Li Can, Staff Officer of a Bureau under the Central Theater Command Joint Staff Department: Charting the Coordinates within the Commander's Tent
On the occasion of the 99th founding anniversary of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, the Central Propaganda Department and the Central Military Commission Political Work Department jointly announced 12 "Most Beautiful Revolutionary Soldiers of the New Era." They serve in different posts, but all share the same dream of building a strong military. On ordinary combat positions they have achieved extraordinary results, writing a brilliant answer sheet worthy of the era through loyal devotion and solid capabilities. They are models for officers and soldiers throughout the entire military to emulate. Beginning today, the PLA Daily launches the "Profiles of the Most Beautiful Revolutionary Soldiers of the New Era" column to recount the stories of struggle of the "Most Beautiful Revolutionary Soldiers of the New Era," inspiring officers and soldiers across the force to bravely shoulder their mission and forge ahead, striving to fight and win the decisive battle to achieve the centenary goal of army building and to accelerate the building of the people's military into a world-class military.
"Study military affairs, study war, study fighting" — these 12 characters on the wall of the Central Theater Command headquarters building circulate in the mind of Li Can, a staff officer of a bureau under the Central Theater Command Joint Staff Department, every single day.
Becoming an outstanding military staff officer is the goal of struggle Li Can set for himself on his very first day in the military. During his tenure as a staff officer at the brigade and group army levels, he thoroughly familiarized himself with the technical and tactical performance of the main combat equipment of his units, and deepened his understanding of cross-service joint exercises through coordination and communication with units of other services and arms. His subsequent experience as a battalion commander gave Li Can the opportunity to accumulate rich practical experience in grassroots combat readiness and warfighting from the perspective of a frontline commander.
In 2023, Li Can was transferred to the Central Theater Command headquarters and became a joint operations staff officer for the theater command. His role changed and his perspective expanded — from "a single domain" to "the full domain." To rapidly develop cross-service joint operations thinking, he seized every available moment to study professional materials, conduct in-depth analysis of military history, and consult senior experts, dissecting the logic of victory through joint operations from every contest of wins and losses, every decision and trade-off, and every second of situational evolution.
Li Can understands clearly that there are no shortcuts in combat readiness, and that the baseline data for warfighting is accumulated step by step in the field. Over three years, he has proactively gone deep into positions and accompanied units on flights, treating every combat readiness inspection and on-site investigation as an opportunity for battlefield reconnaissance, building up a knowledge spectrum of joint operations in his mind. As his understanding of joint operations deepened, he took the lead in establishing a combat readiness baseline ledger (战备底数台账), filling in data gaps item by item, effectively supporting combat readiness sustainment.
"Operations concern thousands of troops and horses." While drafting one operational plan, Li Can realized that the movement routes, arrival times, and forward staging locations had all introduced variables compared to previous plans. To address this, he proactively contacted Air Force pilots, Army battalion commanders, and other key personnel from multiple services and arms to consult on plan details; he made a special trip to the archives to retrieve historical materials and study relevant cases, further clarifying his thinking and refining the plan through repeated deductions. In the new plan, the anticipatory assessment and response measures for sudden unexpected situations (突发特情) were more thorough, and the operational efficiency of the force improved markedly.
Rapidly advancing toward jointness requires breaking free from the constraints that bind hands and feet. Targeting critical bottlenecks in the theater command's organization of major exercises and training activities, he innovatively proposed a new multi-echelon simultaneous coordination work model (多级同步统筹工作新模式), achieving a shift in planning from layer-by-layer transmission to integrated linkage, significantly improving overall efficiency.
"Changing with the times, innovating and seeking change" — this is the defining characteristic of Li Can's work. He has extended his research reach to the frontiers of global military transformation, thinking deeply about the logic of victory in informatized and intelligentized warfare (信息化智能化战争), and participating deeply in simulation deductions and algorithm construction, empowering joint operations command with the latest technology.
"The form of warfare is evolving, the battlefield environment is changing — our operational plans must be ready to produce and put to use at any moment." As a joint operations staff officer, Li Can's gaze remains fixed firmly on the future battlefield.