Fewer but Better Troops and a Simplified Administration

Fewer but Better Troops and a Simplified Administration is presented both as a principle of revolutionary governance and as the rationale for a sweeping military reorganization. In Mao Zedong’s account, the proposal is a useful idea adopted because it benefits the people; in the plot, its implementation dissolves Wu Dawang’s division and abruptly redirects his career and family’s prospects. The distance between those two scales—public principle and individual consequence—gives the expression its central significance.

Principle and Public Justification

In the speech quoted near the novel’s conclusion, Mao Zedong argues that a people-serving organization should welcome criticism and act on proposals that benefit the people, even when they come from outside the Communist Party. He identifies the suggestion for fewer but better troops and a simplified administration as one such proposal, made by Li Dingming, who was not a Communist. Its adoption is framed as evidence that the organization can correct itself in the public interest.

The speech places administrative streamlining within a larger account of revolutionary service. It recalls Zhang Side’s death in service to the people, the need to continue the struggle, and the duty to minimize unnecessary sacrifices while officers care for soldiers. The principle is therefore not presented merely as a technical adjustment: its justification rests on the claim that organizational choices should serve the population and attend to the people within the ranks.

The Division’s Reorganization

The principle enters the plot as a concrete assignment at a Beijing seminar organized and directed by the Central Military Commission. The Division Commander volunteers his division for a pilot scheme to streamline and restructure the army, an assignment other divisions had not been prepared to take on. The stated consequence is stark: the division is to be disbanded, disappearing within the larger institution of the People's Liberation Army.

The reorganization unsettles personnel arrangements before it is complete. Most companies are to be demobilized and a minority transferred, while promotions are suspended. The disruption reaches the Division Commander’s household as well: staff turnover is high, and Wu Dawang is told not to return to his former post or visit the house unless a pressing matter requires it. A broad administrative change thus alters both formal military roles and the daily arrangements around the Commander’s family.

Career and Uneven Consequences

The policy intersects with a long-standing private ambition. Wu Dawang’s marriage pledge had tied his future to commendations, Party membership, promotion to officialdom, and the prospect of moving his wife, Zhao Ezi, to a city. After years of effort, he earns awards, joins the Party, and becomes a full Sergeant, but the official’s four-pocket jacket remains beyond reach. Promotion quotas and delays repeatedly frustrate that final promise.

When the restructuring suspends promotions again, Wu Dawang’s hope of becoming an official appears likely to fail. Yet the same period brings a personal exception: because he is favored by the Division Commander and his wife, instructions are given to arrange a job for him in a city in his native province, move his family there, and find work for his wife. Within a week, work and housing are arranged in the city nearest his village, while other soldiers remain uncertain about their prospects. The policy’s effects are therefore not uniform; formal disruption operates alongside personal intervention and produces sharply different outcomes.

Principle in Practice

The novel sets the speech’s collective language against the administrative machinery through which the restructuring reaches individuals. The plan is publicly justified as beneficial to the people, yet in the division its immediate form is disbandment, canceled promotion, transfers, and demobilization. Wu Dawang’s favorable arrangements do not undo that dissolution; they make his own passage through it unusually protected.

That contrast also links the expression to the novel’s wider attention to discretion within institutions. A volunteer assignment at the level of command becomes a division-wide reorganization, while particular officers’ decisions determine who receives an exception, where a soldier will work, and whether a household can move. The principle’s significance lies in this tension: an argument about serving the public becomes consequential through specific decisions that distribute security and uncertainty unevenly.