The Finest Revolutionary Soldiers of the New Era | Fan Hanjie, Director of a Teaching and Research Section at the National Defense University: Linking the "Lifeline" Tightly to the "Combat Chain"
In midsummer, at the foot of Hongshan, a course on "Joint Operations Political Work" closely tied to actual combat sparked heated discussion and wave after wave of "brainstorming" among the commander class at the National Defense University.
The instructor was Fan Hanjie, director of a teaching and research section at the National Defense University's Academy of Military Management. "In joint operations, political work cannot be a 'bystander'—it must become a 'critical link' in the combat chain." Fan Hanjie said after the lecture.
How can political work play an important role on the joint operations battlefield? Fan Hanjie's answer is clear and resolute: seek the answer from the battlefield.
He leads his team in routinely participating in major exercises and training activities across the entire military, sorting through and analyzing real-world problems in political work; he keeps close watch on political work in unmanned and intelligentized (无人智能) combat operations, conducting in-depth analysis of the impact of new operational modes on officers and soldiers. On front-line exercise grounds, he breaks down the elements of political work into specific "combat functional modules (作战功能模块)," and through after-action reviews of typical battle cases and simulation of command chains, continuously recalibrates political work's "combat-oriented aim point (向战靶心)," further increasing its contribution rate to combat readiness and warfighting.
On one occasion, Fan Hanjie was assigned the task of preparing for a specialized exercise in its early stages. With no prior experience to draw on, he began by sorting through the key links of the combat knowledge system, studied hundreds of thousands of words of reference materials, and led his team in carefully refining the operational tasks for each phase and repeatedly optimizing the exercise plan. In the end, the relevant results were adopted by higher-level organs and applied in theater-level troops.
Fan Hanjie has long been deeply engaged in theoretical research on political work. He has presided over the completion of multiple major research projects on wartime political work, the courses he is responsible for have been rated as military-level quality courses (军队精品课程), multiple results have received military-level awards, and he personally has been recognized as an "Outstanding Political Instructor of the Entire Military (全军优秀政治教员)."
A single tree does not make a forest; a single flower does not make spring. Fan Hanjie understands deeply that setting a good example as a political instructor in the new era requires not only establishing a benchmark for oneself, but also developing a strong corps of political instructors. A course taught by young instructor Teng Han, after being carefully refined by Fan Hanjie, won first prize in the academy's teaching competition. Instructor Shi Guanglei, under his guidance, broke through key and difficult problems in research on cognitive warfare (认知战) in the age of intelligence. An associate professor in the teaching and research section, acting on his advice, went to a certain theater command for four months of attached training, and then entered the advanced command education course classroom with a research topic forged through that "re-tempering (回炉重造)"—to an enthusiastic reception.
From immersing himself in studying and teaching warfare, to wholeheartedly mentoring and guiding others, Fan Hanjie has put into practice through concrete action the mission and responsibility of a military political worker in the new era, deeply integrating political work—this "lifeline (生命线)"—into the broad practice of joint operations, and continuously unleashing vigorous vitality.