Special Issue on Building the Military Through Politics · Forging Essentials | Revolutionary Ideals Transcend All
From the gunshots atop the city walls of Nanchang to the advancing footsteps of strengthening and revitalizing the military in the new era, looking back on the magnificent historical journey of our military, Chairman Xi profoundly observed at the rally commemorating the 90th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army: "The people's military has moved from victory to victory, demonstrating the great power of ideals and convictions. Lofty ideals and firm convictions are the political soul of Chinese Communist Party members and the spiritual pillar of the people's military." "Revolutionary ideals transcend all. Without a large number of Chinese sons and daughters with firm communist ideals, there would be no Chinese Communist Party, no New China, and certainly no development and progress in our country today. To develop our country better, we cannot do without the power of ideals and convictions." As the centenary of the founding of the military draws near, we revisit the spirit of Chairman Xi's important speeches and look back at the sky of history, feeling ever more deeply that, for the people's military, building a solid foundation of ideals and convictions has never been a mere slogan—it is a fundamental proposition that concerns the direction of military building and determines victory or defeat, survival or extinction.
That year, the Great Revolution failed, and more than 310,000 Communist Party members and revolutionary martyrs fell under the enemy's blades.
——Around 2 p.m. on April 28, 1927, the execution ground of the Beijing Metropolitan Detention Center on Xijiaominxiang, Beijing.
Dressed in a worn gray cotton robe, Li Dazhao walked to the execution ground with composure. The commanding executioner asked Li Dazhao whether he had any final words for his family. Li Dazhao replied: "I am a believer in communism. I know only my principles, not my family. To die for one's principles is one's proper lot—what regret could there be?"
Only 38 years old, Li Dazhao, utterly fearless and perfectly calm, was the first to mount the gallows, shouting "Sacrifice for the cause!" and died a heroic martyr's death.
Chen Yannian, then Secretary of the CCP Jiangsu Provincial Committee, walked to the execution ground. The executioner ordered him to kneel. Chen Yannian absolutely refused. Facing the enemy's blade, he cried out: "Revolutionaries are open and aboveboard and look upon death as a return home. We die only standing—we will never kneel!"
Countless revolutionary forebears left behind solemn vows that shook the mountains and rivers, written in their lives and blood across the sky of history.
Xia Minghan, then a standing committee member of the CCP Hubei Provincial Committee and only 28 years old, was arrested after being betrayed by a traitor. Facing the enemy's torture and gun barrels, he refused to yield even unto death. After being escorted to the execution ground, when the executioner asked Xia Minghan if he had any last words, he took up pen and paper and wrote the poem of righteous martyrdom that has resounded through the ages: "Losing my head is no matter, so long as the cause is true. Kill Xia Minghan, and those who come after will carry on."
Fang Zhimin, who had the misfortune of being arrested in January of that year, firmly rejected the enemy's offers of high office and generous rewards while in prison. In his cell, he wrote words that shook the mountains and rivers: "The enemy can only cut off our heads—they can never shake our convictions!"
On the day of his execution, the 36-year-old Fang Zhimin stood silently by the Gan River for several minutes, then suddenly turned around and said calmly: "Come then!" He then died a heroic martyr's death in a volley of gunfire.
Under the White Terror, before the enemy's blades, Communist Party members were fearless and looked upon death as a return home. Their courage and resolve sprang from their faith in and pursuit of communism within their hearts. In the dark old China where the people had no means of livelihood, it was precisely because they firmly believed they were engaged in the magnificent cause of "seeking benefits for the overwhelming majority of people" and opening up a new world that they resolutely merged their personal fates with the fate of the nation and people, placed personal life and death, honor and disgrace outside themselves, and forged with blood and life the firm conviction and far-reaching ideal of "dying for communism is dying in a worthy cause."
Countless revolutionary martyrs, through their acts of sacrificing their heads and shedding their blood, tell us: ideals and convictions are a special quality formed when faith is fused into the soul. They can provide light in the darkest moments, bestow courage in choices between life and death, preserve integrity before material temptation, and perceive eternity beyond personal sacrifice. They connect the small individual life to a great cause, thereby attaining value that transcends time and space. It is precisely this heroic spirit of "with so many sacrifices come such great aspirations, daring to make the sun and moon shine anew," this ideal and conviction of struggling for communism throughout one's life, that has forged the spiritual monument of the Chinese nation and consolidated the most solid foundation of the Chinese Communist Party's ideals and convictions.
