A Research Institute Under the Academy of Military Sciences' CBRN Defense Research Institute Conducts Special Rectification of the "Five Excesses" Problem
Senior Engineer Wang watched the monitoring curves on the screen while lightly clicking the mouse to issue commands, as the experimental process proceeded smoothly and without interruption. "A state of focused, undistracted work is what we need most," Senior Engineer Wang said with feeling. In that same laboratory, researching similar topics, the situation before was very different from now—conducting scientific research on one side while having to keep in mind the need to fill out forms and write logbooks on the other, with the work rhythm constantly disrupted.
In the deep autumn of that year, Senior Engineer Wang led his team in tackling a difficult technical problem involving emergency battlefield decontamination (洗消). CBRN defense research demands strict conditions, and once an experiment is interrupted, all prior work can easily be rendered futile. For many consecutive days and nights, the entire team was riveted to the laboratory—catching brief naps on camp cots when tired, eating instant noodles when hungry. Parameters were being pushed, step by step, closer to their optimal values through repeated adjustments and round-by-round comparisons.
At that very moment, however, the office system suddenly popped up a notification requiring the submission of monthly progress logbooks for each research project, itemized expense statements, and other materials. "Complete archiving," "signature from every individual," "finish within the time limit" … the notification conveyed a sense of urgency. With the reporting deadline approaching, Senior Engineer Wang had no choice but to first arrange for the forms to be completed. By the time all the various forms and logbooks were filled out, the parameters that had been captured with such difficulty were nowhere to be found. The entire team spent a long period of time in repeated adjustments before barely managing to recover the research progress.
At the institute, stories like this were not isolated cases. The experience of Engineer Guo likewise struck a nerve with many researchers. In the height of summer, surface temperatures on the Gobi Desert exceeded 60 degrees Celsius. Under the blazing sun, heat waves shimmered up from the earth—precisely the "golden window" for testing the extreme performance limits of protective equipment. Engineer Guo led his team to seize the moment, racing against time to conduct equipment performance testing under high-temperature conditions.
Under the scorching sun, sensor data suddenly showed abnormal fluctuations, and Engineer Guo urgently began troubleshooting equipment faults. At that moment, his military mobile phone vibrated: "Please submit the complete set of self-inspection logbooks within 2 hours; failure to comply will result in a notification of violation." Engineer Guo had no choice but to set down the work at hand and complete the form submission first. By the time he returned to his post, the test data had a gap that was difficult to make up for.
"There is an excessive volume of administrative work that constantly interrupts research, and all manner of information statistics and reporting have severely 'fragmented' (碎片化) research time." At a two-way review meeting between the headquarters organs and the grassroots level, remarks from frontline researchers drew the close attention of the institute's Party committee, which subsequently conducted in-depth investigative visits. In the course of this process, they learned that: when headquarters organs assigned work, they sometimes failed to give adequate consideration to the special urgency of research work; different departments within the headquarters organs had instances of duplicating data collection; and individual headquarters organ cadres, in order to highlight their work "achievements," had on their own initiative added reporting items and expanded the scope of reporting.
On this matter, the institute's Party committee took a clear stance—human energy is finite, and the burden on researchers must be reduced. Immediately thereafter, a special rectification campaign targeting the "Five Excesses" (五多) problem was rapidly launched at the institute.
The first cut: cutting complexity to achieve simplicity (删繁就简). Headquarters organs were required to conduct thorough justification, and statistics reporting with no substantive meaning was cancelled.
The second cut: data sharing. Relying on the research management platform, a system of "enter once, share across the board, aggregate automatically" (一次录入、全域共享、自动汇总) was built, resolving the problem of duplicate form-filling and statistics reporting at the technical level.
The third cut: reshaping the evaluation yardstick (重塑评价标尺). The assessment and evaluation system was adjusted, establishing progress on tackling key research topics, breakthroughs in core technologies, effectiveness in enabling actual combat (实战赋能效果), and the grounding and transfer of results as the primary criteria for measuring researchers' actual work performance.
Beyond this, they also established dedicated research assistant positions to fully take over routine administrative work, allowing core researchers to focus single-mindedly on their professional work.
Today, on the Gobi test range, Engineer Guo is no longer hampered by forms and reports, and leads his team to concentrate fully throughout on equipment calibration, hazard identification, and data collection, with the experiment success rate climbing steadily. In the laboratory, the new research topic for which Senior Engineer Wang is the lead is advancing continuously. "Filling out forms used to take up a lot of time. Now that the orientation is correct, we can devote ourselves wholeheartedly to research," Senior Engineer Wang said with feeling.
Three cuts severed the "hobbling rope" (绊马索), liberating researchers from administrative work and allowing innovative vitality to burst forth in competition. A batch of CBRN defense research results urgently needed on the battlefield have accelerated their grounding and transfer, continuously injecting new momentum into training for war and war preparation.
"The correct orientation is to back up those who work hard and to reduce the burden on and free those who tackle hard problems," the institute's leadership stated. "We will continue to introduce a series of supporting guarantee measures to drive all energy to focus on fighting and all work to exert effort toward fighting."
Reporting logbooks and forms that were excessively detailed and frequent once left researchers exhausted trying to cope. Energy that should have been focused on research breakthroughs was instead "bound up" by forms; experiments that should have been racing against time were forced to stop because of the need to "leave a paper trail" (留痕). The Party committee of a research institute under the Academy of Military Sciences' CBRN Defense Research Institute moved against these kinds of unreasonable phenomena, liberating researchers from complex administrative work and effectively releasing innovative vitality.
This approach once again tells us: only by reducing burdens can efficiency be increased (减负才能增效). When researchers invest in tackling problems with undistracted focus, the experiment success rate will climb steadily, breakthroughs in core technology research will come one after another, and a batch of research results urgently needed on the battlefield can be expected to reach application faster. This news item further enlightens us: the yardstick for evaluating research work does not lie in logbooks and forms, but in the effort to break through key technologies. Only when all energy is focused on fighting and all work exerts effort toward fighting can military scientific research continue to burst with vitality.