Political Rectification Training in My Eyes | Don't Let "Grinding Out Documents" Wear Away One's Spirit
At the beginning of the year, I received a phone call from a staff officer named Xiao Liu, in which he politely declined an opportunity to be seconded for training at our headquarters organ. Xiao Liu was a top performer at a subordinate organ — disciplined in his work style, sharp in his thinking, and solid in his writing ability. He was a promising talent I had been watching for a long time. The chance to broaden one's horizons and sharpen one's abilities at a higher-level organ is something many people dream of, so why did Xiao Liu turn it down flat?
Over the phone, Xiao Liu spoke from the heart: "Honestly, I'm just afraid of grinding out documents all day long…" He described a previous experience working on drafts at a headquarters organ: a conference room, lights burning around the clock, a few people staring at a large screen, picking over every word and polishing every paragraph. Whether to write "vigorously advance" or "make focused efforts to drive forward" required repeated deliberation; whether to write "consolidate the foundation" or "firmly build the bedrock" required going back and forth. Subheadings had to have matching character counts; parallel sentences had to have identical rhythms; sometimes a draft would pass through layer after layer of review, be pushed back and forth, and end up right back at the first version.
As someone who has worked with written language for many years, I understand the hardships of "grinding out documents," and I know that what Xiao Liu said reflects, to a degree, the problems with writing culture (文风) in a small number of organs. Documents are, at their core, a vehicle for organizing work, deploying tasks, and summarizing experience. What matters is clarifying one's thinking, explaining measures clearly, and conveying the actual situation thoroughly. When form overtakes content, "grinding out documents" quietly loses its purpose.
Our Party has a long tradition of alertness to and correction of bad writing culture. During the Yan'an Rectification Movement, Comrade Mao Zedong sharply criticized writing culture problems in "Oppose Stereotyped Party Writing" (《反对党八股》): "Pages of empty verbiage with nothing in it — that can still be called immature; but to put on airs and try to intimidate people with it is not only immature, it is downright rascally." He demanded that everyone "adopt a lively, fresh, and forceful Marxist-Leninist writing style." Comrade Deng Xiaoping, when drafting documents, always insisted on cutting words and explaining complex problems simply, so that the broad masses of cadres and the people could understand. In 1944, Deng Xiaoping, then acting secretary of the Northern Bureau, used a telegram of just over 700 characters to reply concisely and clearly to ten questions about various aspects of work in the anti-Japanese base areas. After reading it, Mao Zedong commented that the "content is excellent" and circulated it to various localities for reference.
At present, a small number of departments, in their "grinding out documents," place heavy emphasis on ornate phrasing and light emphasis on substantive effectiveness; heavy emphasis on formal sentence structure and light emphasis on candid analysis of actual conditions. Some go even further, equating repeated rounds of redrafting with taking something seriously, and treating document quality as a proxy for work quality. Writing culture is connected to work style (作风). A writing culture that over-polishes wording and prioritizes form over content not only wears away cadres' enthusiasm for their work and diverts time and energy from conducting research and getting real things done — it also imperceptibly distorts work orientation and breeds a formalism (形式主义) that prizes packaging over substantive effort. Over time, some comrades flinch at the sight of a major document. This is not young cadres being afraid of hard work; it is being afraid of pointless hardship and meaningless expenditure of energy.
Since the sustained deepening of political rectification training (政治整训), the entire military has drawn its sword against hollow and inflated writing culture, treating the improvement of writing culture as a prominent lever for rectifying formalism. Our own organ has strictly implemented the requirements of being "short, substantive, and fresh" (短、实、新) and resolutely eliminated the chronic ailments of being "long, empty, and false" (长、空、假). Documents that can go unwritten are resolutely not written; documents that can be shorter are resolutely cut down, with a firm emphasis on being practical and useful.
Rather than rushing to persuade Xiao Liu, I forwarded him several work bulletins and summaries of experience recently drafted by our organ — no boilerplate preambles or stock closing formulas, just concrete solutions to real problems. Reading those words that carried the smell of "gunpowder" and "soil," Xiao Liu's passion for writing was reignited, and he reported to the organ on time after receiving his orders.
When he first arrived, Xiao Liu still carried old habits. When drafting an analysis of the ideological situation among personnel, he borrowed several documents to look for ideas but could not get started for a long time. I smiled and encouraged him: "Don't rush to put pen to paper — come down to the grassroots with me first." We went deep into company-level units and had candid exchanges with officers and soldiers, collecting and analyzing first-hand information on their ideological dynamics. Xiao Liu had a sudden realization: good documents are not "picked out" word by word — they are "run out" in the field and "worked out" through practice. Within just a few months, Xiao Liu no longer blanched at the word "draft." He had become both a beneficiary and a practitioner of the reform of writing culture. A research document he wrote on "effectively preventing and correcting deviations in the outlook on political achievement (政绩观)" was forwarded by higher-level authorities because it struck directly at the pain points and offered specific measures.
The problem of "grinding out documents," on the surface, appears to be about studying written expression; at its root, it is a deviation in the outlook on political achievement and a misalignment in the outlook on work. It must absolutely not be treated as a trivial matter of wording — the distortion must be corrected at the level of ideology. Party organizations and leading cadres at all levels should keep a close watch and routinely correct bad writing culture; use the correct outlook on political achievement to recalibrate a distorted "document outlook" (材料观); take "is the content substantive, is it useful" as the primary standard; stop making excessive demands over word choice and phrasing; liberate cadres from pointless word games; and direct their energy toward the practice of building the force. Leading cadres in particular should take the lead in writing shorter pieces, speaking plainly, and doing real work — using a pragmatic writing culture to guide young cadres to advance unburdened, ensuring that "the rifle, the pen, and the backbone" (枪杆子、笔杆子、腰杆子) are all strong — and thereby influence and motivate officers and soldiers to fight hard battles and produce solid results.