Special Issue on Building the Military Through Politics · Forging Essentials | All for the Front, All for Victory
All for the Front, All for Victory
■ Yu Yuanlai
On February 7, 1934—the Southern Minor New Year's Eve—a chill still gripped the Gannan earth. Inside the Central Government Grand Hall at Shazhouba in Ruijin, Jiangxi, 258 Red Army political workers who had converged from various base areas through layer upon layer of blockades were attending the Red Army's First National Political Work Conference, a six-day gathering.
Outside the hall, the Nationalist army's million-strong fifth "encirclement and suppression" campaign was closing in step by step…. At the conference, Comrade Zhou Enlai, addressing the phenomenon of political work becoming detached from combat realities, emphasized that "political work is the lifeline of the Red Army" and that "all political work must subordinate itself to the overall operational plan; all political work must serve victory at the front."
On October 30, 2014, in the deep of autumn, the All-Army Political Work Conference was convened at Gutian. Chairman Xi clearly pointed out that political work must "break out of the vicious cycle of self-design, self-circulation, and self-assessment," and stressed the need to "firmly establish the combat-effectiveness standard throughout the entire military."
Spanning eighty years, the People's Army's questioning and pursuit of how political work can serve and guarantee the enhancement of combat effectiveness has never changed. It has always held fast to the spiritual thread of "all for the front, all for victory"—this is both the logical starting point and the value origin of our military's political work, and more importantly, the key to keeping the lifeline perpetually vital.
Today, as the bugle call urges us forward toward the on-schedule achievement of the centenary Army-building goals, and as we face a complex and grave security situation, we must deeply recognize: political work was born for war and exists for victory; it must always be anchored to the fundamental point of "all for the front, all for victory." Only by integrating this principle into the practice of strengthening the military can we ensure that political work always resonates in step with combat-effectiveness building.
I
Leafing through the annals of the People's Army, one finds a thought-provoking phenomenon: virtually every major innovation in our military's political work occurred in moments of crisis, when problems were concentrated and maladies rampant; the classic cases of our military's political work are mostly inscribed at those critical junctures of fierce combat and life-or-death stakes.
In 1927, the gunshots at Nanchang and the struggle along the Hunan-Jiangxi border together ignited the spark of revolution. Yet the painful lesson of the sharp reduction in the Nanchang Uprising forces and the grim reality that the Autumn Harvest Uprising's 5,000-strong force had dwindled to barely a thousand brought the revolutionary forces to the brink of collapse.
Pessimism spread like a tide, and this newly born revolutionary armed force was undergoing a severe test of survival. At the critical moment, Comrade Mao Zedong and Comrade Zhu De independently made the same strategic choice—political consolidation and training.
The "Three Disciplines and Eight Points of Attention" reorganization at Sanwan established the organizational principle of "building the Party branch at the company level"; the "Three Rectifications in Southern Jiangxi" established Party branches in the troops and achieved the Party's comprehensive leadership over the military. These two historic initiatives, like a prairie fire, reshaped the revolutionary armed forces and injected a powerful political gene into troops on the verge of disintegration.
By establishing company-level Party branches, instituting the political commissar system, and implementing democratic practices, political work achieved a qualitative transformation from "mobilization-by-campaign" to "embedded support" (嵌入式支撑). This system of political work reaching down to the squad and platoon level not only stabilized morale but also pioneered the foundational system of "the Party commands the gun," injecting the gene of "political work as lifeline" into the new-type People's Army.
The deep-rooted ailments of the old army clung like a disease to the bone; the erosion of erroneous thinking gnawed like a worm at the roots. In the winter of 1929, at Gutian in western Fujian, amid a series of major disputes and ideological disagreements over army-building, the Gutian Conference resolution swept away abuses and corrected the course with the force of thunder, profoundly answering the fundamental questions of "for whom does the Red Army fight, why does it fight, and how does it achieve victory." It established the fundamental principles of ideological Party-building and political military-building, providing the People's Army with an action guide and a great spiritual edifice for defeating the enemy.
