In 223, the dying Liu Bei, ruler of Shu Han, called his chancellor Zhuge Liang and entrusted his son to him. “Your talent is ten times that of Cao Pi,” he said. “If my heir can be helped, help him. If he has no talent, you may take the throne yourself.”
Zhuge Liang wept: “I will give all the strength of my limbs and the loyalty of my heart, until death.” Liu Bei told his sons to serve the chancellor “as a father.”
Article 51 of the Communist Party’s Regulations on Disciplinary Action, in their 2018 version, punishes members who are disloyal and dishonest toward the Party, “are one thing outside and another inside, comply in public and defy in secret, and deceive those above and below.” The Party calls such a member a 两面人, a two-faced person.
In January 2026, Xi Jinping described such people to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. Some, he said, “state their position very quickly and in a very high key” on carrying out the Party’s major decisions, “but in fact comply in public and defy in secret.”
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 Chinese government, a leader’s short written comment on a report or document is called a pishi (批示), a written instruction. It turns the document into a task for the people below.
In 2016, Xi Jinping wrote such an instruction on the study of Mao Zedong’s essay on the working methods of Party committees. The Central Organization Department then issued a notice to carry it out. According to the Party’s news site, the instruction set clear requirements for every member of every Party leadership team, and especially for its principal leaders.
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.
During the Cultural Revolution, people began the day in front of a portrait of Mao Zedong. In the morning, they “requested instructions” from the portrait for the day’s work and life. In the evening, they “reported” how they had carried them out and what they had been thinking. The ritual was called 早请示，晚汇报.
It was widespread from 1966 to 1971, although no official Party document ever prescribed it. People labeled “ox demons and snake spirits” were not allowed to take part. They had to “request punishment” morning and evening instead.
In October 2025, a Xinhua commentary said that the new achievements of the 14th Five-Year Plan period were “fundamentally due to the strong leadership of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core.”
A year-end economic review in December 2025 used the same phrase in its first sentence. “Under the strong leadership of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core,” it said, all regions and departments had carried out the new development philosophy, and the economy had moved forward.
In 1046, the statesman Fan Zhongyan wrote The Yueyang Tower (岳阳楼记). Near its end, it describes the ideal of the virtuous men of old: to be “the first to worry about the worries of the world, and the last to enjoy its pleasures” (先天下之忧而忧，后天下之乐而乐).
According to a 2019 report, the essay is a must for school exams, and visitors who could recite it in full were admitted to the tower for free.
As a Party secretary of Lankao County in Henan, Jiao Yulu worked to fight the county’s floods, sandstorms and salt-alkali soil, and died of liver cancer on May 14, 1964, still in office.
The Party named him “a model for county Party secretaries.” In 1990, People’s Daily published an editorial titled “Leading cadres must learn from Jiao Yulu.” In March 2014, Xi Jinping visited his memorial in Lankao.