"Ideals and convictions are the foundation for establishing and developing the Party, and also the bedrock of Party members and cadres." Ideals and convictions are a spiritual starlight that traverses time and space and never fades. For the century-old great Party, they are like a taproot sunk deep into the historical bedrock, drawing nourishment from the sweet spring of truth, supporting every growth ring of a towering tree; for the tens of thousands of Party members, they are like source code flowing through the bloodstream, defining the value hierarchy of life and calibrating the entire course of one's journey. This faith is the light in Li Dazhao's eyes when he prophesied a "golden world," the fire in Xia Minghan's chest when he wrote "those who come after will carry on," and the silent vow of countless Communist Party members who embedded their burning original aspirations into the warp and weft of the era.
The "bedrock" of ideals and convictions, upon which one establishes oneself, endows life with a weight that transcends worldly measures. It keeps integrity from being eroded by wind and rain, and keeps one's steps from wandering at crossroads. The foundation for establishing and developing the Party is thereby consolidated; the key to remaining evergreen through a century is hidden therein. When generation after generation of Communist Party members gather the starlight of their ideals into a river, it becomes the most magnificent galaxy illuminating the nation's future, and fulfills what Fang Zhimin wrote in his book Beloved China: "By then, everywhere will be vibrant creation, everywhere will be daily renewal and progress; songs of joy will replace laments, smiling faces will replace tearful ones, abundance will replace poverty, health will replace suffering, wisdom will replace ignorance, love will replace hatred and killing, the joy of life will replace the sorrow of death, and radiant gardens will replace desolate wastelands!"
In the 1930s, across the vast land of China, a force spent two years crossing glaciers and snow-capped mountains, high mountains and deep gorges, rivers and treacherous shoals, swamps and grasslands… and forged a path that determined the fate of the Chinese nation—the 25,000-li Long March.
How difficult was this path? Rudolf Bosshardt, a Swiss-born British missionary who traveled with the Red Army on the Long March for more than ten months, described this bitter and frigid road in his book The Restraining Hand in vivid terms: "The road, in China, is defined somewhat differently than in Britain. The road traveled with the Red Army was sometimes little more than a track left by those who had gone before—it could hardly be called a road… Walking on mountain paths was very slippery; thousands of men and horses trudging along with heavy steps made an already slippery road utterly muddy. Falling was a daily occurrence; the mud on one's clothes would dry in one place only for a new wet patch to appear in another." After completing the Long March, someone made a rough calculation: the Red Army covered more than 10,000 kilometers, traversed 12 provinces, crossed 18 mountain ranges—five of which were perpetually covered in snow and ice—and forded 24 major rivers…
There was no road to begin with; the Red Army forged one with their own two legs—a road that astonished the world and will shine forever in history. In the eyes of these foreign nationals who could receive a degree of special consideration, the Long March was a challenge to the limits of human endurance; but for ordinary Red Army officers and soldiers who faced the test of life and death at every moment, the Long March was even more a proof of human spiritual power, achieved through will and conviction—
On the Long March road through wind and snow, an old soldier wearing a tattered single-layer garment leaned against a bare tree trunk, sitting in peaceful repose, motionless, like a frozen statue… The commanding officer sent a messenger to summon the head of the quartermaster department, wanting to ask why he had not issued a padded jacket to this comrade who had frozen to death; comrades in the column told him through tears that the comrade who had frozen to death was the head of the quartermaster department himself. When a sudden rainstorm struck the Songpan grasslands, the physically exhausted young cadre Zheng Jinyu, realizing he could not make it out of the grasslands, pulled from under his arm, before he died, seven matches wrapped in oilcloth and kept warm by his body heat—they became the last tinder to save his comrades and lead them out of the swampy grasslands. When the Red Army crossed the grasslands, short of clothing and food, soldiers had no choice but to boil and eat belts, saddles, and everything else made of leather to stave off hunger. When they came to eat the last half of a belt belonging to Red Army soldier Zhou Guangcai, he said to his comrades through tears: "Comrades, let us keep it as a memento, carry it to northern Shaanxi, find the Party Central Committee, and see Chairman Mao!" This proposal won the agreement of all his squad comrades, and everyone, filled with boundless longing for revolutionary victory, preserved that half-belt and ultimately arrived victoriously in Yan'an…
Facing the challenges of hunger, cold, wounds and illness, and extreme natural conditions such as snow mountains and swamps, on a journey deemed "impossible to complete," Red Army officers and soldiers created the miracle of pressing forward despite "one person sacrificing for every 300 meters." "The head of the quartermaster department," "seven matches," "half a belt"… are concrete portraits of Red Army officers and soldiers overcoming hardship and difficulty, proving to the world the "Goldbach's Conjecture of conviction (信念的哥德巴赫猜想)" in world history—that human spiritual power can break through the absolute limits of material conditions. This is precisely the most precious revelation the Long March left to posterity: when a group of people are completely selfless and fearless in pursuit of a common ideal, what they can create is not only a military miracle, but an immortal monument in the history of the human spirit.