Xiao Ke, who was then Chief of Staff of the First Column of the Fourth Red Army, recalled: "At that time, we all treated the resolution as Party class teaching material, regarded it as Red Army regulations, and used it as the standard for inspecting and measuring work. Before long, the troops advanced into the central Wuyi Mountains and southern Jiangxi; discipline improved, internal unity strengthened, and combat effectiveness rose."
On October 24, 1934, in a mountain hollow at Muhuang in Yinjiang, Guizhou, the triumphant meeting of the Sixth Red Army Corps and the Third Red Army (later restored to its designation as the Second Red Army Corps) stirred feelings of pride and joy. Yet behind this historically recorded meeting lurked a far deeper political crisis—
The Third Red Army, owing to the long-term weakening of political work, had formed the erroneous perception that "political work is dispensable," to the point that "within the troops there was still no understanding that political work is the lifeline of the Red Army; some even looked down on political work and political organs, thinking that 'political work is not fighting' and is something that can be taken or left."
Addressing this erroneous tendency, Ren Bishi pointed out the importance of the Red Army's political commissar system and political work, "opposing the erroneous tendency of political workers not studying military affairs and military commanders not studying politics," and requiring that political work must "strengthen company-level Party branches" and directly serve front-line combat.
Political work has never been an "add-on" to combat effectiveness; it is the "lifeline" that determines victory or defeat. When the political gene of "all for the front, all for victory" is fused into the bloodstream, and when the institutional advantage of "building the Party branch at the company level" is transformed into organizational power, political work becomes the solid ideological foundation of combat effectiveness.
This mighty power of transforming political advantage into the advantage of victory was vividly demonstrated in the grand epics that followed—during the Long March, the Second Red Army Corps spent two years and three months traversing multiple provinces and regions, breaking through the encirclement, pursuit, interception, and blocking of hundreds of thousands of enemy troops, and completing the strategic transfer through victory in more than 110 battles, proving that political work was fulfilling its role as a lifeline.
In September 1937, before the Battle of Pingxingguan, some officers and soldiers lacked confidence, influenced by the Nationalist army's successive defeats. The directors of the political training offices of each Eighth Route Army regiment immediately led political cadres at all levels to go down to the front line to inspire morale. During the battle, political cadres at all levels commanded from the front, carrying out mobilization wherever the fighting reached, ultimately winning the first great victory since the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan and shattering the myth that "Japanese troops are invincible."
Establishing military-political committees to oversee the overall situation, restoring the political commissar system to solidify the organizational foundation, going to the fields to mobilize the military and the people to defend their homes and country, lecturing in the trenches on "winning battles and saving China," and leveraging the unique advantage of disintegrating the enemy to divide enemy ranks…. "All political work is for victory at the front"—wartime political work was endowed with an even weightier historical significance. In 1938, American officer Evans Carlson, visiting the Eighth Route Army's base in Shanxi, remarked with admiration: "Political work is the most important factor in the Eighth Route Army's military victories."
In 1948, during the Huai-Hai Campaign, battles were frequent. Officers and soldiers of our military crouched in trenches for extended periods, the volume of earthwork was enormous, and living conditions were harsh. Companies called out the slogans "turn the trenches into soldiers' homes" and "bring work into the trenches," carrying out activities such as challenge-and-response competitions, revolutionary emulation drives, cultural and recreational activities, small-scale discussion meetings, on-the-spot merit citations, and on-the-spot Party admissions in the trenches, conducting trench political work with great vitality and effectiveness, powerfully guaranteeing operational victory.
Political work is combat effectiveness. This is not theoretical deduction but a truth proven in blood and fire. Su Yu, recalling the Huai-Hai Campaign, said: "600,000 defeating 800,000—on the surface it was a military miracle; in essence it was a political miracle."
In 1952, on the Korean War battlefield, during the Battle of Triangle Hill (上甘岭), Li Mingtian, Deputy Chief of the Propaganda Section of the 45th Division of the 15th Army, created "rifle-stock poetry" (枪杆诗), another innovation in battlefield propaganda and agitation. "Where on the battlefield is political work most needed? At the front! Where the fighting is most fierce! How to do it? It must adapt to the battle." He repeatedly pondered, wrote the heroic stories he had gathered into short and moving poems, printed them on palm-sized slips of paper, and pasted them onto the rifle stocks of officers and soldiers, making them "spiritual rations" and a "bugle call for decisive victory" that inspired fighting spirit and boosted confidence, releasing powerful organizational and spiritual force under conditions of extreme survival.
