细水长流 A thin stream flows long. To keep at something steadily, or to plan carefully so that resources last.
放长线钓大鱼 Let out a long line to catch a big fish. To plan for the long term in order to gain more. The Handian dictionary adds that such a plan “cannot pay off at once.”
来日方长 The days to come are long. There is still a long time ahead. The Handian dictionary cites a letter by the Song official Wen Tianxiang as an example.
From the Art of War: “The form of an army is like water. Water flows away from high ground toward low ground. An army avoids the strong and strikes the weak. Water shapes its course by the ground. An army shapes its victory by the enemy. So an army has no fixed position and no constant form. One who can change with the enemy and win is called divine.”
Xiaomi released the first version of its MIUI phone software on August 16, 2010. From the start, it pushed out an update every Friday at 5 pm. After the first Xiaomi phone came out on August 16, 2011, development split in two. The “development version” kept its weekly updates. The “stable version” received about one update a month.
In the 1980s, China used a dual-track price system (价格双轨制) for the transition from a planned to a market economy. The same good had a fixed price inside the state plan and a market price outside it. In May 1984, provisional State Council rules let enterprises price output beyond the plan within 20 percent of the state price. In January 1985, the limit was dropped.
In November 1989, the Party decided to turn “two tracks” into “one track.” The system had also given rise to guandao (官倒): officials or their relatives who used their power to buy scarce goods at the low price and sell them on the market.
On September 10, 2019, at its twentieth anniversary, Alibaba announced six new values. The third reads: “The only thing that does not change is change.” (唯一不变的是变化) Its earlier values had included “Embrace change.” (拥抱变化)
三重一大 Three majors and one large. Major decisions, important appointments and removals, major projects and large sums of money must be decided after collective discussion.
In June 2010, the General Offices of the Party Central Committee and the State Council issued an opinion on applying this rule in state-owned enterprises.
In 2007, a pregnant woman, Li Liyun, was brought to a Beijing hospital in critical condition. Doctors recommended an immediate cesarean. Her partner, Xiao Zhijun, refused to sign the consent form. Without a family signature, the hospital did not operate, and she and her unborn child died.
The hospital cited “Article 33 of the health administration regulations”: “Only after the patient’s family has signed can we carry out an operation. This happened because the family refused to sign, so we bear no responsibility.”
Article 33 of the Regulations on the Administration of Medical Institutions also contains a second path: a doctor may proceed with a treatment plan after obtaining the approval of the head of the institution.
On November 20, 2006, an elderly woman, Xu Shoulan, fell at a bus stop in Nanjing. Peng Yu took her to the hospital. She then demanded that he pay her medical costs, saying he had caused her fall. He refused, and in January 2007 she sued him. In September 2007, the Gulou District Court found that neither side was at fault. Under the principle of fairness, it ordered Peng Yu to pay 40 percent of her losses.
The judge reasoned that if Peng had been doing a good deed, he could have explained what happened to her family and left. After the case, Chinese Wikipedia notes, more cases against helpers were reported, and people became afraid to help an elderly person who had fallen.
In October 2014, the Fourth Plenum called for “a system of lifetime accountability for major decisions and a mechanism for tracing responsibility back.” The same decision made collective discussion a legal step for major administrative decisions, along with public participation, expert opinion, risk assessment and a legality review.
The 2019 regulations on major administrative decisions spell out the step: “The draft decision shall be discussed at an executive or plenary meeting of the deciding body. The head of the body makes the decision on the basis of the collective discussion.”
In June 2026, a People’s Daily commentary, republished by Xinhua, described an attitude among officials: “do more, err more. Do less, err less. Do nothing, err not.” (多干多错、少干少错、不干不错)
This “wrong understanding,” the commentary said, makes Party members and officials “afraid of mistakes, afraid of accountability, afraid of carrying the pot.” They “would rather lie flat and avoid responsibility than take on hard tasks.”