Deeply Study and Implement Xi Jinping's Thought on Party Building | Uphold and Improve an Organizational System That Is Vertically Integrated and Capable of Forceful Execution

Uphold and Improve an Organizational System That Is Vertically Integrated and Capable of Forceful Execution

■ Chu Dangyang, Zhan Li, Li Zhuoqi

Editor's Note: Xi Jinping's Thought on Party Building identifies "upholding and improving an organizational system that is vertically integrated and capable of forceful execution (坚持健全上下贯通、执行有力的组织体系)" as one of the "Fourteen Upholds," fully demonstrating the important status and role of organizational system construction. The Party's strength comes from organization; the Party's comprehensive leadership and all of the Party's work must be realized through the Party's tight organizational system. Chairman Xi has profoundly pointed out that only when Party organizations at all levels are sound and strong, forming a tight organizational system that is vertically integrated and capable of forceful execution, can Party leadership be exercised like "the body commanding the arm, and the arm commanding the fingers." On the new journey, we must give full play to the enormous advantages of the Party's tight organizational system, build and strengthen Party organizations at all levels, genuinely rally the strength of the broad ranks of Party members and cadres, and provide a strong organizational guarantee for advancing the great cause of building a strong nation and national rejuvenation.

Placing great importance on organizational construction is a glorious tradition consistently upheld by our Party. Since the 18th National Congress of the Party, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has put forward and implemented the Party's organizational line for the new era, vigorously advanced the construction of the Party's organizational system, given full play to the Party's organizational advantages, rallied the hearts of the Party and the people, pooled the strength of all parties, and united and led the people to continuously achieve new victories. To deeply study and implement Xi Jinping's Thought on Party Building, we must build an organizational pattern that reaches all the way down vertically, extends to every corner horizontally, has clear levels, and operates efficiently, and continuously transform the Party's political advantages and organizational advantages into advantages for development and advantages for winning.

I

A tight organizational system is a powerful pillar supporting all of the Party's work and combat effectiveness. More than a century of Party history has repeatedly confirmed one truth: whenever the organizational system is tight and strong, the cause of the Party and the military flourishes; whenever the organizational system is loose and weak, the cause of the Party and the military suffers setbacks. To strive for a century of army-building and advance toward a world-class military, we must build Party organizations at all levels of the military to be even stronger and more powerful.

A tight organizational system is where the advantages and strength of our Party and our military lie. Marx and Engels held that the proletariat should "unite into a closely knit, battle-ready, and organized class." Lenin also pointed out: "In its struggle for power, the proletariat has no other weapon but organization." The Chinese Communist Party is a proletarian party guided fundamentally by Marxism; from the day of its founding it has placed great importance on establishing a tight organizational system. Along the way, our Party and our military have passed through storms of blood and fire and endured countless trials and tribulations, yet have grown ever more vibrant and continuously stronger. One important reason is that we have a tight organizational system—a powerful advantage that no other political party or military force in the world possesses.

A tight organizational system is a strong guarantee for the People's Army to overcome difficulties and hardships. During the Battle of Triangle Hill (上甘岭战役), a company of the Chinese People's Volunteer Army established a "temporary tunnel Party branch (坑道临时党支部)." Under the leadership of the Party branch, officers and soldiers held out in tunnel combat for 14 days and nights in desperate conditions without food or water, were wiped out three times and rebuilt three times, and ultimately annihilated more than 1,700 enemy troops, creating a miracle in the history of positional defense warfare in the world. Practice has proven that organizational tightness is the People's Army's inherited treasure (传家法宝) for moving from victory to victory. It is precisely by relying on a powerful organizational system that Party leadership has been ensured to cover the entire military, reach directly to the grassroots, and reach directly to officers and soldiers, enabling the People's Army to remain united as "a solid piece of steel" and to render great historical contributions to the Party and the people.