Delving into the sea of history, the past speaks clearly. From Sanwan to Gutian, from the War of Resistance Against Japan to the War of Liberation, from Triangle Hill to today, history has repeatedly told us: our military's political work is rooted in the battlefield, its soul lies in winning battles, and its value lies at the front. Deviate from this direction, and political work loses its soul; aim at this target, and political work can forge an invincible force.
II
It is easy to establish an original aspiration; it is not easy to hold fast to it. It is easy to set a standard; it is not easy to implement it.
After a long period of peace, some officers and soldiers easily forget the cruelty of war, lose their sense of hardship and danger, and slacken their fighting will. In such an environment, political work itself easily develops problems: the work done does not match the demands of war, becomes disconnected from what the front needs, and runs counter to the fundamental mission of "winning battles."
The first pathology is content that "fires at empty targets" (打空靶)—saying things that officers and soldiers do not want to hear and that the troops do not need. What does "missing the target" mean? It means the content of political work does not match the needs of actual combat: it cannot identify problems, cannot strike the right note, cannot reach the hearts of soldiers, and cannot penetrate to the root of serving combat effectiveness.
As early as 1944, Tan Zheng, in his "Report on the Question of Army Political Work," criticized this tendency of educational content becoming detached from reality, pointing out that some comrades preferred to talk to soldiers about major international and domestic trends but were unwilling to talk about the trends in their own locality, their own army, their own company, or their own unit…. What they called for was not what those troops actually needed….
If political work becomes detached from operational requirements and fails to deeply resolve officers' and soldiers' ideological and cognitive problems regarding combat missions, it will to a certain extent damage combat effectiveness. In December 2025, a red-versus-blue confrontation exercise was launched in the heartland of central China. A newly appointed company political instructor (指导员), in order not to affect his evaluation score, conducted a "passionate and stirring" battlefield mobilization according to a pre-drafted political work plan. However, because it was not tightly synchronized with the timing of the battle and contained too many empty words and big talk, it not only failed to inspire morale but instead generated resistance among officers and soldiers.
The second pathology is procedures that "go around in circles" (兜圈子)—devolving into formalism (形式主义) and bureaucratism (文牍主义). Procedural cumbersomeness means that political work places excessive emphasis on procedures and details, becomes detached from battlefield realities, the needs of officers and soldiers, and the requirements of the troops, substitutes complete documentation for actual implementation, and substitutes procedural completeness for results-orientation.
After the Gutian Conference, the Fourth Red Army achieved some victories in external-line operations. As the situation improved, a tendency to pursue fanfare and spectacle in political work began to raise its head. Some units, disregarding the "joint suppression" by the Nationalist army's Jin Handing forces, engaged in a series of formalistic actions—posting slogans, shouting catchphrases, holding mass rallies, and making pledges—which delayed necessary combat preparations, allowing the enemy's "punitive expedition" to succeed easily and press directly on Gutian. Although the Red Army ultimately broke out of the enemy's encirclement, "formalism kills people" left a deep impression on Mao Zedong.
In December 1932, Mao Zedong pointed out that the Red Army must "pay attention to practical combat education and exercises in all training, and thoroughly abolish all forms of non-combat education and training from the past." On the eve of the War of Liberation, he required the People's Army to "further accomplish the task of improving army political work and overcome the dogmatism and formalism that exist in the army."
Formalism is the great enemy of combat effectiveness and the great enemy of political work. Chairman Xi has repeatedly emphasized the need to "resolutely oppose bureaucratism and the philosophy of red tape." Political work is not "embroidery"; it is for fighting. Political work must adhere to a work orientation conducive to enhancing combat effectiveness, proceed from reality, act in accordance with objective laws, be reverent in spirit and simple in action, discard complexity in favor of simplicity, and use a solid work style to drive implementation and produce results.
