Southeast Asia Information Port News (www.dnyxxg.com) At the crack of dawn, Chen Xinying, a staff member of the Guangzhou Municipal Government Office, entered an urban village in Panyu District. For the next few hours, she would accompany sanitation worker Mr. Li through narrow alleyways to conduct on-site research into the actual operation of the city's final waste disposal process. This is not her regular job, but it is a "required course" for thousands of young cadres in Guangzhou.
Recently, the 2025 Guangzhou Municipal Government Youth "Rooted in the Grassroots, Key Small Matters" Research and Development Activity successfully concluded. This large-scale research, organized by the Guangzhou Municipal Government Working Committee and lasting several months, brought together youth theoretical study groups from 50 municipal units, ultimately producing nearly 100 research findings. Groups of young cadres shed their "office air" and embraced a more "down-to-earth" approach, abandoning vague thinking and focusing on specific obstacles hindering development and real problems affecting the public's sense of gain, demonstrating their youthful responsibility "from office desk to the front line."
Focusing on Small Breakthroughs to Identify Key Areas of Service
In Liangping Village, Conghua District, the Guangzhou Municipal Planning and Natural Resources Bureau's Youth Theoretical Study Group conducted repeated field surveys, focusing on the core issue of "possessing high-quality ecological resources and distinctive agricultural products, yet failing to retain young people and experiencing low tourist conversion rates." They meticulously recorded details such as mountain road slopes, tourist routes, and agricultural product prices in their research notes, seeking solutions to the problem.
Meanwhile, the Guangzhou Municipal Supply and Marketing Cooperative's Youth Theoretical Study Group rooted themselves in rural areas, starting with the "three questions in the field"—"what to plant, how to plant, and who to sell to"—and, based on solid research, explored a new organizational path centered on "contract farming," building a stable bridge of shared risks and benefits between small farmers and the large market.
It is reported that many young cadres focused their research on the minutiae of people's livelihood concerns, covering areas such as education, employment, elderly care, medical insurance, and youth development. They deeply analyzed the shortcomings in the supply of services for the elderly and children, and focused on pain points such as occupational security for workers in new business formats. Some young cadres directly addressed deep-seated obstacles in the operation of mechanisms. For example, the Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Ecology and Environment's Youth Theoretical Study Group explored ways to shift supervision from end-of-pipe punishment to source prevention in response to the vicious cycle of "complaint-rectification-re-complaint" in the management of restaurant fumes.
Taking advantage of the 15th National Games and the National Paralympic Games, young cadres further examined the shortcomings of the mechanisms from multiple dimensions, including event organization, public safety, and legal safeguards. This promoted a shift in work logic from "solving an immediate problem" to "clarifying the underlying principles," helping to improve urban governance efficiency.
Seeking solutions through hard work, honing true skills in tackling reform challenges
The difficulty of electric bicycles traveling has been a long-standing pain point in the governance of Guangzhou, a megacity. In this survey, the Guangzhou Municipal Transportation Bureau's Youth Theoretical Study Group used the Zhongshan Avenue West section as a sample, measuring road conditions on foot, recording the current situation such as narrow non-motorized vehicle lanes, listening to riders' demands, and combining professional calculations to design solutions, leading to the innovative pilot project of "shared lanes for motorized and non-motorized vehicles." After the solution was implemented, the proportion of electric bicycles entering motorized vehicle lanes during off-peak hours on the pilot section dropped significantly from 38.5% to 4.7%. For many young cadres transitioning from academia to government service, this research trip served as a crucial opportunity for "capacity building" and "mindset refinement"—identifying problems was the starting point, but solving them was the core. The Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences' Youth Theoretical Learning Group visited high-tech enterprises, compiling a "physical report" of Guangzhou's innovation ecosystem through 517 questionnaires, accurately assessing new changes in enterprise talent needs, and proposing targeted suggestions for optimizing the talent pool. The Guangzhou Water Resources Bureau's "Water Purity Gathering" Youth Theoretical Learning Group, aiming to build a water-saving industry hub in the Greater Bay Area, surveyed 1,086 large-scale water-saving enterprises, 78 key enterprises, 30 industrial parks, and 7 research institutes, capturing valuable information on technological bottlenecks, market trends, and policy needs.
Yaotian Road in Xintang Town, Zengcheng District, was disrupted for five years due to the construction of the Guangzhou-Shantou Railway, hindering the travel of three schools and thousands of residents. Faced with challenges such as poor coordination in approval processes and intertwined historical issues, the Youth Theoretical Study Group of the Guangzhou Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China, relying on a high-level coordination and supervision mechanism and an online real-time communication platform, worked tirelessly for several months to ensure the road opened to traffic in 2025. This reduced average travel time in the surrounding area by 20 minutes, transforming a "blocked road" into a "connecting road."
In their research report, the young cadres wrote: "The 'key small things' that directly affect the public's sense of gain are the 'touchstone' for testing grassroots governance capabilities. To ensure the implementation of policies reaches the 'last mile,' we must use a reform-minded approach to tackle deep-seated institutional and systemic obstacles, and a pragmatic style to ensure that beneficial measures reach and penetrate the grassroots level."
Exploring the Path with a Holistic Perspective: Writing a Grand Chapter in Urban Governance
How to solidify the foundation of refined governance for Guangzhou, a city with 19 million permanent residents? The young cadres approached the problem with meticulous attention to detail and broke through with systemic thinking. The Guangzhou Municipal Government Office, using urban village garbage collection as a starting point, restructured the city's micro-governance processes; the Guangzhou Municipal Health Commission's Youth Theoretical Study Group, focusing on mosquito-borne disease monitoring, addressed the "temperature gap" between policy goodwill, implementation efficiency, and public satisfaction, promoting more coordinated and precise governance.
This "Rooted in the Grassroots, Key Small Matters" activity not only guided young cadres to solve individual problems but also focused on cultivating systemic thinking, promoting the upgrading of governance concepts, models, and methods, and accumulating energy for the modernization of governance in megacities. The Guangzhou Municipal Emergency Management Bureau's Youth Theoretical Study Group focused on the weak links in earthquake prevention and disaster reduction in "earthquake-free cities," exploring pathways to improve disaster prevention capabilities through mechanism optimization, resource integration, and inter-departmental collaboration under the background of fiscal austerity; the Guangzhou Federation of Industry and Commerce's Youth Theoretical Study Group, while investigating the business environment, considered the demands of enterprises, departmental opinions, and expert suggestions, seeking the optimal balance between policy, market, and enterprise realities; and the Guangzhou Municipal Party School's Youth Theoretical Study Group, focusing on the high-quality development of the private economy, proposed suggestions on adhering to market orientation and strictly enforcing relief rules, contributing to the construction of a diversified and collaborative governance pattern.
The principal official of the Guangzhou Municipal Government Organs Working Committee stated that this event is a practical exploration to strengthen the education and guidance of young cadres in government organs. The next step will be to continue promoting the Youth Theoretical Learning Enhancement Project, optimizing content design, innovating methods and carriers, and stimulating the intrinsic motivation of young cadres to learn the Party's innovative theories, providing a solid ideological guarantee and spiritual support for Guangzhou to play a leading and driving role in high-quality development.