Napoleon, who once swept across Europe by force of arms and was ultimately defeated and exiled to Saint Helena, left the world this famous saying in his remaining years on that lonely island: there are two great powers in the world—the sword and the spirit. In the long run, the spirit always conquers the sword.
Why can the spirit overcome the material? To interpret this great expedition of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army and find the secret of victory in the 25,000-li Long March, three famous foreign journalists came to China one after another to investigate and report, each completing a book: Snow, in Red Star Over China, regarded the Long March as "an incomparable epic in human history"; Smedley, in The Great Road, called the Long March "a great epic in the history of revolutionary warfare"; Salisbury, in The Long March: The Untold Story, considered the Long March "the crucible of the Chinese revolution" and "a monument to human steadfastness and courage"… Their works differ in style and perspective, but the conclusions they reached are strikingly similar: they all regard the Long March as an extraordinary manifestation of the human spirit, will, and conviction—a shared spiritual heritage of all humanity and an eternal symbol of courage, sacrifice, and conviction.
To test jade requires three full days of burning; to distinguish timber requires waiting seven years. The true strength of a force often lies in its ability both to withstand the test of the most critical moments and to endure the tempering of long and arduous years. The Long March is celebrated as "the red ribbon on the earth" because it was dyed red by the blood of countless Red Army soldiers. The two different dimensions of tempering—"the test of life-and-death moments" and "the tempering of prolonged suffering"—together constitute the most complete and thorough forging of the spirit and will of Communist Party members.
Deng Xiaoping, who "followed along" during the Long March, had earlier presided over the founding of the Red Star newspaper in the Central Soviet Area. On the Long March road, this hand-carved mimeographed tabloid continued to be printed and distributed, providing soldiers with "spiritual nourishment." In summing up the long and arduous course of the Chinese revolution, Deng Xiaoping put forward: "Why were we able to struggle through in extremely difficult circumstances in the past, overcome thousands of hardships and dangers, and achieve revolutionary victory? It was because we had ideals, we had Marxist convictions, we had communist convictions."
Wind and rain soak our clothes but make our bones harder still; wild vegetables fill our stomachs but make our will more resolute; officers and soldiers share the same hardships; revolutionary ideals transcend all. At the rally commemorating the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Red Army's Long March, Chairman Xi's voice resounded throughout the world: the victory of the Long March was the victory of the ideals of Chinese Communist Party members, the victory of the convictions of Chinese Communist Party members… The victory of the Long March depended on the heroic spirit and revolutionary mettle of Red Army officers and soldiers who could overwhelm all enemies without being overwhelmed by any enemy, and who could conquer all difficulties without being conquered by any difficulty.
In the history of the people's military's development, there are recorded historical moments that made the enemy "tremble with fear."
——On February 23, 1940, surrounded on all sides by Japanese forces, General Yang Jingyu responded to the enemy's calls to surrender with bullets. In the end, he was struck by multiple bullets and died a heroic martyr's death. To unravel the mystery of Yang Jingyu's continued fighting in desperate circumstances, the Japanese military cruelly dissected his remains and found not a single grain of food in his stomach—only undigested grass roots, tree bark, and cotton wadding.岸谷隆一郎 (岸谷隆一郎), the chief of the puppet Tonghua Provincial Police Department responsible for the encirclement and suppression operation, could not help but "sigh with admiration at his heroism."
——On March 18, 1943, the 4th Company of a certain unit of the New Fourth Army fought a desperate battle against Japanese and puppet forces at Liulaozhuang in Huaiyin, Jiangsu. Facing a powerful adversary, all 82 soldiers of the company were utterly fearless, fighting fiercely against several thousand Japanese and puppet troops for 12 hours, successfully covering the withdrawal of the Huaihai District Party and government organs and the masses. In the end, all soldiers of the company died heroic martyr's deaths. After the battle ended, word came from the puppet side that the Japanese military expressed deep admiration for the spirit of sacrifice shown by our forces in dying heroically for their country.