The third pathology is evaluation that "spins in a void" (空转轮)—measuring success by spectacle rather than combat effectiveness. Vacuous spinning means that the assessment of political work effectiveness lacks the hard standard of combat effectiveness, falls into the vicious cycle of self-evaluation, produces no actual benefit, looks lively on the surface while actual results are ignored; the machine keeps turning but outputs no substantive power.
In the past, the standard for political work was "hard": whether it was done well or not depended on the combat effectiveness of the unit. On January 18, 1941, Luo Ruiqing pointed out in "We Must Greatly Enhance the Tenacity of Our Army's Political Work": the tenacity of our army's political work should be especially manifested in the great power of our army's wartime political work, so as to guarantee the completion of every combat mission and the achievement of victory in every battle.
In a peaceful environment, this standard easily becomes softened, weakened, hollowed out, and marginalized. Some units gradually develop the phenomenon of political work and combat readiness being "two separate skins" (两张皮), equating political work with holding meetings and issuing documents, filling out forms and leaving paper trails, and conducting inspections and evaluations; they are keen on creating spectacle and putting on a show, appearing lively and with ledgers full, while in reality having little connection to training and combat readiness preparation and contributing nothing to enhancing combat effectiveness.
As Luo Ronghuan pointed out at the Shandong Military-Industry Conference in 1944: "Some political workers have liberalism and a preoccupation with personal status; they do not care about military work or the improvement of military technology, but are satisfied only with their numerous meetings and numerous work plans, quarreling over time and over precedence, detached from the realities of war."
The hollowing out of evaluation is the key crux constraining political work from firmly establishing the combat-effectiveness standard. In April 2015, the "Opinions on Implementing and Carrying Out the Combat-Effectiveness Standard in Party Committee Leadership Work" was issued, explicitly requiring that work be planned, guided, and carried out with a tight focus on enhancing combat effectiveness. Making the degree to which political work supports and contributes to combat effectiveness the measuring standard, and driving the transformation of evaluation indicators from "soft tasks" to "hard benchmarks," of evaluation subjects from "self-circulation" to "actual-combat traction," and of evaluation results from "leadership satisfaction" to "battlefield validation"—only in this way can we ensure that political work permeates every aspect of combat-effectiveness building and is integrated into the entire process of military struggle preparation.
Probing the root causes behind these pathologies, it ultimately comes down to a shift in the position of the original aspiration, the hollowing out of value standards, and the drifting of the center of gravity from the primary mission—forgetting the fundamental attribute that our military is forever a combat force, forgetting the fundamental mission of political work of "all for the front, all for victory," and forgetting combat effectiveness as the one and only fundamental standard.
III
The combat-effectiveness standard is the sole standard for measuring all work of the military. An important task of political work in the new era is to ensure that this standard takes root and bears fruit in every aspect of force building. Political work must truly be integrated into the chain of combat readiness and war preparation, embedded into every link of the future battlefield, and ultimately empower the winning of battles, demonstrating its powerful role as a lifeline on the road to strengthening the military.
The roots must be planted in the character of "war" (战). "All for the front, all for victory"—this is the mission inherent to political work from its very inception. As Comrade Wang Jiaxiang said in those years, political work is the original driving force for enhancing the Red Army's combat effectiveness.
Today, we face a peaceful environment without the smoke of gunpowder, and the "peace disease" (和平病) is the greatest enemy. How should political work be conducted? The most pressing task is to keep a close eye on changes on the battlefield and the needs of fighting. We cannot merely reason in classrooms or seek answers in books; we must break through these limitations, integrate education into the command chain and permeate it into the training ground, and vigorously cultivate the fighting spirit of "fearing neither hardship nor death" (一不怕苦、二不怕死).
As early as 1930, our military's first set of political work regulations stipulated that the purpose of political work was to "consolidate the Red Army's combat effectiveness." The newly revised "Regulations on Military Political Work" even more explicitly and unequivocally requires that political work must focus on combat readiness and war preparation as its primary responsibility and main business. This tradition is unbroken: political work divorced from enhancing combat effectiveness becomes water without a source and a tree without roots, easily spinning in a void and going off course.
