From 'Each Fighting His Own Battle' to 'Covering for Each Other': The Principal and Deputy Party Secretaries Take the Lead in Emphasizing Unity and Keeping the Big Picture in Mind

A Record of the Principal and Deputy Secretaries 'Covering for Each Other'

— One Experience of a Battalion Party Committee Under a Brigade of the 82nd Group Army in Strengthening Leadership Cohesion

■ Ma Yuanpeng, Yan Bin; PLA Daily Special Correspondent Yang Kaiming

After stepping off the training ground, the battalion party committee's principal and deputy secretaries communicate promptly to identify shortcomings in training. Photo by PLA Daily Special Correspondent Yang Kaiming

Not long ago, Deputy Secretary Xu of a battalion party committee under a brigade of the 82nd Group Army had barely taken up his post when, on the eve of a battalion party committee session on war-fighting and training (议战议训会), he received a special "welcoming gift" from Party Committee Secretary Zhang — an analytical report on the battalion's basic military training situation and existing problems.

Leafing through the data-rich, clearly articulated report, Deputy Secretary Xu was moved: "I never expected to get such a thorough grasp of the situation so quickly. Now I have a much firmer foundation for doing my job well."

This harmonious state of affairs was hard-won. Previously, the battalion's principal and deputy secretaries had fallen into the predicament of "each fighting his own battle" (各自为战).

At the time, after the battalion party committee leadership had been reorganized, Secretary Zhang threw himself entirely into party affairs work — conducting education, organizing records, running activities — while the then-Deputy Secretary Li pursued military training at his own pace. On the surface, the two had clear responsibilities and a clear division of labor; in reality, each was doing his own thing without communicating with the other. Officers and soldiers were constantly switching between study-and-education activities and military training, activities frequently conflicted, and they could only focus on one thing at a time.

During one quarterly evaluation, the battalion's party affairs work ranked near the top, but its military training results ranked near the bottom. After the results were announced, a brigade leader who was conducting grassroots research noticed the problem and, taking advantage of his attendance at the battalion party committee's organizational life session (组织生活会), led everyone in analyzing and identifying problems such as "each singing a different tune" and "each sweeping only the snow from one's own doorstep," and collectively deliberated on specific corrective measures.

"I used to think that focusing on party affairs work was the right direction, and I had achieved some results, but on careful reflection, a lot of the work was done for the sake of doing it and was not connected to combat readiness and training" ... "I threw myself entirely into the training ground, thinking it was enough to put in sufficient time and cover enough subjects, and I failed to appreciate the role party affairs work plays in promoting military training" ... At the session, the principal and deputy secretaries each conducted self-reflection and analysis. Through discussion, everyone came to feel that the principal and deputy secretaries of a party organization are partners, not adversaries — helpers, not opponents. Therefore, they must communicate more in their thinking, coordinate more in their actions, pull together as one in their work, and actively support and cooperate with each other. Only in this way can the strength of the organization and the strength of unity be brought to bear.

The principal and deputy secretaries engaged in multiple in-depth exchanges and jointly agreed on the principle of "covering for each other and serving as mutual support" (相互补台、互为支撑). They established a weekly coordination mechanism to regularly communicate on party affairs work and training arrangements, and to plan ahead for time, personnel, and venues in order to avoid each fighting his own battle. Based on the realities of current tasks, they formulated targeted education plans to ensure that party affairs work truly serves the front lines of training. They adhered to the practice of studying, deploying, and inspecting training plans and party affairs work in tandem; conducting ideological mobilization before major exercises and training tasks; and having both principal leaders jointly resolve ideological problems that arise during training. Through these measures, they gradually drove party affairs work and military training into synchronized resonance and mutual promotion.

Only by covering for each other can one good performance follow another. On one occasion, a higher echelon organized a combat capability assessment and evaluation. As the exercise entered its most intense phase, the "Blue Force" not only suppressed with fierce firepower but also employed high-technology means to conduct psychological warfare, flooding the battalion's positions with large quantities of false information, causing some officers and soldiers to waver in their thinking.

