Struggle Without Words, Victory Without Form — An Investigative Report from a Unit of the Western Theater Command Air Force

Struggle Without Words, Victory Without Form — An Investigative Report from a Unit of the Western Theater Command Air Force

■ Liu Chang, PLA Daily Reporter Zhang Leifeng, Contributing Reporter Deng Dongzhi

Summer. The high plateau of the western frontier. Howling winds, sand filling the sky. Upon receiving an urgent support order, a mission detachment from a unit of the Western Theater Command Air Force moved out swiftly. Laying cable, calibrating equipment… an information link was quickly established.

"The formless defeats the formed; the soundless defeats the sounded; the nameless defeats the named." During the unit's study and education campaign on establishing and practicing a correct view of political achievement (政绩观), the words of one leader struck a chord: "Fighting on the invisible battlefield, we must keep our eyes on the long term and on fundamentals — doing more work that lays foundations, builds staying power, and serves the long haul."

For whose sake is political achievement built, what kind of political achievement should be built, and on what basis? The answers lie in the unit's personnel's repeated mission-assurance tasks, and in one ordinary post after another.

Focused on the high-quality development of the force, they have adopted "struggle without words" as a value orientation and "strengthening the military to win wars" as the measuring standard. With the perseverance of "accumulating sand into a tower (聚沙成塔)," they guide officers and soldiers to forge ahead on the new-domain, new-quality (新域新质) track and to make their mark on the invisible battlefield.

[Caption: The unit's high-plateau mission detachment on a mobile march (archival photo). Photo by Yang Binhua.]

"'Not being seen' is the best form of 'being seen'"

In this unit, there are two types of posts where people do "invisible" work.

One is the technical station monitoring room — the post "closest to the leadership." Officers and soldiers sit behind the large operational display screens every day, just steps away from the leadership. The workload is heavy and the standards are high, yet the leadership can rarely directly sense their presence. Engineer Shi Chaowei put it vividly: "We're like the electric lights in a room — you flip the switch and they come on, and you take it for granted. Only on the day they fail to light up do you realize they exist."

The other is the mobile communications detachment — the post "farthest from the headquarters." To carry out missions, they must venture deep into uninhabited areas of the snow-covered high plateau. There, oxygen content is less than half that of the plains, and nighttime temperatures drop below minus 30 degrees Celsius. Even so, officers and soldiers who volunteer for missions keep coming in an unbroken stream. Veteran soldier Xia Mingxiao has stood watch multiple times at positions above 5,000 meters in altitude. He said: "Communications support cannot have even the slightest problem. I'm the most experienced veteran in the detachment — if not me, who?"

One is right under the leadership's nose; the other is a thousand li away. Yet their work is strikingly similar — do it well and no one knows; let a problem arise and everyone can see it. What they do is latent-merit work (潜功) — imperceptible to others, yet something no one can do without for even a moment.

Shi Chaowei has worked in the monitoring room for five years, leading his team to successfully complete all manner of support tasks — but few people understand his contributions. "Being in this post, the greatest sense of achievement isn't being seen by others, but having the equipment and systems running normally at all times," Shi Chaowei said.

Xia Mingxiao has gone up to the plateau to carry out missions multiple times around the Spring Festival. While others reunite with their families, he is calibrating equipment in a zone hostile to life. When asked whether it is hard, he was blunt: "It's hard. But when the signal comes through, it's worth it!"

They never thought about being seen — but the organization saw them. At a unit office meeting, the unit's Party committee leadership set a clear orientation for all officers and soldiers: ensure that every "invisible" contribution can be seen.

From then on, for every major mission, the unit arranges for a leader to accompany the monitoring room on duty shifts — not to inspect work and add pressure, but to help solve problems and relieve pressure. Over time, the Party committee gained a thorough understanding of the monitoring room personnel's workload, stress, and rhythm. One unit leader said: "They never say it's hard, but we need to know."

At the end of last year's "Dual Competition (双争)" evaluation, Shi Chaowei was awarded an individual third-class merit citation, and the monitoring room received a collective commendation. At the awards ceremony, Shi Chaowei — standing in the spotlight for the first time — said: "'Not being seen' is the best form of 'being seen.'"

At a battlefield-stories sharing session, Xia Mingxiao was invited to the podium. He recounted several ordinary episodes from his missions with great feeling, and the applause from the audience rose again and again. The unit also adapted his story into a dramatic sketch. On the day of the performance, he spoke from the heart: "I never imagined my story could be seen by so many people. All I want to say is: on post for one minute, do a full sixty seconds of work!"

Today in this unit, doing latent-merit work is gradually becoming the conscious action of officers and soldiers. As one young platoon leader put it: "As long as you're not afraid of hardship and are willing to dedicate yourself, no matter what post you hold, the organization will see you."

"Honor is not preserved — it is fought for"

A certain women's company in the unit is a model company for grassroots-level building in the Theater Command Air Force. The walls of its honor room are covered with dozens of advanced-unit plaques: "National Women's Merit-Building Advanced Collective," "National March 8th Red Banner Collective," "National Women's Civilization Post," and others gleam brightly.

These visible honors nearly became an invisible "burden."

The praise from outside once gave the company's officers and soldiers a sense of superiority. Over time, some developed the passive mindset of "seeking stability and guarding the status quo (求安稳、守摊子)": training followed the syllabus — neither raised nor lowered; tasks were carried out by the book — neither risky nor erroneous.

