Problem-Solving Archives - Page 6 of 7

Peng Dehuai’s Letter

On July 14, 1959, at the Lushan Conference, Marshal Peng Dehuai wrote a letter to Mao Zedong about the problems of the Great Leap Forward. On July 16, Mao had it printed for all participants under the title “Comrade Peng Dehuai’s Statement of Opinion,” with the note “printed for comrades’ reference.”

Peng protested that it was a personal letter to Mao. “How did it become a ‘statement of opinion’? Why is it to be discussed?” He asked to take the private letter back. In August, a plenum condemned the “anti-Party clique headed by Comrade Peng Dehuai,” and a campaign against “right deviation” began.

Indirect Admonition

In a story from the Strategies of the Warring States, Zou Ji asks his wife, his concubine and a guest whether he is more handsome than Lord Xu of the northern city. All say yes. When he sees Lord Xu, he knows they were wrong. His wife favored him, his concubine feared him, and the guest wanted something from him.

Zou Ji then tells King Wei of Qi that the king, surrounded by palace women, ministers and common people, is deceived far more than he is. He urges the king to open the way for criticism. The story is collected in the anthology Guwen Guanzhi as “Zou Ji Admonishes the King of Qi Indirectly to Accept Advice.”

Soft Nails

软钉子 A soft nail. A refusal or criticism made in a gentle, roundabout way.

旁敲侧击 To knock at the side and strike from the flank. To make a point indirectly, without stating it.

指桑骂槐 To point at the mulberry and curse the locust tree. To seem to blame one person while really blaming another.

Yellow Cat, Black Cat

On July 7, 1962, speaking about how to judge household contracting in farming, Deng Xiaoping said: “Comrade Liu Bocheng often quotes a Sichuan saying: ‘Yellow cat or black cat, as long as it catches mice, it is a good cat.’ He said it about fighting. We beat Chiang Kai-shek because we did not follow the old rules and the old roads.”

The saying is popularly remembered as “white cat, black cat.” In 1976, the Party journal Red Flag attacked the “white cat, black cat” theory for erasing the difference between socialism and capitalism.

Strong Ties

In a 1988 survey in Tianjin, the sociologist Bian Yanjie found that jobs were obtained through strong ties more often than through weak ties. Job seekers often reached their helpers through an intermediary to whom both sides had strong ties, and those who used such indirect ties got better jobs. He published the study in 1997 in the American Sociological Review as “Bringing Strong Ties Back In.”

Leave It to the Next Generation

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.”

The Vocabulary of Flexibility

变通 To adapt. To act according to the actual situation, not bound by convention. The word is old. The Book of Changes says: “Nothing changes and gets through more than the four seasons.”

通融 To make an exception for someone. To stretch the rules as a favor.

合情合理 To accord with feeling and with reason. The everyday word for “reasonable.”

The Fengqiao Experience

In 1963, during the Socialist Education Movement, Fengqiao district in Zhuji, Zhejiang, dealt with the “four categories” of class enemies by having local people supervise and reform them on the spot, without arrests. Mao Zedong wrote an instruction that other places should copy it.

Over the decades, the Fengqiao Experience came to mean settling disputes locally. Xinhua sums it up: “Small matters do not leave the village, big matters do not leave the town, conflicts are not passed up.”

The Vocabulary of Rank

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.

Leaders’ Written Instructions

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.