At the critical moment, Deputy Secretary Li calmly commanded fire strikes, firmly maintaining the initiative on the battlefield according to the predetermined plan. At the same time, Secretary Zhang rapidly moved forward and conducted timely wartime political work (战时政治工作), organizing key personnel to identify and filter false information, stabilize morale, and launch a counterattack against the "Blue Force's" psychological offensive. The two coordinated their division of labor with seamless cooperation. At the conclusion of the exercise, the evaluation team gave a highly favorable assessment: under battlefield conditions involving a complex electromagnetic environment intertwined with psychological offense and defense, the battalion party committee's principal and deputy secretaries led the leadership team members to each fulfill their respective duties while providing mutual support — fire command was precise and efficient, and wartime political work was timely and effective.

The results achieved on this occasion greatly encouraged the entire battalion's officers and soldiers, and in the subsequent quarterly assessment, the battalion's performance improved further.

With this successful experience behind them, at several subsequent sessions on war-fighting and training, the two secretaries continued — without evasion or concealment — to identify weak links in their work and to mutually urge each other to make corrections. That year, the battalion was rated a First-Class Military Training Battalion and an advanced unit for "Four-Iron" ("四铁") standards.

The transformation from "each fighting his own battle" to "covering for each other" — it was precisely through this kind of reflection and rectification that the scene described at the outset, when Deputy Secretary Xu took up his new post, came to pass.

Some time ago, the battalion organized coordinated training as planned. The entire battalion was dispersed across multiple positions separated by dozens of kilometers, with communications intermittent. Facing this complex situation, the principal and deputy secretaries consulted and decided: each would lead a team at his respective position, handling both training and party affairs work, and would exchange situation reports at fixed times each day while serving as mutual support.

When they noticed that the other had not fully considered or handled a problem, or that there was a gap in the work, they would promptly tug each other's sleeve and proactively give a reminder. On one occasion, Secretary Zhang was leading the communications detachment in an exercise, but when exchanging situation reports, Deputy Secretary Xu astutely detected an oversight in the plan Secretary Zhang had formulated, immediately raised the alert, and offered optimization suggestions. Deputy Secretary Xu then drew on his own experience organizing training and worked through the night to produce a detailed supplementary plan, which he sent to Secretary Zhang for reference and implementation.

This model of leading separate teams while serving as mutual support quickly showed results. Wherever training encountered an obstacle in one direction, the other party proactively coordinated support; wherever ideological wavering appeared in one direction, the other party promptly shared experience and helped resolve it. Though the two were at different positions, they consistently maintained a state of covering each other's gaps. The exercise task was ultimately completed successfully, and multiple training method achievements were tested against actual combat conditions.

Reporter's Notes

Taking the Lead in Emphasizing Unity and Keeping the Big Picture in Mind

The transformation of this battalion party committee's principal and deputy secretaries from "each fighting his own battle" to "covering for each other" vividly confirms a truth: unity is strength, and the building of the force and the preparation for war and combat training must firmly establish the "one game of chess" (一盘棋) mindset.

In reality, similar phenomena exist in the party organizations of some units, where division of labor has turned into division of the household, and cooperation has turned into internal friction. For example, some fail to keep the overall situation in mind and focus only on their own "three-thirds of an acre" (一亩三分地) of responsibility, responding passively and unwilling to take on "extra" work; some engage in departmentalism (本位主义), with blurred boundaries between public and private interests, calculating personal gains and losses before doing any work; and still others are accustomed to fighting alone and do not value coordination and joint action, and so on. All of the above may appear to be guarding one's own "responsibility field," but in reality it is self-serving individualism of the "not my concern, none of my business" variety at work — a manifestation of weakened party character cultivation and a distorted view of political performance (政绩观).

What the combined strength of all can lift, nothing can withstand. In the history of our Party and our military, stories such as "Zhu and Mao are inseparable" and "Chen cannot do without Su, and Su cannot do without Chen" have been widely celebrated. The facts prove that unity is the lifeblood of the Party; when the question of unity is handled well, work can be done well; when the question of unity is not handled well, work will often be difficult to do well. Party member cadres, and especially leading cadres, must fully recognize the importance of unity, strengthen the overall perspective of "one game of chess," not sever responsibilities because of division of labor, not stand apart because primary responsibilities differ, proactively step forward when tasks arise, and actively extend a helping hand when comrades are in need. Only when leadership team members take the lead in emphasizing unity and keeping the big picture in mind can they inspire and motivate everyone to think in one direction and exert effort in one direction, creating the vibrant situation where "when everyone adds fuel, the flames rise high" (众人拾柴火焰高).