Correct Outlook on Achievements, Practiced in the Barracks | The "Pneumatic Drill" Passed Down to the Training Ground

"The Pneumatic Drill" Passed Down to the Training Ground

■ Cao Wei, PLA Daily Special Correspondent Zhang Yongqing

Illustration: Fang Han

The Wujiang River roars; the Wuling Mountains stand tall. Deep in the mountains, a massive cave lies hidden among lush greenery.

In the 1960s, the state launched the Third Front Construction (三线建设), laying out a nuclear industrial system in the deep mountains of the southwest. It was decided that at a concealed location in Fuling, Chongqing—backed by mountains and adjacent to the Wujiang River—a strategic defense project would be built, codenamed "816." At a single order, tens of thousands of builders converged from every corner of the country, concealed their identities, and toiled for 18 years, carving into the deep rock strata a spiritual landmark of "doing only unseen work, seeking no fame."

Today, the place where those pioneers gave their youth has become the "816" Project ruins site, a tourist destination that visitors flock to; a pneumatic drill once used by the builders stands quietly in a display case, silently recounting to visitors that era of burning passion.

Sixty years have passed in the blink of an eye. Atop the mountain, officers and soldiers of a certain company of the 4th Detachment, China People's Armed Police Force Chongqing General Corps, have taken up the invisible "pneumatic drill" and continue writing the story of hard-fought breakthroughs on the training ground.

The "hard bone" (硬骨头) that this company has been gnawing at for six consecutive years stems from a course that seems unremarkable at first glance: combat casualty care. At the end of 2020, then-Deputy Company Commander Chen Shouren led a team to participate in "Devil Week" extreme training and was scored zero in the combat casualty care event for non-standard operations.

This failure cut deep into the participating officers and soldiers. At the after-action review, Chen Shouren produced a blank sheet of paper and analyzed the causes person by person and item by item against the outline standards, formulating corrective measures. That densely written sheet of paper became the starting point for the company's combat casualty care "capability advancement chart" (能力进阶图).

At just that time, the detachment planned to roll out standardized combat casualty care training across grassroots companies. After the notice was issued, Chen Shouren, drawing on the lessons of the competition defeat, set standards for the officers and soldiers that far exceeded the outline requirements. Word spread, and the officers and soldiers erupted. Some felt, "We're not medical personnel—training to a rough standard is good enough." Others thought, "The outline doesn't even demand this much; why make things hard for ourselves?" Still others questioned, "In peacetime, what use is there for combat casualty care skills?"…

Faced with these differing voices, Chen Shouren was resolute: "Train well and train hard—that's the only way to save lives when it counts." He led the company's officers and soldiers into the "816" Project ruins, pointed to the dense drill marks on the rock walls, and told everyone with feeling: "Faced with hard granite and dangerous rockfall zones, the builders of that era set no conditions, waited on no one, and hollowed out an entire mountain, in exchange for national security and the people's peace. On the battlefield, failing to save a wounded comrade because training was cut short in peacetime is the greatest betrayal of the mission."

Those heartfelt words, like that pneumatic drill, bored deep into the hearts of the officers and soldiers. In the training that followed, everyone's enthusiasm surged, and training scores rose accordingly. By the end of 2021, all of the company's combat casualty care scores had reached "Good" or above.

"Our secret is just two words: hard work (刻苦)." Then-Platoon Leader Chen Shunpeng said that during the sprint period before the assessment, for the single action of hemorrhage control and bandaging alone, everyone practiced more than a hundred times a day, finally achieving the ability to "precisely locate in darkness and operate to standard in low light."

When the results were announced, the company ranked at the top in the detachment assessment. The outstanding results were a vivid lesson in education on the correct outlook on achievements (政绩观)—outline standards are the floor, winning is the high bar of combat effectiveness, and training military skills to the utmost is genuine achievement.

Deep inside the "816" Project tunnel, every meter the pneumatic drill advanced was an accumulation of quantitative change breaking through to qualitative change (量变向质变突破). The company's path of refinement on the training ground is likewise a quiet perseverance in doing unseen work (潜功).

In 2023, when Chen Shouren was transferred away from the company, the company's combat casualty care training scores had already been firmly at the top of the detachment. Many officers and soldiers felt that "this subject can be 'closed out'" and "as long as we maintain our current state, other units will find it hard to surpass us"…

Noticing that the officers and soldiers' thinking was beginning to slide, then-Company Political Instructor Wu Yanbin led everyone into the detachment history museum to revisit the "unfinished" stories of the "816" Project: the project ultimately never went into production, and the tens of thousands of builders who fought hard for 18 years left behind not a single "meritorious service stele." "Those 18 years of construction were not wasted, because the mountain had been bored through and the strategic foundation had been built up. This is like our approach to training—reaching the standard on one subject does not mean the hard fighting is over. Combat effectiveness building has only a present continuous tense, never a completed tense." Wu Yanbin said.

