For years, village officials in Gangzhongping, in Central China's Hunan province, have spent part of each summer holiday visiting households to raise awareness of drowning risks and help keep children safe.
They identify children staying in the village, which has several bodies of water, and they record their ages and school schedules and advise parents or other guardians on water safety. They also check whether children who normally live elsewhere have returned for the holidays and follow up when their whereabouts change.
The measures are simple but effective, said Dai Liping, the village's Party branch secretary. Since the work began, Gangzhongping has recorded no drowning incidents of children, and neither have any electrical or traffic accidents involving children been recorded, Dai said.
Gangzhongping's bodies of water include a small reservoir. Dai said that frequently seeing news reports of children drowning during the summer holidays had prompted concern about the risks facing children in the village.
"The loss of a child would be devastating for a family," Dai said, adding that preventing such tragedies was an important part of serving residents.
Under a rotating office-duty arrangement, the village's three officials no longer all spend the entire working day in the office. Those not on duty have more time to visit households, walk through the fields and follow up on residents' needs.
These tasks are not difficult in themselves, Dai said, but officials had previously been tied up with too many administrative requirements. As those burdens eased, their focus shifted from paperwork to practical work for residents.
In 2019, a national effort to reduce unnecessary administrative burdens gave village officials more time to visit households and respond to residents' needs. Summer water-safety work was among the tasks they took up that year.
In March that year, acting on instructions from Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee issued a notice calling for action against pointless formalities, easing burdens on grassroots officials and encouraging them to take responsibility and act.
On days away from office duty, Dai checks food preparation and cleanliness at the village's mutual-aid center for older residents, inspects sanitation around the village and visits people who need assistance.
Dai also follows the village's agricultural projects, checking the growth of golden chrysanthemums and contacting potential buyers ahead of a planned harvest this month.
In March 2024, Xi visited Gangzhongping village during a fact-finding trip to Hunan. He examined efforts to reduce burdens on grassroots officials and called for persistent action against pointless formalities and bureaucratism and for streamlining administration.
Joseph Olivier Mendo'o, a Cameroonian who has visited more than 60 villages in over 20 Chinese provinces, visited Gangzhongping in July and November 2025. He said cutting redundant paperwork so that officials could spend more time visiting households reflects a shift he has observed across rural China.
"In Gangzhongping, I saw this reclaimed time turn into tangible care: checking on children's safety, listening quietly to farming families' worries, and sorting out small, urgent problems before they escalate," Mendo'o said.
He saw a similar pattern in villages in Zhejiang and Guizhou provinces. "Party members do not wait for complaints to arrive at a desk; they walk the lanes, keep track of vulnerable households, and tailor solutions to what villagers actually need," he said.
"This is where discipline and conduct translate into service: Strengthening Party discipline is not an abstract rule from above," he said. "It is a practical mechanism that keeps grassroots cadres accountable, refocuses their energy away from formalities, and anchors governance in face-to-face contact with residents."
During deliberations with the Jiangsu delegation to the fourth session of the 14th National People's Congress in March this year, Xi stressed that more effective Party governance provides a stronger guarantee for economic and social development. He also called for earning public trust through tangible results in full and rigorous Party self-governance and pooling strength to advance development.
The fifth plenary session of the 20th CPC Central Committee, being held in Beijing from Monday to Thursday, is considering a draft decision on sustained efforts to advance full and rigorous Party self-governance.
The CPC had more than 101 million members and about 5.43 million primary-level Party organizations at the end of 2025, according to a statistical bulletin released by the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee.
Gu Shaojie, an associate professor at the China Executive Leadership Academy Yan'an, said that improving governance capacity is an integral requirement of full and rigorous Party self-governance.
"Full and rigorous Party self-governance is not about being strict for its own sake," Gu said.
One of its fundamental purposes, he added, is to improve the Party's ability to lead the modernization drive and translate its political and organizational strengths into effective governance.
At a group study session of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on June 27, 2024, Xi called for strengthening grassroots Party organizations' ability to lead local governance as part of efforts to improve the systems for full and rigorous Party self-governance.
In Gangzhongping, Dai, the village's Party branch secretary, said household visits also help officials understand residents' employment circumstances and match them with local job opportunities.
When a village workshop that offers traditional food-making experiences and is linked to an employment service station needed a full-time manager, officials identified Liu Qin through information gathered about local households, Dai said.
The 40-year-old mother of three had relied on casual work and small trading activities. Her husband worked away from home, while her elderly mother-in-law could only offer limited help with the children.
Liu now earns 3,000 yuan ($450) a month. Her work includes liaising with villagers who supply agricultural products to the workshop, where visitors can try traditional activities such as tofu-making and preparing the local specialty leicha, or pounded tea.
The income allows her to support herself and contribute to a pension program for people in flexible employment, Liu said.
Gu, the professor, said that once policies are determined, officials' ability to carry them out becomes decisive. He cited the decision adopted at the fourth plenary session of the 19th CPC Central Committee in 2019, which identified improving governance capacity as a major task in building the ranks of officials in the new era.
Governance capacity does not merely benefit from full and rigorous Party self-governance; it also helps drive that process forward, Gu said. Stronger governance capabilities enable Party organizations to identify and address underlying problems in Party self-governance through more law-based, standardized and precise methods, he said.
The purpose of strengthening Party discipline, said Mendo'o, the Cameroonian who has visited many villages in China, "is to make public services more human, precise and people-centered".
Editor：Zhou Jinmiao
