Recently, the third issue of "Party Building Research" in 2025 published a signed article by Xiong Zhengyu, Secretary of the Yichang Municipal Party Committee of Hubei Province. The article mentioned that Yichang highlights grassroots orientation in cadre assessment, randomly listens to more than 1,300 public evaluations every year, and doubles the weight of public evaluations to 25%.
Xiong Zhengyu said that the Yichang Municipal Party Committee focused on accelerating the construction of a model city for protection of the Yangtze River, grasped the main contradictions and clarified the main direction, and extended the "probe" of cadre assessment and evaluation to the front line of development of the "four major" cadres. Cadres experienced ups and downs and gained talents in the big battles and exams, and organized the examinations and identification of accurate people at the front line of struggle. Since 2023, the organization department has conducted assessments in more than 90 key projects across the city, accurately "portraits" and mastered a group of outstanding cadres who dared to fight and performed outstandingly.
First, focus on major strategic decisions and see whether the implementation of the "Two Mountains" concept is real or not. The main leaders and organization departments of the municipal party committee watched on-site, listened directly and asked in person, observed what the main leaders of the county, city and district and responsible persons of municipal departments thought and planned, and understood whether their important decisions, development plans, ideas and methods were in line with the new development concept, and whether the path measures and work carriers were in line with the requirements of the Yangtze River protection, so as to effectively let the seeds of the "Two Mountains" concept take root and sprout on the land of Yichang.
The second is to focus on major industrial projects and see whether the development contains "green". Vigorously develop leading industries such as green chemical, biomedicine, and digital economy, establish a "full life cycle management platform for major projects" in the city, and implement quantitative assessments from the project signing. The organization department will promptly collect the development and reform, investment promotion, economic and information, taxation and other departments to promote industrial development, and grasp the project investment attraction, actual investment, and profit and tax payment. The organization department regularly goes deep into leading enterprises in the industrial chain to extend the situation of strengthening, replenishing and extending the chain, and uses data to evaluate the effectiveness of projects and assess the performance of cadres, so as to promote the continuous improvement of the value, new content and green content of the city's leading industries.
The third is to focus on major engineering projects and see if the people have a strong sense of gain. For key engineering projects closely related to environmental protection and improvement of people's livelihood, such as the ecological protection and restoration project of mountains, rivers, forests, fields, lakes and grasslands, and the construction of Bailin River ecological corridors, we will have an in-depth understanding of the progress of the project's preliminary work, the formation of physical workload, the breakthrough of control nodes, and whether the people are satisfied through the "four no and two direct" method.
Fourth, focus on major thematic activities and see whether the city is well-known. We insist on listening to opinions from various parties such as sponsorship, exhibitions, etc. before and after each major event held, hosting, co-organizing, and participants, to understand whether the event is smooth and orderly, safe and stable, and to meet expectations, to grasp the performance of the participating departments such as publicity, culture and tourism, urban management, and transportation, and then comprehensively evaluate the cadres involved.
Xiong Zhengyu also introduced that the Yichang Municipal Party Committee insists on career first and selects people based on affairs, integrates front-line assessment into daily life and grasps regularity, improves the multi-dimensional governorship and people-knowing system of "regular assessment + annual assessment + pre-appointment inspection", combines organizational evaluation and local word-of-mouth reputation, and is brave enough to break the "GDP-only" theory, strive to solve the problems of arbitrary actions, inaction, daring to do things, and bad things, and promotes "recognition of people" with "examination".
First, do detailed daily assessments. Focusing on solving problems such as not promoting or evaluating the cadres' work, not changing the term, and not evaluating until the end of the year, we will go to the front line of the project, construction site, and field workshops, one-on-one, face-to-face, and intuitively understand the cadres' mental state, work performance, life style, etc.
The second is to do annual assessment. Implementing the requirements for reducing burdens at the grassroots level, in 2024, the county, city and district indicators were reduced to 47, and the municipal department indicators were reduced to 23, 24.2% and 32.4% respectively. Highlight the grassroots orientation, and randomly listen to more than 1,300 public evaluations every year, doubling the weight of public evaluations to 25%. In combination with the annual assessment, reverse evaluation will be carried out, and "indecisive and flexible implementation of the decision-making and deployment of the Yangtze River protection" will be included as a negative situation in the evaluation element, so as to promote mutual confirmation between public evaluation and organizational evaluation.
The third is to conduct a practical pre-task inspection. Each cadre inspection is regarded as an important node in cadre performance assessment, and comprehensively use methods such as "talking, listening, seeing, telling, checking, and verifying" to record the performance of cadres throughout the process, and over time, forming consistent performance performance of cadres. Establish a negative list of cadre education and management, and go deep into the front line to carry out reverse investigations on the social image of leading cadres, and implement a "one-vote veto" for cadres who have deviations in political achievements such as sacrificing the environment for economic growth and fraud in pollution control.
In order to solve the problem of "two skins" in assessment and use, the Yichang Municipal Party Committee has issued supporting measures such as encouraging cadres to dare to take risks and act responsibilities, and to be able to go up and down, and to supervise and evaluate effectiveness to encourage cadres to work and start businesses.
Xiong Zhengyu revealed that since 2023, the Yichang Municipal Party Committee has promoted and further used more than 250 county-level cadres from the fields of promoting the green transformation of the chemical industry, reducing carbon, reducing pollution, and expanding green in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. On the other hand, since 2023, the city has had more than 100 people talking and 210 people interviewed, including 61 "top leaders" of the units. Yichang also regards the "can be depressed" of cadres as an important part of the discussion of cadre issues at the Standing Committee of the Municipal Party Committee. In the past two years, each batch of cadre motion has the target of "depressed".
