没有功劳也有苦劳 Even without merit, there is hard toil.
吃得苦中苦，方为人上人 Only by eating the bitterest of bitterness can one rise above others.
In 1984, Hu Yaobang extended the first saying when he praised an old Red Army veteran: “If not merit, then toil. If not toil, then fatigue.”
On October 7, 2001, the Serbian coach Bora Milutinović led China’s men’s football team to its first World Cup qualification. He left two famous sayings behind: “happy football” and 态度决定一切, “attitude decides everything.”
Before the 2002 World Cup in Korea, he gave each player a red cap with “attitude is everything” printed on it in English.
Article 35 of the Civil Servant Law says that civil servants shall be assessed comprehensively on their 德、能、勤、绩、廉: virtue, ability, diligence, results and integrity. The emphasis is on political quality and actual work results.
Diligence is assessed as a criterion of its own, next to results.
On April 12, 2019, Jack Ma told an internal Alibaba event that being able to work “996,” from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week, was “a huge blessing.” For companies like Alibaba, he said, it was a fubao (福报), a reward earned by good deeds.
Ma later wrote on Weibo that no company should or could force employees to work 996. In August 2021, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and the Supreme People’s Court published model labor cases against unlawful overtime rules.
In March 1960, the oil driller Wang Jinxi led his team from Yumen to the new Daqing oilfield. They moved and installed the drilling rig by pulling with their hands and carrying on their shoulders. During a blowout, Wang jumped into the mud pit and stirred the mud with his body. He became known as the “Iron Man.”
At a rally on April 29, 1960, he shouted: “Better to live twenty years less, but we must take this great oilfield, whatever it costs.”
The 2012 Regulations on the Handling of Official Documents of Party and Government Organs say that documents generally may not skip a level of the hierarchy (越级). When it cannot be avoided, the office that is skipped must receive a copy.
In 1629, the Ming commander Yuan Chonghuan used his imperial sword of authority to execute another general, Mao Wenlong. The Chongzhen Emperor was deeply displeased. Acting first and reporting later is called 先斩后奏, literally “behead first, report later.”
Han Xin was one of the great generals of the founding of the Han dynasty. In 196 BCE, he was put to death at the Changle Palace on a charge of joining a rebellion, and his family was wiped out to the third degree.
In Sima Qian’s account, the adviser Kuai Tong had warned him: “A man whose courage and strategy make his lord tremble is in danger. A man whose merit covers the world is not rewarded.” Han Xin himself quoted a saying that became a proverb: “When the cunning hare is dead, the good hound is cooked.”
On November 16, 1981, China’s women’s volleyball team won the World Cup in Japan with seven wins in seven matches. It was China’s first world title in any of the three big ball sports. Under coach Yuan Weimin, the team also won the 1982 World Championship and the 1984 Olympic Games.
Its fighting spirit, nüpai jingshen (女排精神), became a national model. Xi Jinping has described it as “the motherland above all, unity and cooperation, tenacious struggle, never giving up.”
From 1995, Hengshui High School in Hebei became a closed, quasi-military boarding school. Its university admission rate soon rose to the top of the province. In 2014, 104 of its students were admitted to Tsinghua and Peking universities.
Students rise at 5:30 and begin running drills on the sports field at 5:40. Talking, turning around or drinking water during study periods costs points or brings a disciplinary notice. The “Hengshui model” is highly controversial.
At the New Year tea party of the national CPPCC on December 31, 2020, Xi Jinping called for the spirit of three oxen. They were the ox that serves the people (孺子牛), the ox that breaks new ground (拓荒牛) and the old ox of hard struggle (老黄牛). He repeated the call at the Spring Festival reception for the Year of the Ox in February 2021.
The first ox comes from a 1932 poem by Lu Xun, Self-Mockery, in which he bows his head and gladly serves as an ox for children.