During his early years in Liangjiahe, a village on the Loess Plateau in Shaanxi province, Xi Jinping, then one of the educated youths sent to the countryside, was struck by a small detail at mealtime.

While the educated youths were given corn buns, many local villagers survived on coarse cakes made from husks and bran — food that was barely edible and served only to keep hunger at bay.

Seeing the difference, Xi offered to swap his food with theirs. Only later did he realize that some villagers had not eaten the better food at all, but had saved it for family members back in the cave dwellings, especially the men who bore the heavier burdens.

Years later, Xi recalled that it was in those days that he came to understand the hardships ordinary people endured and began to think that, if given the chance, he should do practical things for their benefit.

That early conviction helps explain why the Communist Party of China's latest Party-wide education campaign for fostering and practicing a correct view on governance performance places such strong emphasis on putting the people first.

On Nov 15, 2012, the day he was elected general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, Xi met with Chinese and foreign journalists. He spoke not in grand abstractions, but about the issues that mattered most to ordinary people: better education, more stable jobs, more satisfactory incomes, more reliable social security, better medical and health services, more comfortable living conditions, a better environment, and better opportunities for their children to grow, work and live well.

He distilled that commitment into an expression that would later become one of the most widely cited statements of the Party's governing philosophy: "The Chinese people's aspiration for a better life is the goal we strive for."

Putting the people first has remained central to Xi's thinking on governance and modernization. During an inspection tour in Chongqing in April 2024, he put it in especially direct terms: "As far as Chinese modernization is concerned, the people's well-being matters the most."

In this sense, a correct view of governance performance is measured not by headline numbers alone, but by how people actually experience the results of policy. During a visit to Huamao village in Zunyi, Guizhou province, in June 2015, Xi told villagers that the effectiveness of the Party's policies should be judged by whether people were smiling or in tears.

That point also helps explain why the current education campaign carries particular weight at this stage of China's development. Lin Jianhua, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' National Academy of Chinese Modernization, wrote that the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) period will be critical to laying a solid foundation for the basic realization of socialist modernization.

Lin said that meeting China's development goals on schedule will depend in large part on whether Party officials maintain a sound outlook on performance, avoid impatience, short-termism, falsification and reckless action, and deliver results that can stand the test of practice, the people and history.

That standard is reflected not only in how the Party defines good governance, but also in how it turns policy into action and development into tangible improvements in people's lives.

Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, nearly 100 million people have been lifted out of poverty, China has completed the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and the country has established the world's largest systems for education, social security, healthcare and urban housing support.

Access to education at all levels has reached or surpassed the average for middle- and high-income countries. Basic medical insurance coverage has remained above 95 percent, life expectancy has risen above 79 years, and the middle-income group now exceeds 400 million people.

The same emphasis is evident in the 2026 Government Work Report, which stresses the need to address the people's most pressing difficulties and concerns while strengthening inclusive, basic and bottom-line social protections.

Some foreign observers said the campaign is notable not only for its emphasis on internal Party discipline, but also for the way it ties governance performance to people's lived experience.

Zafar Uddin Mahmood, former special assistant to the prime minister of Pakistan, said the Party's emphasis on educating its members and officials has long been part of China's governance approach, and that the current campaign should be seen as a continuation of that tradition.

Having studied in China, lived there and maintained ties with the country for five decades, Mahmood said that he has seen firsthand how China's system works in practice and how it has enabled the country to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty within a relatively short period of time.

What impressed him most, he added, was that the benefits of China's development were "visible everywhere", reaching not only major cities but also far-flung areas such as the Xinjiang Uygur and Xizang autonomous regions and Qinghai and Gansu provinces.

Djoomart Otorbaev, former prime minister of Kyrgyzstan, said the campaign was needed because "government should work for the people, not the other way around". He said that its significance lies in improving governance and making public services more efficient and responsive, adding that high-quality development and more productive industries will be essential to sustaining growth and delivering prosperity for the people.

Danilo Turk, former president of Slovenia, approached the campaign from the perspective of outcomes. Development should ultimately be judged by how people experience its results, he said, adding that "the insistence on results is critical".

zhaojia@chinadaily.com.cn