Why did I make great efforts to arrest officers and soldiers to study?
-- Talking with Li Xiaonian, political commissar of a brigade of the 75th Group Army
■ Feng Dengya, Ye Xingguo, reporter of the People's Liberation Army Daily, Zhang Liang
Li Xiaonian is currently the political commissar of a brigade of the 75th Army Group Army. He has successively served as platoon leader, propaganda officer, political instructor, chief of the organization section, and director of the propaganda department.
Host: I heard that after you became a political commissar in 2019, the first thing you grasped was not other work that sounded more important, or more direct ideological and political education, but the reading of officers and soldiers. What is the reason for this?
Li Xiaonian: Because I think that catching officers and soldiers to study is something that should be paid special attention to by leading soldiers at all levels. Perhaps it does not sound like direct ideological and political work, but in fact it is the "foundation" or "foundation" of other work. The reason is very simple, officers and soldiers read more books, acquired more knowledge, broadened their thinking, and their cognitive ability and comprehension ability will be improved accordingly; in the past, it was necessary to say 10 sentences to do ideological work, and it may be enough to read more books than one sentence.
In addition, I think that it is still a very urgent matter to grasp the reading of officers and soldiers, and it has a strong practical pertinence. In recent years, with the continuous liberalization of the use of mobile phones in military barracks, officers and soldiers have spent more time using mobile phones and more abundant content choices. But let me ask, when we pick up the mobile phone, can we withstand the temptation of short videos and games? At the beginning of my appointment, many officers and soldiers chatted with me and said that whenever I brushed a short video, there was always a feeling of not being able to stop, but after that, there was a sense of anxiety that time was wasted. Then, how to reduce the impact of mobile phones and the Internet on the spiritual life of young officers and soldiers? I think that doing a good job of reading activities is a good measure to "prevent addiction," and through in-depth reading, young officers and men can be more calm, less impetuous, and grow up better in the army.
Host: We all know that if you want to grasp a thing and achieve results, you must take hard measures, but reading is just a soft indicator, how do you grasp reading solidly? What resistance did you encounter?
Li Xiaonian: Let me start with resistance. The biggest resistance came from the officers and men themselves. We must admit that if you don't like it, reading is really a very painful thing. When I first started pushing out the reading activities in the brigade, I heard a lot of negative voices, such as "If you like to read, what do I still come to do as a soldier", such as "Training is already quite tired, who has the heart to read", and then "The leader said, we just listen, don't have to be so serious"...
Needless to say, we initially took some hard measures against these officers and men, such as we carried out the "buy one read hundred" activity throughout the brigade, and as long as the officers and men went out, they had to buy a book and come back, and after reading it themselves, they put it in the company library for everyone to share. We also made a book purchase plan for the battalion company, and regularly let the officers and men make their own book lists, and used the club funds to supplement some books that everyone liked. Every quarter, the brigade will organize reading sharing meetings and book recommendation activities to build a platform for officers and soldiers, so that those comrades who like to read can recommend a good book for everyone, share the joy of reading, and constantly drive other officers and soldiers to gradually integrate into the strong learning atmosphere. I encourage everyone to read some favorite books, interesting books, such as novels, essays, etc., I think as long as you can pick up the books, it is already a big step forward.
Host: The reading activity has been arrested for two years, has it achieved the expected effect?
Li Xiaonian: Overall, I am satisfied. As mentioned earlier, reading is a soft indicator, it is not like running 3000 meters immediately after insisting on a period of long-distance running training, the results will have a visible progress, for reading, we can only examine and judge the effect through some slight changes. For example, on weekends and holidays, I always like to walk on the main road of the camp, and sometimes which unit I pass by will go in to see what our officers and men like to do during the rest time, on the one hand, I can grasp the dynamics of the troops, on the other hand, I can also understand the reading situation of the officers and men. Now the biggest feeling for me is that with the continuous promotion of reading activities, officers and soldiers hold their mobile phones to play games less, pick up books to read and learn more, and more and more officers and soldiers like to sit in the library to read books and write things.
One of the company soldiers I had been following was fu Xingchang, who was a Chinese when he joined the army, and at first he saw reading and learning as a difficult thing. In his eyes, either he is rejecting words or words are rejecting him, and he himself often says, "I would rather run a five-kilometer trip than study." "Not long ago, I deliberately went to the company to see him, and I could feel his obvious changes from a few simple exchanges, and my speech was no longer as fragmentary as last year, and I also had a clearer plan for my next development. The transformation of Xiao Fu made me feel inexplicably touched and relieved in my heart, and at the same time, it also strengthened my determination to carry out reading and learning activities throughout the brigade.
Of course, the transformation of learning results requires a long process, and it is impossible to achieve immediate results, but I believe that as long as such a continuous development trend is maintained, the construction of units will certainly move forward steadily step by step, and every officer and soldier will also benefit from it.
Host: It is a long process to learn from reading, and it is only a few years to serve as an official. Have you ever thought that you might not see particularly significant results until you leave office?
Li Xiaonian: To be honest, I haven't thought about this question, because I always believe that if you pay, you will gain, and as long as you persist, you will gain. Therefore, no matter whether the results I achieved during my term of office were not satisfactory, I would push forward the work of grasping officers and men to study, which is beneficial and harmless.
I see reading and learning as a foundational work, and although it will not have an immediate and visible effect, it can subtly change a lot of things. I cannot guarantee to the officers and men that as long as they study and study, they will certainly reach the other side of success; in fact, they can only solve the problem of a "bridge," which still needs to be tested by practice, just as there are ideas to be put into action. The premise is that you have to have ideas first, and reading and learning is to solve the problems that make you have ideas.
All in all, I hope that by insisting on reading and studying, I can change some people, and I hope that even if I leave here in the future, or if the officers and soldiers leave the army after completing their service period, I can still persist in the study of reading. I also hope that in the near future, some or more officers and soldiers who have benefited from reading and studying will say how correct the political commissar made to ask us to insist on studying and studying. I hope that each of us can become a luminous body and pass on the baton of reading and learning forever with practical actions. Because I always firmly believe that learning ability is also a kind of combat effectiveness and productivity, not good at reading and learning, an army cannot become a world-class army, and a society cannot innovate and develop.
(Picture courtesy of Li Zhifa)
Source: China Military Network - People's Liberation Army Daily