Wu Zhaoguang and Sun Xuan: Establishing and Practicing a Correct Outlook on Performance Excellence in Scientific Decision-making
At the critical juncture of beginning the "15th Five-Year Plan," [1] launching education and study programs on establishing and practicing a correct outlook on performance [2] is an inevitable requirement for implementing the strategic deployments of the 20th CPC Central Committee's Fourth Plenary Session. It is necessary to ensure decisive progress in basically achieving socialist modernization and serves as an important measure to practice the Party's fundamental purpose and consolidate the Party's foundation for governance. "Scientific decision-making" is one of the general requirements of this study and education activity—alongside "establishing the Party for the public, creating benefits for the people, and working with earnestness"—and is an important mode of governance through which our Party unites and leads the masses to promote the development of various undertakings. It profoundly reflects the Marxist worldview and methodology and is an important way of governing and a scientific method for answering the question of "on what should political performance be based." We must rely on scientific decision-making to conform to the people's expectations and practice their entrustment, using tangible results and practical work to coalesce the hearts and strength of the people, thereby continuously consolidating and strengthening the Party’s foundation for governance.
A scientific worldview and methodology are powerful weapons for people to understand and transform the world. The Marxist worldview and methodology advocate for viewing the development of objective things historically, grasping their essence and laws through seeking truth from facts, and understanding and transforming the objective world via the key relationships between productive forces and relations of production, the economic base and the superstructure, and theory and practice. This achieves the unity of historical purposiveness and law-governed necessity.
The connotation and essence of scientific decision-making lie in correctly understanding the world and, on this basis, rationally formulating plans to transform it. Marx maintained that "man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice." Judging whether a decision is scientific is essentially judging whether human thinking possesses objective truth. Therefore, the process of scientific decision-making must follow the Marxist worldview and methodology, persist in proceeding from reality in all things, and continuously enhance scientific understanding of the objective world. We must deepen our grasp of the essence and laws of objective things and, under the goal-oriented guidance of a correct outlook on performance, create the prerequisites, roadmaps, and timetables for the forward development of objective things while preventing and resolving risks.
In the process of promoting scientific decision-making, one will inevitably encounter various risks and challenges and face complex and intertwined contradictions. Engels pointed out that "dialectics comprehends things and their representations in their essential connection, concatenation, motion, origin and ending." Guided by dialectical materialism, we should be adept at viewing the contradictions of objective things dialectically. We must use the perspectives of connection and motion to examine the primary contradiction and the principal aspect of a contradiction. By using the primary contradiction as a starting point to break through the "stuck points" and "bottlenecks" [3] affecting decision-making, and by grasping the interdependence, mutual exclusion, and mutual transformation of the opposing sides of a contradiction, we can reach consistent and scientific decisions, creating sufficient conditions for practicing a correct outlook on performance.
General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out that a correct outlook on performance requires us to persist in proceeding from reality, act according to objective laws, and—through scientific decision-making and arduous practical work—create achievements that can withstand the test of practice and history, truly benefit the people, and gain public recognition. Scientific decision-making is the important support and cornerstone for a correct outlook on performance. Only by adhering to scientific decision-making can we create political performance that is felt by the people, steady and long-lasting, and marked by excellence, ensuring our work is always anchored in the people's expectations and consolidating the foundation of development.
Rely on scientific decision-making to create performance felt by the people. Scientific decision-making is an important method and path for implementing a correct outlook on performance in a way that reaches the hearts of the people. The scientific nature of a decision is first reflected in the scientific nature of the performance goals. Some Party members and cadres are obsessed with "numerical performance" or "potted-landscape performance," [4] caring only about growth rates and rankings on paper while downplaying livelihood issues. They care only about whether projects are launched or investments are in place, while ignoring factors like environmental protection, noise, and safety that may cause negative social effects. The unscientific nature of such goals lies in their departure from the materialist conception of history; they fail to see the creation of performance as a people-oriented process of creating history, thus moving toward the opposite of the people and history. Only by establishing scientific and reasonable performance goals centered on the people can we correctly take the first step in scientific decision-making.
