Fewer but Better Troops and Simplified Administration

Fewer but Better Troops and Simplified Administration is a revolutionary proposal for reducing and improving the military while simplifying its administration. In the novel, its stated test is whether a change benefits the people; its practical consequence is the disbandment of Wu Dawang’s division, a process entangled with private influence and unequal outcomes. The distance between principle and implementation gives the proposal its double force: it is both an argument about how an army should serve the people and the language through which an institution’s dismantling is made intelligible.

Revolutionary Principle

In Mao Zedong’s speech commemorating Zhang Side, the proposal is presented as an example of the Party’s willingness to accept criticism and correct itself. Mao argues that anyone may point out shortcomings and that a useful suggestion should be adopted even when it comes from someone outside the Communist Party. The proposal’s value, in this account, rests not on the proposer’s political identity but on its benefit to the people. Its adoption is offered as evidence that correction and reform can strengthen the revolutionary ranks.

The speech places administrative reform within a larger moral argument about service and sacrifice. The army exists to liberate and protect the people, and officers are enjoined to care for every soldier and help one another. The proposal therefore implies more than a smaller establishment: its stated purpose is to make the organization better serve the people while avoiding unnecessary sacrifice. That public standard becomes an ironic measure of what follows when the principle is translated into personnel decisions.

The Division’s Test Case

The Political Instructor invokes the same language in reprimanding Wu Dawang. He expands a failure to look after Liu Lian into a chain of military consequences: her husband, the Division Commander, might be distracted from meetings in Beijing; the division’s training might suffer; and the army’s readiness might be affected. His speech treats individual conduct as part of a vast political and military system, while also pressing Wu Dawang to recognize the Commander’s private household as a route to promotion and a city transfer for his family. Revolutionary duty and personal advancement thus occupy the same argument, without resolving into the same interest.

The proposal becomes institutional fact after the Division Commander volunteers at a Beijing seminar organized by the Central Military Commission to test a pilot plan for streamlining and restructuring the army. The Political Instructor tells Wu Dawang that the practical result will be the division’s disbandment: within the People’s Liberation Army, the formation is to disappear. Promotions are suspended while most companies are demobilized and a minority transferred. The language of improvement and streamlining consequently accompanies a sweeping change in the lives and service prospects of the soldiers.

Rules, Exceptions, and Uneven Costs

For Wu Dawang, the reorganization initially appears to close off advancement once again. Yet the Division Commander has ordered an exception for him: a city job in his native province, relocation for his family, and work for his wife. Within a week, the arrangements are in place, and Wu Dawang need only complete and sign the bureaucratic forms. The contrast between canceled promotions for the majority and a rapid, favorable placement for one soldier makes the division between general procedure and personal exception concrete.

The exception is connected to Wu Dawang’s relationship with Liu Lian. Earlier, she had asked the company’s Captain and Political Instructor to let him sleep at the Commander’s home while her husband was away, presenting his continued presence as a response to her fear of being alone and to the improvement in his service. Later, when Wu Dawang returns to barracks, the Political Instructor explains that Liu Lian personally reported serious family problems and obtained a three-month home leave for him. He also says the Commander arranged the city placement because Wu Dawang was a favorite of the Commander and his wife. The novel thus shows formal decisions moving through military channels alongside household influence and personal trust.

That mixture reaches beyond Wu Dawang’s case. The Captain orders him to tell no one what he has heard or seen, warning that disclosure to the Division Commander could ruin them all. The secrecy surrounding the arrangements sits uneasily beside the public account of reform as a beneficial correction adopted openly in the people’s interests. Later, the Head of Management, handing Wu Dawang a job-assignment form, remarks that Liu Lian has left him better off than anyone else. His comment sharpens the possibility that the dismantling of the division distributes security and loss unevenly, even as the official rationale speaks in collective terms.

Consequences and Irony

The reorganization changes not only Wu Dawang’s prospects but the fate of his comrades and the division itself. As the barracks empty and soldiers face demobilization or transfer, Wu Dawang is spared much of their uncertainty by the work and housing arranged for his family. He has reason to feel relief, yet the benefits do not erase his growing suspicion that his affair with Liu Lian has been staged or directed as part of a larger scheme. The reform’s administrative outcome and his private entanglement become difficult to separate, though he resists treating the relationship as merely instrumental.

The proposal’s two meanings remain in tension at the novel’s close. In the commemorative speech, fewer, better troops and simplified administration exemplify a principle of serving the people, accepting useful criticism, and caring for soldiers. In the plot, the same policy accompanies the disappearance of a division, canceled advancement, and sharply different outcomes for those affected. Its irony lies not in a simple rejection of the reform’s stated purpose, but in the gap between that collective ideal and the particular networks, exceptions, and costs through which the army carries it out.