In April 1979, during a central work conference, Xi Zhongxun, the Party leader of Guangdong, asked the center for room to act and proposed export processing zones in Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shantou. Deng Xiaoping proposed calling them special zones.
“The center has no money,” Deng said. “But it can give some policies. Go and do it yourselves, and cut a bloody path out.”
On the morning of October 24, 2022, the Party group of the National Development and Reform Commission held a meeting. It studied and “grasped the spirit” of the 20th Party Congress, conveyed “the spirit of the important speech” Xi Jinping had given at the first plenum, and arranged how the whole commission would study and carry it out.
The verb linghui means to understand and master the meaning of something, in the words of the Handian dictionary.
听话听声，锣鼓听音 Listen to speech for the voice, to gongs and drums for the tune. The Handian dictionary calls it a proverb. When listening to someone, grasp the meaning beyond the words, just as one listens to drums for the melody.
心领神会 Taken in by the heart, understood by the spirit. The other person has not said it openly, but one has already understood.
In August 2015, the website of the National Development and Reform Commission published “Five Steps for Writing Official Documents,” by an official of a county Party organization department in Yunnan. The writer, it says, must “learn the leader’s intentions in detail” and the requirements for the document, and leave out personal likes and dislikes.
The writer should then “take the leader’s point of view” to understand the situation, analyze problems and propose measures.
In the Analects, Confucius describes a man of real standing. Such a man “examines words and observes the face, and thinks of putting himself below others” (察言而观色，虑以下人).
The phrase lives on as the idiom 察言观色. The Handian dictionary defines it as “observing a person’s words and expression in order to work out what the person has in mind.”
In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Cao Cao is stalled in Hanzhong and gives the night password: “Chicken rib!” His registrar Yang Xiu tells the soldiers to pack. A chicken rib has no meat, he explains, so the king will soon withdraw. Cao Cao has him executed for disturbing the army. The novel says that Yang Xiu “relied on his talent and was unrestrained, and he often offended Cao Cao.”
The historical Yang Xiu was executed in the autumn of 219, on a charge of leaking Cao Cao’s instructions and conspiring with the princes.
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.
君命有所不受. “There are commands of the ruler that are not to be accepted.” The line comes from the chapter on variations in tactics in Sunzi’s Art of War. Sunzi held that only the general who leads the troops knows the situation on the battlefield.
The saying is often quoted in a later form: 将在外，君命有所不受, “a general in the field need not accept every command of the ruler.”
It names an exception, and the exception depends on distance from the court.
On January 16, 2009, Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei, spoke at an awards ceremony for the company’s sales organization. He said Huawei should “let those who can hear the gunfire call in the artillery” (让听得见炮声的人来呼唤炮火). The idea was to give decision-making power to the staff on the front line.
The phrase was widely praised in Chinese business.