PLA Daily Commentary Urges Cadres to Prioritize Capability Over Personal Gain

A commentary published by the PLA Daily on July 30, 2026, called on military cadres and officers to focus on cultivating genuine combat capability rather than pursuing short-term personal gain or superficial achievements. Written by Liu Weijiao, the piece emphasized that military readiness requires persistent effort and day-to-day cultivation. Citing President Xi Jinping on the principle that real work generates true results, the commentary urged leadership to resolve grassroots preparation bottlenecks and uphold combat effectiveness as the sole benchmark for evaluating performance.

The commentary highlights official expectations regarding political work style and performance evaluation within China's armed forces. By positioning combat readiness as the singular metric for success, official military media signals a continued effort to curb bureaucratic formalism and careerist short-termism, attempting to align cadre incentives with long-term war-fighting requirements.

An official commentary published by the PLA Daily on July 30, 2026, has called on military cadres and leadership to focus on building long-term operational capabilities rather than chasing short-term personal gain or superficial accomplishments. The article, authored by Liu Weijiao and published via China Military Online, opened by citing instructions from President Xi Jinping, who emphasized that performance is achieved through concrete action and that only genuine work produces true results. Building on this framework, the piece articulated a distinction between two contrasting approaches to military duty: honing internal capability versus obsessing over utilitarian gain. In the commentary's framework, utilitarian pursuit represents a restless mindset that prioritizes short-term, highly visible metrics designed to calculate personal career advancement. In contrast, true capability refers to a sustained commitment to refining military skills and engaging in practical, hands-on work. The author stressed that competition in the military realm involves direct and uncompromising real-world confrontation. Without continuous, day-to-day cultivation of deep military competence, attempts to secure immediate or superficial victories will remain ineffective, leaving force preparation hollow and rendering actual battlefield success impossible to achieve. The commentary stressed that cadres—particularly leading officers—must recalibrate their initial motivations and strictly maintain combat effectiveness as the sole, fundamental criterion for evaluating all military work. To put this principle into practice, leadership must focus directly on the urgent concerns of officers and soldiers as well as the immediate requirements of the battlefield. Furthermore, the author urged officials to spend more time at the front lines to grasp real operational conditions, solve concrete difficulties at the grassroots level, and dedicate effort toward resolving key bottlenecks in war preparation and fixing development weak points. Looking toward the long-term construction and growth of the armed forces, military leadership was called upon to display a mindset where personal recognition is secondary to institutional success, producing accomplishments that can withstand the evaluation of troops, the test of actual combat, and the judgment of history.