Not long after, the company's "capability advancement chart" received an upgraded version: two sub-courses were added—"rescue in confined spaces" and "rescue under multiple overlapping injuries"—with standards higher and more demanding than the foundational courses.

The previously self-confident officers and soldiers were quickly doused with cold water. During one training session, a rescue team worked for more than 20 minutes without being able to extract the "casualty"—in the confusion, the soldiers had installed the splint backwards. During the after-action review, the company cadres reached a consensus through discussion: "Training cannot remain at the level of 'getting by'; it must be trained to the point of 'holding up under any conditions.'"

For a period after that, the company's officers and soldiers noticed that Chen Shunpeng often shut himself in the study room. Before long, he produced a set of "rapid first-aid procedures under low-light conditions." It turned out that Chen Shunpeng had used his spare time to systematically sort through the various variables that might be encountered under extreme conditions, studying solutions one by one, and refining the procedures down to every single step.

A year later, the company achieved an "all-excellent" score in the confined-space rescue exercise.

Last year, higher authorities issued new-generation rapid first-aid equipment and intelligent monitoring devices, and the company seized the opportunity to propose a new training subject: rapid first-aid and decision-making based on vital signs monitoring. Through repeated simulation training, the officers and soldiers worked out a set of rescue procedures that are fast to respond and quick to operate, and they won first place in the training assessment organized by the General Corps.

"Combat effectiveness building is not shouted into existence—it is 'chiseled' out blow by blow, like the '816' Project." Speaking of the hard-won results, the company's current Political Instructor Liu Qianlong showed this reporter the combat casualty care "capability advancement chart," which not only records in detail the achievements the company has made along the way, but also bears the signatures of successive company commanders.

Over six years, the name of the subject has changed, the training conditions have changed, and the assessment standards have changed—but their determination to overcome difficulties has not changed, and their goal of striving to be first has not changed. Over those six years, company commanders have been rotated one after another; at each handover, the outgoing and incoming commanders jointly sign the "capability advancement chart," completing the relay of the mission. On this "capability advancement chart," there are both subjects marked "completed" and "hard bones" still being worked on. At each handover, detachment leaders say the same thing to the new company commander: "A new official making new achievements is a form of achievement; a new official settling old accounts is also a form of achievement."

In the study and education campaign on establishing and practicing a correct outlook on achievements (正确政绩观), the detachment organized officers and soldiers to once again revisit the story of the "816" Project. Everyone firmly declared: the "pneumatic drill" has been passed down to our generation, and we have only one thing to do—keep our eyes fixed on the "hard bones" of combat effectiveness building and keep drilling, without stopping.

At the end of the interview, as this reporter passed the company training ground, several soldiers were seen sitting together reviewing that day's training. The pneumatic drill of the "816" Project stopped long ago, but the continued struggle of these young soldiers is clearly another kind of charge forward—courageous and resolute, never pausing.

Unseen Work as Foundation, Real Results Reaching Far

■ Zhou Junbing

An old pneumatic drill displayed in a case, a "capability advancement chart" soaked in sweat—these bear witness to the unseen work (潜功) of Third Front Construction builders who concealed their identities, and to the responsibility of officers and soldiers of the new era who have carried on the hard fighting, vividly interpreting for us what a correct outlook on achievements means.

To establish and practice a correct outlook on achievements, one must recognize at a deep ideological level the dialectical relationship between visible achievements (显功) and unseen work (潜功). A towering building, magnificent and imposing—that is visible achievement; a solid foundation, buried deep underground—that is unseen work. If one is impatient for quick results and eager for instant success, prioritizing visible achievement over unseen work and short-term gains over long-term development, it will be impossible to lay a solid foundation, and the so-called towering building can only be a castle in the air with an unstable base.

In those years, tens of thousands of builders took root in the deep mountains for eighteen years, chiseling through mountains to forge a shield without seeking fame, solely to consolidate the strategic barrier of national security and build up the foundation of national development. Today, successive commanders of a certain company of the 4th Detachment, China People's Armed Police Force Chongqing General Corps, have carried on the hard fighting in relay, leading officers and soldiers in deep and meticulous study, continuously achieving improvements in quality and upgrades in capability. Their practice of not seeking visible results and instead cultivating unseen work has set the example of what it looks like to practice a correct outlook on achievements.

True achievement is often the unseen work that accumulates day by day without anyone knowing, the hard skill (硬功夫) that cannot be seen for a time but holds up when it counts. Combat effectiveness building is a systematic project—absolutely not the work of a single morning or evening. We should be like the officers and soldiers of that company: take up the invisible "pneumatic drill" passed down by our predecessors, cast aside the restless and utilitarian mindset, endure the hardship of cultivating unseen work, and keep our eyes fixed on the "hard bones" of combat effectiveness building, drilling and chiseling without stop. Only in this way can the edifice of the cause of strengthening the military (强军事业) have a permanently solid foundation.