In March 2021, the Central Committee issued its Opinions on Strengthening Supervision of “Top Leaders” and Leading Groups. One provision concerns meetings of the leading group. “Members of the leading group should fully express their views. When views differ widely, the vote should be postponed. The votes and the dissenting views at the meeting should be recorded truthfully and kept on file.”
The provision appears in a document whose purpose is to watch over the person at the top.
China’s 2019 Regulations on the Selection and Appointment of Party and Government Leading Cadres set out how leaders are chosen. Article 34 says that before a candidate is discussed and decided, the choice “shall be deliberated” (进行酝酿) among the leading members of the Party committee, the standing committee of the people’s congress, the government and the political consultative conference.
Only after that does the formal meeting vote, “on the basis of full discussion,” by voice, by show of hands or by secret ballot. The word 酝酿 originally means the fermentation of wine.
礼之用，和为贵: “In the practice of the rites, harmony is most precious.” The line is in the first book of the Analects. It is often quoted as Confucius, but the speaker is his disciple Youzi.
The passage continues with a limit: “To know harmony and seek harmony, without regulating it by the rites, will not work either.”
On October 25, 1978, at a press conference in Tokyo, a Japanese reporter asked Deng Xiaoping about the Diaoyu Islands. Deng said that the two sides had set the question aside when they normalized relations. “It does not matter if such a question is set aside for a while, even for ten years.”
He added: “Our generation is not wise enough. Our next generation will surely be wiser than us. They will always find a good way, acceptable to all, to solve this question.”
再说 Let’s talk about it later. Literally “speak again.” Used to put a decision off.
从长计议 To plan for the long term. Not to decide now.
好说 Easy to discuss. A modest, polite phrase. It can also mean “that can be arranged.”
推三阻四 To push three and block four. To give one excuse after another.
敷衍 To deal with something only on the surface.
一把手 The first hand. The head of a unit or organization.
拍板 To strike the board. In old trading houses, a sale was sealed by striking a wooden board. Today it means that the person in charge makes the final decision.
一言堂 The hall of one word. Once a shop’s sign for fixed prices. Today a leader who decides alone.
官大一级压死人 An official one rank higher crushes a person to death. In 2018, the Party’s discipline newspaper used the phrase to criticize an official who pulled rank.
In February 2019, the Central Committee of the Communist Party issued Regulations on Requesting Instructions and Reporting on Major Matters. Their rule is short: what must be requested must be requested, and what must be reported must be reported (该请示的必须请示，该报告的必须报告).
A request to a higher Party organization on a major matter must be made in advance, so that the higher level has enough time to study it and decide. Only when an emergency leaves no time to ask may an official act first. Even then, the official must report to the higher level promptly afterwards.
摸着石头过河, “to cross the river by feeling for the stones,” comes from a folk saying. Chen Yun, then vice premier, first proposed it as a working method at a government meeting in April 1950. In 1961 he told the Ministry of Chemical Industry that the work must start from reality and “cross the river by feeling the stones.”
The saying is widely linked to Deng Xiaoping and the reforms after 1978. According to scholars cited by Chinese Wikipedia, Deng himself never used it.
On a winter night in 1978, dated by Chinese Wikipedia to November 24, eighteen farmers in Xiaogang village, Anhui, signed a pact at great risk to contract the collective land to households. Each pressed a red fingerprint on a worn, creased sheet of paper. The members also promised to raise the leaders’ children until the age of 18.
In 1979 Xiaogang had a record harvest of 66,000 kilograms of grain, equal to its total from 1966 to 1970.
不求有功，但求无过 Seek no merit, only avoid faults.
多一事不如少一事 One more matter is worse than one matter less.
In 1950, the scholar Qian Zhongshu was asked to join the committee translating Mao Zedong’s Selected Works. He told his wife, Yang Jiang: “This job is not easy to do. Seek no merit, only avoid faults.”