Soldiers are impermanent, and water is impermanent.

——Cited in the article "Doing in the Forefront of Practical Practice: Speech During the Investigation in Fuyang City, Zhejiang Province" and other articles

■Interpretation

The situation of reform and development is changing, and our ideological concepts, work ideas, and work priorities should also change accordingly; otherwise, problems such as insufficient ability, wrong thinking, and improper methods will appear. Comrade Xi Jinping attaches great importance to the problem of "panic in skills" of the cadre team, and once used "new methods will not be used, old methods will not work, hard methods dare not be used, and soft methods will not be used" to describe the shortcomings of some cadres' abilities. Engels famously said, "Contempt for dialectics cannot go unpunished." In reality, some people only have achievements and no problems in their eyes, some people fall into the trap of problems and can't see a way out, and some people can't find the direction and can't grasp the point, and suffer from blind adoption, which backfires. Comprehensively deepening reform has taken off, how to resolve the new problems encountered in the reform? To promote the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity, how to improve the ability to do things in accordance with the law? If you don't understand the rules, lack knowledge, lack skills, and are accustomed to using old ideas to solve new problems, then the harder you work and the more you work, the more you will go in the opposite direction. Our party is a learning political party, and the majority of party members should not be cocooned and hold on to their defects, but should always increase their skills and abilities according to changes in the situation.

■Original text

The image of the soldier is water, the shape of water, avoiding the high and tending down; The shape of the soldier, avoiding the real and attacking the false. The water is controlled by the land, and the soldiers are defeated by the enemy. Therefore, the army is impermanent, and the water is impermanent; Those who can win due to the change of the enemy are called gods. Therefore, the five elements are impermanent, the four times are impermanent, the days are short and long, and the months are dead and alive.

——(Spring and Autumn) Sun Wu "The Art of War: The Sixth Reality of Fiction and Reality"

■Definition

"Fiction and Reality" is the sixth of the thirteen chapters of "The Art of War". "Virtuality and reality" refers to defeating the enemy on the battlefield through tactical changes in dispersion and concentration of troops, creating a situation in which we are strong and the enemy is weak.

Sun Wu believes that "soldiers are like water", and the law of mastering and applying the shape of soldiers is like the flow of water. "The shape of water, avoiding the high and tending downward; The shape of the soldier, avoiding the real and attacking the false. "The flow of water is to avoid the high places and flow to the low places; Victory in war is to avoid the enemy's strong fortifications and attack his weak points. "Water is controlled by the land, and soldiers are defeated by the enemy." The water flows according to the topography, and the army adopts a winning strategy according to the enemy's situation. From this, Sun Wu concluded: "Therefore, soldiers are impermanent, and water is impermanent; Those who can win due to the change of the enemy are called gods. Therefore, there is no fixed position in the use of troops, just as water has no fixed shape and flow direction, and only those who can win according to the changes in the enemy's situation are called acting soldiers like gods.

The above statement has been well known to soldiers for thousands of years. In 1972, the Han Tomb of Yinque Mountain in Linyi, Shandong Province excavated the bamboo slips of "The Art of War", "the impermanence of soldiers, the impermanence of water" is easy to be "the soldiers have no potential, there is no constant shape", which is free from the metaphor of water, but it still comes down to the "shape" and "potential" of the soldiers.