“If there are conditions, go ahead. If there are none, create the conditions and go ahead.” People’s Daily attributes the line to Wang Jinxi, the “Iron Man” of the Daqing oilfield.
In 1960, Wang led Drilling Team 1205 from Yumen in Gansu to Daqing. There was no housing. Some slept in cattle sheds, others on canvas on the ground. Grain was short, and people picked up frozen cabbage leaves. “The drilling rig has arrived. What if there is no crane? Pull it by hand and carry it on our shoulders!”
In August 1998, during the great floods on the Yangtze, a team at the Longwangmiao sluice put up a “life-or-death sign” on the levee and shouted: Ren zai di zai! “While the people stand, the dyke stands!”
More than 300,000 soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army and the armed police took part in the flood fight of 1998. At Jiujiang, the Yangtze dyke broke on August 7. According to China News, 24,000 soldiers and civilians fought for five days and five nights and closed the breach.
After the Wenchuan earthquake of May 2008, 19 provinces and cities in eastern and central China were paired with badly damaged counties in Sichuan. Each province was to give aid worth at least 1 percent of its local fiscal revenue of the previous year, for three years in a row. The State Council set the aim of finishing the main tasks of reconstruction in about three years.
The number of counties is reported differently. A report from June 2008 names 18. The National Development and Reform Commission later counted 24.
According to a report from January 2019, an official of the Ministry of Public Security had said the year before that “5+2” and “white plus black” had become the daily working state of China’s police.
“Five plus two” adds the weekend to the five working days. “White plus black” adds the night to the day.
人定胜天 Human resolve overcomes heaven. Human strength can conquer nature. The Handian dictionary cites the Song poet Liu Guo: 人定兮胜天, “human resolve overcomes heaven.”
事在人为 Things depend on what people do. Whether a matter succeeds depends on human effort. Among its opposites, the Handian dictionary lists 成事在天, “success lies with heaven.”
Article 41 of China’s Labor Law lets an employer extend working hours for the needs of production, after consulting the trade union and the workers. As a rule, the extension may not exceed one hour a day. For special reasons, and with the workers’ health protected, it may reach three hours a day, but never more than 36 hours a month.
At Huawei, the mattress became a symbol. A company text from 2006, titled Heaven Rewards Diligence, describes the origin of Huawei’s chuangdian wenhua, mattress culture. In the words of the business site Jiemian, the mattress stands for “a culture of continuous striving.” Ren Zhengfei once said: “Huawei has no money. If people do not strive, it will collapse. We cannot pay anything for those who do not strive.”
In 2008, Ren played the symbol down. “The mattress is not a culture. Culture can be passed on. A mattress is only a tool for an afternoon nap.”
On January 23, 2020, the government of Wuhan announced a new hospital for coronavirus patients, modeled on Beijing’s Xiaotangshan SARS hospital. Work began on January 25. On February 2, Huoshenshan Hospital was handed over to the army, and on February 4 it took its first patients. From planning to completion took ten days.
Millions of people at home watched the building site on a livestream, and “cloud supervisor” (yun jiangong) became a popular term. By 10 p.m. on one evening, the CCTV stream had counted 86.24 million views.
Workers later said that on February 3 only the first of four zones was in operation. Zones 2 to 4 were still in their final stage of construction.
会战 A decisive battle between main forces. In civilian use, concentrating forces to finish a specific task in one great effort.
攻坚战 An assault on fortified positions. Today used for any hard target, as in the “battle against poverty.”
冲刺 The sprint at the end of a race. The greatest effort in the moment just before success.
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.