During basic training, the young soldier Lei Feng did many good deeds in his camp and in the city of Yingkou without leaving his name (做好事不留名). He died on duty in 1962, at the age of 21. On March 5, 1963, Mao Zedong wrote the inscription “Learn from Comrade Lei Feng,” and March 5 became Learn from Lei Feng Day.
His diary, found and published after his death, contains the line “I want to be a screw forever” (我愿永远做一个螺丝钉).
没有功劳也有苦劳 Even without merit, there is hard toil.
吃得苦中苦，方为人上人 Only by eating the bitterest of bitterness can one rise above others.
In 1984, Hu Yaobang extended the first saying when he praised an old Red Army veteran: “If not merit, then toil. If not toil, then fatigue.”
Article 35 of the Civil Servant Law says that civil servants shall be assessed comprehensively on their 德、能、勤、绩、廉: virtue, ability, diligence, results and integrity. The emphasis is on political quality and actual work results.
Diligence is assessed as a criterion of its own, next to results.
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.
In March 1960, the oil driller Wang Jinxi led his team from Yumen to the new Daqing oilfield. They moved and installed the drilling rig by pulling with their hands and carrying on their shoulders. During a blowout, Wang jumped into the mud pit and stirred the mud with his body. He became known as the “Iron Man.”
At a rally on April 29, 1960, he shouted: “Better to live twenty years less, but we must take this great oilfield, whatever it costs.”