A tight organizational system is an important pillar for the People's Army to deepen political consolidation and rectification (政治整训). Only by relying on the top-down organizational chain and a complete organizational system, pressing down political responsibility for governing the Party at each level, achieving full coverage of Party member education and management, and promptly correcting nascent and trending problems, can we continuously achieve self-purification, self-improvement, self-reform, and self-elevation. In recent years, the People's Army has implemented the strategy of political army-building for the new era (新时代政治建军方略), continuously strengthened military Party organization construction, deepened political consolidation and rectification with the spirit of self-revolution, fundamentally reversed the situation in which the Party's absolute leadership over the military had been weakened, hollowed out, and diluted and in which governing the Party had been lax and soft, preserved the roots and soul through revolutionary tempering, and forged strong Party organizations that are politically steadfast and highly capable.

II

To deeply study and implement Xi Jinping's Thought on Party Building, we must profoundly grasp the connotation and essential meaning of "upholding and improving an organizational system that is vertically integrated and capable of forceful execution," accurately understand the specific requirements for military Party organization construction in the new era, and work hard on strengthening Party leadership, releasing organizational effectiveness, and optimizing organizational form, so as to genuinely enhance the political function and organizational function of Party organizations.

Ensure that Party leadership reaches all the way to the end. "Vertical integration (上下贯通)" addresses the question of the vertical extension of Party leadership; its core meaning is to resolutely uphold the authority of the Party Central Committee and its centralized, unified leadership, and to enable the Party Central Committee's decisions and deployments to reach directly to the grassroots and directly to officers and soldiers. The military has special political attributes and rigid disciplinary requirements; we must put into practice the series of fundamental principles and systems for upholding the Party's absolute leadership over the military, and through pressing down political responsibility level by level, refining implementation measures, and strengthening inter-level linkage, drive the various regulations and requirements of the Chairman of the Central Military Commission Responsibility System (军委主席负责制) to run through to the very end and be implemented in detail, ensuring that the entire military maintains absolute loyalty, absolute purity, and absolute reliability, and always unswervingly follows the command of the Party Central Committee, the Central Military Commission, and Chairman Xi.

Ensure that organizational effectiveness is fully released. "Forceful execution (执行有力)" requires Party organizations at all levels to proactively shoulder political responsibility, implement all deployments and requirements of the Party Central Committee without exception, break through blockages in the implementation process, and genuinely transform organizational advantages into governance effectiveness. As an armed group that executes the Party's political tasks, the People's Army has always been renowned throughout the world for its iron rules of military orders being as immovable as mountains and commands being obeyed without question; we must always remain steadfastly aligned and move at the sound of orders, executing all decisions and deployments of the Party Central Committee, the Central Military Commission, and Chairman Xi unconditionally, advancing them with high efficiency, and implementing them with high quality, forging with absolutely iron-clad organizational execution capability a crack force that comes when called, fights when it comes, and wins when it fights (召之即来、来之能战、战之必胜).

Ensure that organizational form is dynamically adjusted. Organizational system construction has never been a static project that is fixed and settled once and for all; changes in the era's environment, adjustments to the mission and tasks, and updates to the objects of work inevitably require the organizational structure to keep pace with the needs of developing circumstances. Modern warfare is accelerating its evolution toward intelligentization and informatization, exhibiting the distinct characteristics of joint operations and system-of-systems confrontation (体系对抗); unmanned combat, space confrontation, and cyber gaming are gradually becoming important forms of modern warfare, and new-domain new-quality forces (新域新质力量) have become the core growth point of combat effectiveness. This requires us to break with traditional models, extend the Party organization chain to frontline combat units, field training sites, and the front lines of scientific research breakthroughs, drive the construction model of Party organizations and the generation model of combat effectiveness to resonate at the same frequency, and consolidate the organizational foundation for winning future wars.

III

On the new journey of the new era, to improve an organizational system that is vertically integrated and capable of forceful execution, we must proceed from the new practice of military struggle, grasp the key emphases of military Party organization construction, and through using key points to drive the overall situation, promote comprehensive progress and across-the-board excellence in Party organizations at all levels throughout the military.