This phenomenon alarmed the unit's Party committee. Unit leaders led headquarters personnel down to the company, held heart-to-heart talks with officers and soldiers, and listened to their inner concerns. They sat in on the company's organizational life sessions (组织生活会), directly pointing out problems and digging to the root causes. After thorough analysis, officers and soldiers laid bare the contradictory mindset of "wanting to preserve the honor yet fearing to tarnish the plaque," and brought various passive thoughts out into the open.

Having identified the crux of the problem, the unit's Party committee immediately helped the company Party branch clarify its thinking: "Honor is not preserved — it is fought for. What is fought for is not the face of being advanced, but the substance of combat effectiveness."

Change began on the training ground. In the past, the company's training followed old routines — each specialty trained separately, one person per post. "That's the safest approach — no mistakes." But as the mission load grew heavier, Company Commander Zhao could no longer sit still: "If each person only trains in one specialty, there won't be enough hands when things get busy!"

The company Party branch deliberated and decided: break the baseline-protection training model (保底训练模式), promote one-specialty-multiple-skills and cross-post rotation training, require each backbone member to master two or more specialty skills, and have each specialty rotate on duty on a regular basis. Some worried: "What if it goes wrong — we won't be able to hold onto the advanced-unit plaque." Company Commander Zhao said firmly: "Failing to complete missions and being unable to fight hard battles — that is what would tarnish the plaque."

The company started with its backbone members — one person learning multiple specialties, cross-training with each other. Everyone channeled their energy: practicing hands-on skills during the day, studying materials at night. Several months later, a communications support mission arrived — multiple lines to be activated simultaneously, multiple tasks to be followed up on at once. This time, the company completed the support mission with high quality and zero errors.

The old advanced unit revitalized itself. The unit's Party committee guided the momentum, holding up the company's experience of turning the blade inward (刀刃向内) in ideological transformation as a model, and encouraging each company to conduct comparative self-examinations: check for the inertia of lying flat and "living off past achievements (吃老本)"; check for the habit of passively "playing it safe."

Today, the unit's officers and soldiers have reached a consensus: true honor is not on the wall but in one's hands; true political achievement cannot be waited for or demanded — it must be fought for one step at a time.

"Letting the great tree take deep root is our shared political achievement"

In the unit's headquarters, a map showing the distribution of the force's garrison locations stands out prominently: it includes both fixed positions in the interior of the motherland and mobile detachments on the high plateau and in the desert.

"One static, one mobile — easy to manage separately." The unit's Party committee believes that the more dispersed and divided the work between interior and exterior, the greater the need to unify and integrate. After conducting research, they upgraded their approach to building dispersed and mobile forces (动散抓建), consolidating the scattered Party organization strength into a unified whole and incorporating dynamic mission deployments into standardized construction.

Building dispersed and mobile forces through regulations and systems, and consolidating the foundation — this is a long-term undertaking: slow to show results, long in cycle.

"What benefits the force is what should be done. Doing more foundational work is the lasting political achievement." The unit's Party committee was resolute in this stance. In accordance with the higher-level assistance-building mechanism, the unit's standing committee members took the lead, bringing backbone personnel to visit positions, assess conditions, strengthen Party branches, and resolve difficulties — participating throughout and providing front-line supervision.

The leadership worked with solid effort; officers and soldiers followed suit. Political Instructor Bai of the mobile communications battalion at the time ran to every point under the battalion's jurisdiction, thoroughly surveying the baseline data of each station: which station's equipment was aging, which position's signal was unstable — each was recorded one by one and sorted by category. Research during the day, analysis at night. Someone advised him: "Building-up work requires sustained effort — why go all the way to the bottom?" He countered: "Without putting in hard effort, how can you sustain it?"

With the support of the unit's Party committee, the problems Instructor Bai recorded in his notebook gradually acquired actionable, implementable solutions. The Party branch was strengthened; the systems were rationalized. Officers and soldiers said: "Before, when we went on missions we only knew how to set up lines. Now we have mission standards, and we have training objectives in mind."

When he departed, Instructor Bai left his notebook to the next political instructor. The incoming Instructor Long, upon taking over, further refined the approach to problems not yet resolved, turning the framework into systems and implementing those systems at the grassroots level.

"Does this count as your political achievement, or the previous instructor's?" Faced with this well-meaning observation, Instructor Long smiled and said: "One generation plants the trees; the next waters them. Letting the great tree take deep root — that is our shared political achievement."

When the orientation is correct, the drive is strong. Standing committee members take the lead in going deep; principal officers carry the work forward in relay; everyone pulls together as one: doing long-term work, doing foundational work.

In this atmosphere, officers and soldiers' sense of proactive responsibility has also grown stronger. Soldier Ou Yunbo is a communications operator. During one field training exercise, he noticed that the traditional site-selection method was inefficient and error-prone. Having studied programming before enlisting, he conceived the idea of designing software to improve work efficiency.

He set to work immediately. Ou Yunbo performed his normal duty shifts during the day and self-studied and wrote code at night. Before long, he designed an intelligent site-selection software that significantly reduced site-selection time. After the force promoted it, the quality and efficiency of field training improved substantially.

The unit seized on this example, comprehensively promoting the "mining potential from existing equipment (旧装挖潜)" initiative, and made clear: "As long as it contributes to combat effectiveness, regardless of post or identity, anyone can do it — and anyone who does will be supported."

Not counting "the merit of a single term," but seeking "lasting benefit." In this force that devotes itself wholeheartedly to war preparation, every "invisible" act of steadfast duty is accumulating strength for future victory; every practice of "laying foundations and serving the long haul" is a firm step forward on the march to strengthen the military.