Pragmatism is the way forward

Transforming talkers into doers is one of the challenges the new leadership will have to tackle in the years to come

'Empty talk harms the country, hard work prospers the nation," remarked Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party Central Committee, when he and the other six members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of CPC Central Committee visited The Road Toward Rejuvenation exhibition on Thursday. This epigram is rich in its connotations, a better understanding of which helps explain why pragmatism must be further practiced for China to realize its dream of rejuvenation.

Former general secretary Hu Jintao once used the expression zhe-teng, which literally means wasting time on meaningless things, to refer to political nonsense. Xi's remark is more explicit and broader as it can be understood to be not just referring to the past but also to the present.