We must persist in a systems concept, closely surrounding the people's sense of gain, happiness, and security to set scientific decision-making goals. We must handle major relationships such as those between the economy and society, government and market, efficiency and equity, vitality and order, and development and security. Focusing on areas of public concern—such as basic needs, employment, education, healthcare, elderly care, and environmental protection—we must layout plans scientifically. This involves conducting grassroots research to perceive livelihood concerns and development bottlenecks from specific "points," while also using big data and statistical analysis to master holistic and structural information from the broader "surface." By combining points and surfaces, we provide precise support for scientific decision-making and optimize resource allocation, ensuring that policy and capital are precisely "invested in people" and serve their livelihoods. In policy planning and evaluation, we should incorporate more livelihood indicators like employment and environmental protection. The formulation of major policies, determination of major projects, and the layout of major productive forces must place greater emphasis on job creation effects, unemployment risk assessments, ecological assessments, and historical-cultural impact assessments. This ensures that the people's needs for stable employment, a safe environment, fair treatment, and high-quality spiritual and cultural life are fully met.
Rely on scientific decision-making to create steady and long-lasting performance. Practicing a correct outlook on performance is not a hundred-meter sprint but a protracted war responsible to the people and history. Some Party members and cadres are keen on "short-term performance" and "assault-style performance," [5] blindly pursuing "quick results" without scientific decision-making or repeated consideration. They turn a blind eye to sustainability issues, the exhaustion of future resources, and subsequent hidden risks, often planting "landmines" for the cause and overdrawing future development potential. Only by completely, accurately, and comprehensively implementing the New Development Philosophy and building steady, long-term mechanisms can political performance withstand the test of time, practice, and history.
Steadiness means viewing development from a holistic perspective and making plans based on reality to ensure development follows a smooth and healthy path. Long-term effectiveness means viewing development from the perspective of the future and making long-term plans to ensure development leads to lasting peace and stability. We must regard practicing a correct outlook on performance as a gradual process of persisting over the long term. We must prioritize "stability," take a long-term view, and establish steady performance goals. We must handle major relationships between the present and the long-term, speed and quality, existing stock and incremental growth, and short-term effectiveness and long-term benefit. We should comprehensively consider issues concerning long-term development such as the innovation ecosystem, talent cultivation, and social equity. While focusing on the scale and efficiency of development, we must also emphasize development weaknesses and potential risks, strengthening evaluations of long-term benefits, resource carrying capacity, subsequent operation and maintenance costs, and various risks. We should be adept at using professional demonstrations and expert judgments to reduce and resolve hidden risks, better "investing resources in the long-term," resolutely putting an end to "eating next year's food today" [6] or "eager for quick success" in decision-making behaviors. This makes development more resilient, sustainable, and secure, leaving ample space and a solid foundation for subsequent growth.
Rely on scientific decision-making to create excellence in performance. Practicing a correct outlook on performance is a process of transforming ideal goals into practical results and making the cause of benefiting the people reach toward the ideal and perfection. No matter is too small when it comes to benefiting the people; the essence of livelihood is seen in the details. Livelihood work connects the overall developmental situation on one end and the warmth of the people's lives on the other. Whether it is a major livelihood project or a small convenience, ensuring that every achievement benefits the public and is widely acclaimed requires striving for excellence and applying effort to the minutiae. Even in seemingly ordinary small matters of livelihood, whether fine-grained management and service are achieved and whether a closed-loop management from reception to feedback can be formed profoundly reflects the style and governance level of serving the people. Only by relying on scientific decision-making and viewing the practice of a correct outlook on performance as a process of pursuing excellence, quality, and effectiveness can we truly land the work of benefiting the people in the details and in reality.
We must eliminate the mentality of "just getting by," "carelessness," and "valuing the trace over the result," [7] as well as styles of extensive promotion and superficial implementation. We must prioritize "refinement," establish an attitude of striving for excellence, and handle the relationships between form and effectiveness, quantity and quality, process and result, and surface improvement versus essential progress. In the decision-making process, we should focus on closed-loop management, full-process quality control, public satisfaction evaluation, and the construction of long-term mechanisms, putting more effort into details and seeking breakthroughs in quality. We should be adept at using precision thinking, meticulous measures, and lean management to check work processes and links, pushing every work deployment deeper, more pragmatically, and more exquisitely. This effectively enhances work efficiency and creates high-quality performance that is tangible and can withstand scrutiny.