——In the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, Chinese People's Volunteer Army officers and soldiers, wearing only single-layer clothing in temperatures of minus 30 to 40 degrees Celsius, held their positions and were frozen into "ice sculptures" while maintaining their combat postures. American soldiers who witnessed this scene felt it was "unbelievable" and "awe-inspiring," and some were still writing in their memoirs years later, marveling that "they were not corpses—they were frozen sentinels." This battle was called "the coldest winter" by the U.S. military, while the spirit displayed by the Volunteer Army was regarded as "the enigmatic spirit of the East."
——In the Battle of Triangle Hill (上甘岭), the U.S. military, obsessed with firepower, poured 1.9 million artillery shells from more than 300 heavy guns, along with more than 5,000 aerial bombs, onto Triangle Hill, an area of only 3.7 square kilometers, shaving the hilltop down by a full two meters… After suffering enormous casualties, Triangle Hill was still in the hands of the Volunteer Army! From then on, Triangle Hill became the U.S. military's "Heartbreak Ridge." Many foreign military researchers have marveled: the Soviet Union showed the world through World War II what an "iron torrent" looks like; China showed the world through the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea what "soldiers of steel" look like.
The people's military led by the Chinese Communist Party, whether in the War of Resistance Against Japan or in the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea, used the fighting spirit of "fearing neither hardship nor death (一不怕苦，二不怕死)" to repel the most ferocious and powerful enemies in the world, and elevated the philosophy of war in which "more spirit with less steel" defeats "more steel with less spirit (钢少气多战胜钢多气少)." Yang Jingyu, the Five Heroes of Langya Mountain, the Liulaozhuang Company, Huang Jiguang, Qiu Shaoyun, the Huangcaolin Hero Company… they proved with their blood and lives that on the scales of victory and defeat in war, the human factor, the spiritual factor, and the factor of conviction are key variables that can transcend material conditions.
"Be resolute, fear no sacrifice, surmount every difficulty, and strive for victory." In the most arduous warfare, the spirit of fearing no sacrifice and daring to dedicate oneself, and the firm conviction of believing in victory and winning honor, were the ultimate weapons with which the people's military defeated powerful enemies in an era of extreme material scarcity—the key to going from weakness to strength, from small to large, from victory to victory. It is precisely by relying on this spirit and conviction that the people's military, at the historical level, reshaped the national spirit, laid the foundation and backbone for the nation's independence and self-reliance, and enabled the Chinese people—whose backs had been bent by hundreds of unequal treaties over more than a hundred years—to stand tall before the world with chests unbowed by humiliation, establishing a lofty military honor universally recognized by the world. This spiritual legacy, forged by the lives of countless martyrs, has also compelled our adversaries to stand in reverence; its value has long since transcended the outcome of battles on the battlefield, becoming an eternal source of strength for the Chinese nation on its journey toward great rejuvenation—to resist all risks and challenges and overcome all hardships and difficulties.
On the morning of March 23, 1949, Xibaipo, Pingshan County, Hebei Province. The CCP Central Committee organs were about to leave this place for Beiping.
Climbing into a jeep and looking back at Xibaipo with deep feeling, Comrade Mao Zedong said meaningfully to those around him: "We are going to Beijing to sit the imperial examination (进京赶考)!"
Mao Zedong's metaphor of entering the city to govern as "going to Beijing to sit the imperial examination" was intended to warn the entire Party: seizing nationwide victory was only the first step of the Long March of ten thousand li; the road of governance ahead was a more severe test, and one must absolutely not repeat the mistake of Li Zicheng, who rapidly became corrupt and failed after entering the city.
The leader's concern was not excessive. As events proved, the Communist Party members' high degree of clarity and self-awareness at this major historical turning point laid a solid ideological foundation for Party building and development after the founding of New China. During the revolutionary war years, some people had withstood the test of life and death and the tempering of suffering, yet could not resist the temptation of a life of luxury and debauchery, and fell to "sugar-coated bullets (糖衣炮弹)." As senior cadres who had been "little red soldiers" tested by war, Liu Qingshan and Zhang Zishan became the first "failing examinees" on the road of "sitting the examination."