Optimize the system and weave a tight grid of organizational coverage. The Sanwan Reorganization (三湾改编) established the important principle and system of "building the Party branch at the company level (支部建在连上)," ensuring politically and organizationally that "the Party commands the gun." With the Party branch built at the company level, the troops have a soul. At present, it has become the norm for troops to break with traditional organizational structures and carry out missions in the form of modular groupings and mobile formations; the People's Army must carry forward the glorious tradition of "building the Party branch at the company level," continuously optimize the military Party organization system, improve methods for establishing Party organizations in cross-service joint missions, improve procedures for forming temporary Party organizations in military operations such as field training, distant-ocean escort missions, and joint military exercises, and truly embed Party branches into combat groupings and combat units, so that wherever the mission grouping goes, Party organization construction follows.

Build strong branches and consolidate the foundation of organizational development. Chairman Xi has emphasized: "We must attach great importance to strengthening grassroots Party organization construction, forge every grassroots Party organization into a strong fighting fortress, and promote comprehensive progress and across-the-board excellence in grassroots construction." Military grassroots Party organizations, as the "nerve endings" of the Party's body, are the "last mile" for implementing the decisions and deployments of the Party Central Committee, the Central Military Commission, and Chairman Xi. We must continuously rectify weak and lax grassroots Party organizations, select and assign excellent Party branch secretaries, enhance the comprehensive capability of grassroots branches to grasp war preparedness, construction, and implementation; drive the normalization and standardization of intra-Party political life, strictly implement systems such as the "three meetings and one lesson (三会一课)," organizational life meetings, and democratic evaluation of Party members, give full play to the role of grassroots Party organizations as fighting fortresses and the vanguard and exemplary role of Party members, and forge grassroots troops into strong fighting collectives that are invincible in attack and undefeated in battle.

Enhance capability and clarify the direction of organizational construction. At the Political Work Conference of the Central Military Commission, Chairman Xi explicitly identified "improving the leadership capacity, organizational capacity, and execution capacity of Party organizations (提高党组织领导力、组织力、执行力)" as one of six key areas of work to be grasped in advancing political army-building on the new journey, pointing the direction and providing guidance for strengthening military Party organization construction in the new era. Improving the leadership capacity of Party organizations requires Party organizations at all levels to uphold politics, set the direction, plan the overall situation, and formulate policies, and to firmly grasp the troops politically, ideologically, and organizationally, ensuring that all construction proceeds in an orderly manner and develops in a healthy direction. Improving the organizational capacity of Party organizations requires relying on one's own organizational system to accumulate energy and release effectiveness, maximally rallying military morale and fighting spirit, integrating combat forces, and activating grassroots vitality, forming a powerful organizational synergy in which all are of one mind and everyone strives forward. Improving the execution capacity of Party organizations requires continuously enhancing the courage to take responsibility and the practical capability of Party organizations at all levels, ensuring that the decisions, deployments, instructions, and requirements of the Party Central Committee, the Central Military Commission, and Chairman Xi are implemented and realized.

Improve systems and standardize the processes of organizational operation. Laws and regulations have a fundamental, comprehensive, stable, and long-term character and are an important guarantee for ensuring the efficient operation of the organizational system. In recent years, our military has focused on breaking through the key difficulties in military Party organization construction under the new structure, successively revising and promulgating a series of regulatory documents including the Outline for Grassroots Construction of the Military (《军队基层建设纲要》), the Regulations on Party Building in the Military of the Chinese Communist Party (《中国共产党军队党的建设条例》), and the Regulations on the Work of Military Committees (Branches) of the Chinese Communist Party (《中国共产党军队委员会（支部）工作规定》), further elevating the level of institutionalization and standardization of military Party organization construction. We must adapt to the development of the times, further improve the system of intra-Party laws and regulations, use systems to drive Party building and use systems to strengthen organizations, and rely on the authority of systems to ensure that the organizational system operates in coordination from top to bottom and runs with high efficiency.

(Authors' unit: Air Force Aviation University)