’ was a task for the future, a test of responsibility, and a concrete goal of the campaign. The military kept in mind its sacred duty to bear arms for the people and fight for the people, to protect their lives and property, and to guard their happy lives.
For the PLA, the campaign’s lasting value will be measured in loyalty under pressure, problems solved at the grassroots, and readiness that holds up when tested.