For a force that had undergone the test of life and death and the tempering of hardship, "sitting the examination" was a test of both material conditions and ideals and convictions. "The Good 8th Company on Nanjing Road" and "the Steel 8th Company, Vanguard of the South Sea" are two landmark spiritual reference points in our military's history of "sitting the examination."
In May 1949, Shanghai was liberated. The officers and soldiers of the 8th Company of a certain unit of the East China Military Region stepped through the smoke and fire of battle and into the heart of China's most prosperous metropolis in a single stride. Nanjing Road was Shanghai's "ten-mile foreign concession (十里洋场)"; faced with neon lights and wafting perfume, some soldiers developed the thought that "the revolution has won—it's time to enjoy ourselves." Hostile forces also boasted: "Shanghai is a great vat of dye; the Communists will enter red and come out black."
Decades passed, and the 8th Company, at the very front line of the "examination hall" where "sugar-coated bullets" were most concentrated, delivered an answer sheet satisfactory to the Party and the people. The Ministry of National Defense awarded the company the honorary title "The Good 8th Company on Nanjing Road." Mao Zedong gladly took up his brush and wrote "Ode to the 8th Company (八连颂)": "The good 8th Company, known throughout the land. Why so? Their will is firm. Serving the people, for decades on end. Resisting corruption, never to be tainted…"
Hengqin Island—the southern sea frontier of the motherland, a brilliant pearl in the South China Sea, separated from Macao by only a narrow strip of water. Garrisoned on the island is the 8th Company of a certain unit of the Zhuhai Garrison.
The 8th Company is a heroic collective with outstanding battle achievements, having successively experienced the War of Resistance Against Japan and the War of Liberation, participated in the Liaoshen and Pingjin campaigns and bandit suppression operations in southern Henan, western Hunan, and Guangxi, traversed 11 provinces and municipalities, fought across more than 30,000 li, engaged in nearly a hundred battles large and small, annihilated more than 2,300 enemy troops, and was awarded the honorary title "Model Company for Consolidating the March South" in 1949 for its outstanding battle achievements.
After moving to garrison Hengqin Island, the 8th Company faced both the test of a harsh natural environment and the predatory assault of "sugar-coated bullets." In the face of this dual test, the 8th Company developed the fine tradition of arduous struggle and resistance to corruption and degeneration, maintaining the character of "steel" at all times in a special and complex environment. On April 27, 1964, the Ministry of National Defense awarded the 8th Company the honorary title "The Steel 8th Company, Vanguard of the South Sea."
"The Good 8th Company on Nanjing Road" and "The Steel 8th Company of the South Sea Vanguard" were both awarded their titles by the Ministry of National Defense in the early 1960s, together constituting two banners of our military's spirit of "resisting corruption, never to be tainted (拒腐蚀、永不沾)." Through decades of steadfast commitment and practice, they tell us that a military's "examination" is never-ending. The greatest challenge is often not surviving in hardship and difficulty, but holding firm in a superior environment; the most dangerous enemy is not the hail of bullets in plain sight, but the "sugar-coated bullets" lurking in the shadows. Firm ideals and convictions are forever the most powerful weapon with which the people's military overcomes all temptations and tests and moves from victory to victory.
After visiting the Xibaipo Memorial Hall, Mao Zedong's former residence, the former site of the Central Military Commission operations room, and the former site of the Seventh Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee, Chairman Xi said with deep feeling: "When the Party Central Committee left Xibaipo back then, Comrade Mao Zedong said it was 'going to sit the imperial examination.' More than 60 years have passed, and we have made tremendous progress—the Chinese people have stood up and grown prosperous—but the challenges and problems we face remain severe and complex. It should be said that the Party's 'examination' is far from over."
The convoy that set out from Xibaipo to "sit the examination" was imbued with surging new momentum more than 60 years later on that same road. For the people's military, this examination has never been about any single moment or matter, but about the political character passed down from generation to generation; the answer sheet is not submitted by any one individual, but is the shared commitment of every generation of officers and soldiers. On the new journey of striving to build the military for its centenary and advancing toward a first-class military, the spirit of "sitting the examination" is the root and soul of the people's military's ideological and political work—the deeper the root is planted, the more firmly the soul is guarded, and the more this military will be able to stand invincible in any storm.
