Improving your work style means breaking through the "enclosed city," "glass doors," and "invisible walls." It means going all the way to the grassroots where the people are and remaining in contact with the ground.
-- Speech given by Xi Jinping at a meeting with leading officials in Hubei Province, July 23, 2013
Breaking Through the "Enclosed City,"
"Glass Doors," and "Invisible Walls"
-- Improving work styles and keeping close tie with the people
Chinese people are very familiar with the phrases "enclosed city," "glass doors," and "invisible walls." Xi Jinping used these three phrases as metaphors for Party members and officials -- in particular leading officials, who have become strangers to the grassroots and divorced from the people. He stressed the importance of breaking through these barriers and truly be one with the people.
The work style of Party members and officials, especially leading officials, is a matter related to the relations between the Party and the people, between officials and the people. Xi Jinping frequently uses vivid metaphors to demonstrate the importance of this problem. For example, he talked of "remaining in contact with the ground" and "recharging one's batteries" to explain connecting with the grassroots and the importance of learning from the people. He talked of the widely hated phenomenon of "putting on a show" to describe how some officials like to put on formalities and not really get down to business. Breaking through the "enclosed city," "glass doors," and "invisible walls" focuses attention on the key problems affecting the relations between officials and the people, and how to resolve them. Clearly, these apt metaphors all point to the same phenomenon while individually alluding to different sides of the interrelated problems.
During the revolutionary era, there was no "enclosed city," "glass doors," or "invisible walls" between the Party and the people. The Party and the people were like fish in water, like peas in a pod. After coming to power, the Party still made great efforts to keep up its blood-and-flesh relationship with the people. But governing is no revolution after all, and some officials who are Party members no longer felt the pressing need to relate closely to the people, and an "invisible wall" started to form between many officials and the people.
Some Party members and officials feel that they are above the people, that they regard the people as aliens, and they dread to meet the people. In some places and some offices they are difficult to access, hard to talk to and impossible to get them to act, let alone actually solving the people's problems and serving the people. This phenomenon is most acute at the lowest levels that interact the most with the people, and this is what the people complain about the most.
The ancient saying goes: "To rule means to be correct. If you are the model of correctness, who will dare to not be correct?" The Party's Central Committee with Xi Jinping as general secretary are an excellent model for improving work styles and intimately relating to the people. From chatting with the people and eating home-cooking during a visit to Hebei, to trekking through water with pant-legs rolled up on an inspection in Wuhan, every word and action of Xi Jinping served as a vivid model in the effort to transform work styles.
To break through the city, doors, and walls, Party members and officials need to remember what the Party stands for. Especially in these times when conditions everywhere are improving, Party members and officials need to study the philosophy of the Party all the time and be focused on the people. They need to understand in their bones that the Party's mission is to wholeheartedly serve the people, and thoroughly implement the Party's Eight Rules on improving work styles and intimately relating to the masses. They must think what the people think, worry about what the people worry about, truly keep the people in mind, sincerely interact with the people, and show the people the concern they would show their own family. This is the only way to break through the thick walls separating them from the people.
To break through the city, doors, and walls, Party members and officials need to go out to meet the people and invite the people in. On the one hand, Party members and officials need to get out more and stop sitting in their offices listening to reports and reading forms, thinking they are doing a good job. They must get outside the office, look and listen at the grassroots, check on things, listen around, and resolve people's problems where they occur. They have to be the first to find out what is going on at the grassroots. On the other hand, Party members and officials have to be adept at keeping their doors open to let the people stroll in. They should explain to the people the work and problems faced by the Party and government, and gather more opinions from the people when making decisions. This will open the two-way communication channels, which is the only way to advance mutual understanding, mutual appreciation, and mutual consideration. All this will slowly eliminate the misunderstandings and chasms between Party members and the people, between officials and the people.
"Book learning is no substitute for hands-on experience." To transform work styles, we not only have to fully recognize the importance of intimate relations with the people, we also have to make sure that every Party member and official personally gets in the action. The only way for the "enclosed city," "glass doors," and "invisible walls" to be kicked to the curb once and for all is for the entire Party to follow the mass line.
(An excerpt from XI JINPING: WIT AND VISION -- SELECTED QUOTATIONS AND COMMENTARY, published by FOREIGN LANGUAGES PRESS in 2015)