What is the core of recalibrating the political work evaluation system? It is to thoroughly change the past practice of "looking more at materials and less at actual results," and to make the actual contribution of political work to the enhancement of combat effectiveness an important assessment indicator.
Political consolidation and training (政治整训) means cutting away the showy scaffolding unrelated to fighting, breaking the old bad habits that weaken combat effectiveness, and focusing on whether the officers and soldiers have sufficient spirit and vigor, whether the unit's combat effectiveness is strong, and whether the foundation for combat readiness and war preparation is solid. The orientation of everything for the sake of fighting must be set straight and established firmly.
Whether political work is grasped tightly and substantively cannot be separated from strict supervision and inspection. History has lessons: in 1932, the Party Central Committee severely criticized the phenomena of political work in the Soviet area Red Army being "weak," "perfunctory," and even "wavering" and "resistant." In 1934, Comrade Wang Jiaxiang set the tone directly at the political work conference: political work must guarantee victory in every battle! Problems must be resolved before battle; after battle, those who disobey orders must be resolutely corrected. This established an iron rule for wartime political work: strict supervision, directing force toward war. This tradition continues to this day.
Our military's history of multiple political consolidation and training campaigns and political work conferences was precisely to discover problems in a timely manner, correct deviations, and ensure that political work always serves and guarantees combat readiness and war preparation. Entering the new era, we must use "strictness" as the main keynote, vigorously rectify the problems of political work becoming detached from actual combat, engaging in formalism, and having its role weakened. We must strictly enforce political discipline, press down supervisory responsibilities, compel changes in work style and improvements in capability, and make political work truly a "force multiplier" (倍增器) for combat effectiveness.
Whether political work has vitality depends critically on whether it can be implemented in practice and produce real results. One of the core standards is: whether it can facilitate the accomplishment of combat missions.
The 1955 assault on Yijiangshan Island was our military's first combined arms operation involving the Army, Navy, and Air Force. With many branches of service and difficult coordination, officers and soldiers were uncertain and even somewhat afraid. What was to be done? The Party committee of the front-line command made its decision: for the three services to coordinate in action, first their thinking must be united! They organized Army personnel to board naval vessels and Air Force personnel to enter Army barracks, mutually studying branch-of-service knowledge and researching tactical coordination, eliminating the sense of mystery and fear, and ensuring the ability to "link up and win." Political work demonstrated its great power at the very front line.
Today, the political work of various units likewise emphasizes going deep to the front line and implementing a closed-loop approach. A certain unit of the Navy insists that wherever a mission advances, political work follows. In arduous and dangerous environments, cadres and backbone personnel move to the front to do ideological work, strengthen organizational building, and conduct mass work, consolidating military morale, tempering the force, and successfully completing missions.
A certain unit of the Rocket Force, implementing Chairman Xi's requirement to "conduct ideological and political work at the foot of the launch pad," has established a complete work chain: deploy the mission, verify at the front line, conduct after-action review to find problems after completion, rectify and improve, then set out again. In this way, ideological guidance, organizational function, talent cultivation, and work-style building are all threaded through the entire process of combat readiness and war preparation, allowing political work to truly take root at the combat post and direct its force toward winning.
Historical experience warns us: political work detached from actual combat is wasted effort, and a combat-effectiveness standard that cannot reach the last mile is an empty slogan.
To truly establish the combat-effectiveness standard firmly throughout the entire military, political work must form a closed loop at the last mile and front line: draw up checklists and clarify responsibilities in accordance with combat missions; the advancement of work must be able to withstand actual-combat-style inspection and supervision; after missions are completed, conduct after-action assessments, promptly rectify problems discovered, and continuously optimize and improve. We must ensure that work deployments receive responses when passed down, that front-line situations receive responses when fed back up, and that lessons from actual combat can promote improvements in work. Only in this way can political work play a critical role at critical moments and critical positions.
IV
"All for the front, all for victory." The destination of this resolve lies with every person who leads troops and fights battles. Whether political work can truly serve combat effectiveness depends critically on political cadres. What they are like determines what the military's political work is like; when they understand fighting, political work truly works!
