Processes Archives - understand-culture

Obey Orders in All Actions

The first of the Three Main Rules of Discipline reads yiqie xingdong ting zhihui (一切行动听指挥): “Obey orders in all actions.” The rules took shape in the Red Army in 1928. On October 10, 1947, the General Headquarters of the People’s Liberation Army reissued them, together with the Eight Points for Attention.

In the autumn of 1935, two officers of the political department of the Red 15th Army Corps set the rules to music. The song spread through the whole army and became one of the most popular revolutionary songs.

A Hundred and Eight Stamps

On January 20, 2013, Guangzhou’s mayor met members of the city’s political consultative conference. One of them, Cao Zhiwei, showed a chart of the approval process for an investment project. He called it the “Long March chart.” From the start of a project to its approval, he said, the process passed through 20 departments, needed 108 stamps and took 799 working days.

Cao said the process could be cut to 232 working days.

Run at Most Once

On December 27, 2016, the economic work conference of the Zhejiang Party committee first proposed a reform called zui duo pao yi ci, “run at most once.” Citizens and firms were to get a matter done with the government in at most one trip. In March 2017, the province said that it aimed to cover about 80 percent of administrative matters by the end of the year.

In March 2018, the reform was written into the national Government Work Report.

The reform that cut the trips was itself a decision from above.

Close to the Official

Since February 28, 2009, China’s Criminal Law has punished a particular way of getting things done. Under Article 388-1, a close relative of an official, or “another person with a close relationship” to the official, commits a crime by using the official’s position to obtain an improper benefit for someone who asked for help, and taking money or property in return.

The same rule covers former officials and their relatives and close associates.

Note Students

In August 2014, the head of the education bureau of Changsha announced a new rule. From that year, no school in the city would accept a tiaozi, a note, from any unit, and no school would set up “airdrop classes.” Tiaozisheng, “note students,” and airdrop classes, the bureau said, “are products of unfairness in education.”

No Constant Shape

In the chapter on weak points and strong points in The Art of War, Sunzi compares an army to water. “Water shapes its flow according to the ground. An army shapes its victory according to the enemy.” (水因地而制流，兵因敵而制勝)

He goes on: “So an army has no constant formation, and water has no constant shape. One who can win by changing with the enemy is called divine.” (故兵無常勢，水無常形。能因敵變化而取勝者，謂之神。)

Adapted Provisions

China’s Legislation Law uses the word biantong as a legal term. Under Article 85, as amended in 2023, the autonomy regulations and separate regulations of ethnic autonomous areas may make biantong guiding, adapted provisions, to laws and administrative regulations, “according to the characteristics of the local ethnic groups.”

The adaptation has limits. It may not violate the basic principles of the law. It may not adapt the Constitution, the Law on Regional Ethnic Autonomy, or provisions made specifically for ethnic autonomous areas.

Special Matters, Special Handling

On February 3, 2020, at a State Council Information Office briefing on the coronavirus, Gan Lin, deputy head of the State Administration for Market Regulation, said that her agency had told its whole system to te shi te ban, “handle special matters specially.” Firms that met the conditions were to get business licenses and production permits in the shortest possible time, so that they could start production at once.

In 2022, the magazine Banyuetan wrote that this kind of handling, “with efficiency first and flexible methods,” had always been an important tool of grassroots governance. Its headline named the difficulty: matters must be handled specially, and also according to law and regulation.

Hidden Rules

In January 2001, Yunnan People’s Publishing House brought out a book by the writer Wu Si: Qian guize (潜规则), “Hidden Rules: The Real Game in Chinese History.” Wu describes rules that “are not necessarily written down, but are very binding.” “I could not find a suitable word,” he wrote, “so for now I call them hidden rules.”

Chinese writers credit Wu with inventing the term.

Unwritten Discipline

On January 13, 2015, Xi Jinping spoke to the Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection about the Party’s rules. “The law of the state is a rule that Party members and officials must obey,” he said. “The fine traditions and working customs formed by the Party over long practice are also important rules within the Party.”

He described two layers: “Discipline is written rules. Some rules that are not written into discipline are unwritten discipline.”