The inscription drafted by Comrade Mao Zedong for the Monument to the People's Heroes is only 114 words, but it reflects a modern history of China. In 1975, Comrade Deng Xiaoping was responsible for drafting Premier Zhou Enlai's report to the first session of the Fourth National People's Congress, which used only 5,000 words. Later, when talking about this matter, Comrade Deng Xiaoping said: "Chairman Mao appointed me to be responsible for drafting, and the requirement should not exceed 5,000 words, and I completed the task. 5,000 words, isn't it also useful? ”

-- "Striving to Overcome Bad Literary Styles and Actively Advocate Good Literary Styles: Speech at the Opening Ceremony of the Second Batch of Admitted Students in the Spring Semester of 2010 of the Central Party School" (May 12, 2010)

Further reading:

From September 21 to 30, 1949, the first plenary session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference was held in Beiping. In order to commemorate the people's heroes who died in the People's Liberation War and the People's Revolution, the meeting decided to build a monument to the people's heroes outside Tiananmen Square in the capital Beijing. Mao Zedong wrote the inscription: "In the past three years, the people's heroes who died in the People's Liberation War and the People's Revolution have been immortalized!" Over the past 30 years, the people's heroes who sacrificed their lives in the People's Liberation War and the People's Revolution have been immortalized! Dating back to 1,840 years, since then, in order to oppose internal and external enemies, and to fight for national independence and the freedom and happiness of the people, the people's heroes who sacrificed their lives in all the struggles are immortal! In just 114 words, it is done in one go, vigorously and powerfully, and clearly expresses the admiration and remembrance of the people's heroes.

From January 13 to 17, 1975, the first session of the Fourth National People's Congress was held in Beijing, which was the only National People's Congress held during the "Cultural Revolution". In view of the physical condition of Premier Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, who was the first vice premier at the time, was entrusted by Mao Zedong to preside over the drafting of the government work report on behalf of Zhou Enlai. Deng Xiaoping not only compressed the total number of words in the report to 5,000 words, but also led the drafting team to overcome many obstacles and include Zhou Enlai's long-standing ideas on the "four modernizations" as a key point in the report's manuscript. As soon as the grand goal of realizing the "four modernizations" was reported, it immediately aroused the confidence of the whole party and the people of the whole country to break through the shackles of the "Cultural Revolution." Deng Xiaoping sighed with emotion: "Isn't 5,000 words also very useful? ”

The style of writing advocates short, practical and new, and opposes fake and empty, Xi Jinping asked for it like this, and he also demonstrated it in this way. As early as 1984, Xi Jinping, then secretary of the Zhengding County Party Committee of Hebei Province, published a signed article in the "People's Daily" for the first time, "Young and middle-aged cadres should "respect the elderly", which has already shown a simple style. During his tenure as secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee from 2003 to 2007, Xi published 232 short essays in the "Zhijiang Xinyu" column of Zhejiang Daily. Most of these works are only three or five hundred words, there are no empty words and clichés, quotations from classics, powerful expositions, simple and easy to understand reasoning, talking about problems and hitting the pain points, and many ideas and formulations in the articles are still worth chewing and recalling.

The style of writing reflects the style of work, and the style of writing reflects the ability and level of leading cadres. The issue of style has attracted Xi Jinping's attention. There is a misconception about the style of writing: the longer the article, the more it means that there is a level. Xi Jinping cited the example of the 114-word inscription on the Monument to the People's Heroes and the 5,000-word government work report drafted by Deng Xiaoping on behalf of Zhou Enlai, to illustrate that a short essay can also hold up rich content, and that the article should be as short as possible, concise and profound.

Xi Jinping once quoted an allusion from the Zhuangzi: "The elderly are not excessive, and the short are not insufficient." Therefore, although the shin is short, the continuation is worrying; Although the crane's shin is long, it is sad to break it. This means that although the legs of a wild duck are very short, it will be troublesome to connect it to it; Although the crane's legs are very long, it will be sad to cut off a section of it. The same applies to writing articles. In this regard, he pointed out that as far as today is concerned, there are too many articles on "lengthening the legs of wild ducks," and advocating short articles, short speeches, and short documents is the main task of improving the style of writing at present.