Looking back on the journey, from the spark at Gutian to the flames of the War of Resistance, and then to the years of peace, one iron law runs throughout: political cadres must understand military affairs and know how to fight! This is the code for the inexhaustible vitality of our military's political work.
First, look at the "exemplary" figures: Luo Ronghuan was acclaimed as the "Marshal of Political Work," yet his military talent was equally admirable. Mao Zedong once gave him high praise: "When Luo Ronghuan was conducting the War of Resistance in Shandong, he put forward tactics such as 'turning the flanks' (翻边战术) and 'the enemy advances, we advance' (敌进我进). Without these pioneering and highly effective tactics, the overall situation of the War of Resistance in Shandong could not have been opened up!"
Next, look at the historical inheritance: as early as the 1929 Gutian Conference, it was made clear that political personnel should study military knowledge; at the 2014 All-Army Political Work Conference at Gutian, it was again emphasized that political cadres must strive to study military affairs, study command, and study science and technology, comprehensively improving their overall quality and practical capabilities—they must become experts in political work and also experts in military work; only then can political work be done well.
Practice yields true knowledge. During the War of Resistance Against Japan, our military implemented "dual military-political training" (军政双训), producing a large number of outstanding commanders proficient in both military and political affairs. In March 1940, the "Order on Strengthening Wartime Political Work" issued by the Eighth Route Army Field Political Department explicitly required that "all political work personnel must study military affairs and study wartime political work."
In January 1954, Xiao Hua, Deputy Director of the General Political Department, proposed: "Political work must penetrate into technology and professional work, guaranteeing the improvement of military technology and all professional work…. Only in this way will political workers have the right to speak, be able to create work methods suited to various technologies and professional work, and will political work be able to achieve results."
Nie Rongzhen wrote in his memoirs: "Political work must make clear the overall objective of everything for victory at the front. Only by making this objective clear…will political cadres pay attention to studying tactics, learn to conduct political work under various combat conditions, and be able to overcome bureaucratism, armchair strategizing (闭门造车), formalism, and so on in political work."
The practice of building and developing the People's Army invariably illuminates one iron law: the authority and effectiveness of political work depend on whether political cadres can resonate in step with military practice.
Entering the new era, the form of warfare has undergone profound transformation, but the objective of "everything for victory" has never changed, and the truth that "the key lies in people" has become ever more profound. Facing the challenges of informatized and intelligentized warfare (信息化智能化战争), it is far from sufficient for political cadres merely to "understand ideology"; they must fuse "studying military affairs, practicing command, and researching science and technology" into their bloodstream and forge themselves into composite talents (复合型人才) proficient in both civil and military affairs.
Only in this way can political work truly break free from the shackles of "bureaucratism" and "armchair strategizing," achieving "synchronized heartbeat and aligned force" (心跳同频、发力同向) with combat readiness and war preparation. And only in this way can the "combat-effectiveness standard" transform from a slogan on the wall into a truth that officers and soldiers firmly believe in their hearts and a yardstick they consciously apply in their actions.
Inheriting the gene of "proficiency in both military and political affairs" (军政兼通), forging the hard-core capabilities to win future wars—this is the most precious heirloom that history has left to political cadres of the new era, and also the most urgent bugle call to charge!
V
A hundred years of wind and rain have not altered its resolve; the passage of time has not changed its essence. Political work—this "lifeline" of the People's Army—must carry forward its proper value through the baptism of war's flames. It cannot become "showy scaffolding" (花架子), cannot fall into the trap of "two separate skins" (两张皮), and cannot contract the "peace disease" (和平病). It must be a bugle call to charge, a fueling station, a fixed star of orientation, and must be the flame in the hearts of officers and soldiers that never goes out.
The journey is long, always oriented toward war; the original aspiration to win battles remains forever young. Looking back on the trail of battle smoke, "all for the front, all for victory" has long since settled as the spiritual bedrock of the People's Army, fused into the bloodstream and soul of political work.
Toward the centenary Army-building goals, carry forward the fine traditions of political work, firmly establish the combat-effectiveness standard throughout the entire military, build a world-class military, defend national sovereignty, security, and development interests, and forge an unbreakable political foundation and gather the boundless force that is invincible wherever it goes!