Having traversed nearly a century of history, the people's military has placed "millet plus rifles (小米加步枪)" in museums and welcomed a modern iron torrent composed of aircraft carriers, hypersonic missiles, fifth-generation fighter aircraft, nuclear submarines, and more. At the same time, "sugar-coated bullets" have been given new meaning in the context of "sitting the examination" in the new era, and we face more intricate and complex new tests. Today's world is undergoing great changes unseen in a century, and national development also faces unprecedented challenges and opportunities. As national strength grows and lives become more prosperous, people have higher demands for national security and greater expectations for the cause of military strengthening. World conditions, national conditions, Party conditions, and military conditions are all undergoing complex and profound changes; the struggle in the ideological sphere is sharp; various social currents of thought are eroding ideas and concepts; and various material temptations are distorting value orientations. How to consolidate the foundation and cultivate the source (固本培元)? Chairman Xi has emphatically stated: "We must firmly grasp the era's requirements for building the military through politics, advance the building of the military through politics without pause for a single moment, and ensure that the people's military forever preserves its nature and purpose, always dares to fight and is certain to win, always unites and strives together, always produces talented people in abundance, always remains pure and honorable, and always maintains strict discipline under law and regulations." The six key areas of work to be grasped in advancing the building of the military through politics on the new journey are the six major examination questions for the people's military in the new era.
Political rectification (政治整训) is a "tempering and purification (淬炼提纯)" of ideals and convictions. Without the "ballast stone" of ideals and convictions, political rectification will lose its way in wind and rain; without the "great furnace" of political rectification, ideals and convictions will rust and degenerate in comfort and ease. Chairman Xi emphasized at the Gutian All-Army Political Work Conference: "In strengthening and improving our military's political work under new circumstances, the most urgent task at present is to firmly establish four things of a fundamental nature throughout the military: firmly establish ideals and convictions throughout the military, firmly establish the principle of Party spirit throughout the military, firmly establish the standard of combat effectiveness throughout the military, and firmly establish the authority of political work throughout the military"—issuing to the entire military a clarion call for military strengthening, led by the strategy of building the military through politics and striving toward the goal of a strong military, and pointing the direction for efforts to build a world-class military.
Strong winds reveal sturdy grass; fierce fire reveals true gold. During this period of reform, transformation, development, and construction, our military's officers and soldiers bear in mind Chairman Xi's instruction that "our military has always fought on spirit (精气神); in the past we had more spirit and less steel, now we have more steel, and our spirit must be even greater, our bones must be even harder," carry forward the fine revolutionary traditions, and steadfastly fuse ideals and convictions into the "iron torrent," forging an integrated Great Wall of steel: from the transformation and reshaping of "the Hard-Bone 6th Company (硬骨头六连)," to the heroic fighting of the new-era heroes defending the nation's borders—Qi Fabao, Chen Xiangrong, and others—on the Karakoram; from Zhang Chao, the "vanguard of military strengthening who chased dreams across sea and sky," whose hot blood illuminated the sea and sky, to the officers and soldiers of Submarine 372, who remained calm in the face of danger and successfully handled a major sudden emergency, creating a world miracle… The "spirit (气)" of the people's military in the new era soars high in the wind, and the "bones" grow harder with the times. This "spirit" is the loyal spirit of following the Party's command, the fighting spirit of being able to win battles, and the upright spirit of maintaining an excellent work style; these "hard bones" are the bones of loyalty forged by conviction, the bones of victory in battle supported by capability, and the bones of work style tempered by will. This is precisely the most powerful and vivid practice of tempering a battle-winning force on the journey of strengthening and revitalizing the military.
Establishing lofty ideals and firming up revolutionary convictions is absolutely not an empty slogan, but a long-term cultivation process that employs multiple simultaneous approaches and comprehensive measures—theoretical arming, historical enlightenment, cultural cultivation, practical tempering, and institutional constraints—and a multi-dimensional, integrated process of forging the soul and cultivating people, tempering through actual combat, and shaping work style. Only by continuously replenishing the "calcium of the spirit (精神之钙)" and consolidating the spiritual pillar can we ensure that, as our military's officers and soldiers have ever more "steel," their "spirit" remains ever full and their "bones" remain forever hard, thereby gathering the magnificent spiritual force to strive ceaselessly for the realization of the Party's goal of a strong military in the new era and the building of the people's military into a world-class military. This is both the inevitable requirement of carrying forward the bloodline, and the winning formula for meeting all future risks and challenges and achieving victory in the future.