In mid October, a division of the Jinan Military Area Command held a command-and-staff commanding operational examination. This examination broke away from the fixed evaluation mode and highlighted the actual combat effectiveness.

　　Why was the fixed scoring mode not used in this commanding operational examination? The leaders of the division gave the following answer: The former commanding operational examination had detailed scoring regulations. If only the examinees met the requirements of the detailed regulations they would get high scores, which resulted in some officers beating their brains in getting high scores instead of improving their commanding capabilities. Some of them got high scores with poor combat commanding capabilities. Therefore, the leaders of the division dropped the fixed mode of assessing tactical operational performance with standard answers but adopted measures of setting tactical conditions and operational contents without fixed answers so as to enable the officers to make operational plans independently in light of the general battlefield situations.

　　On the examination spot, the reporter noticed that the examinees were very active in collecting information, analyzing battlefield situation, making decisions and coming up with operational plans. Therefore, the information volume increased by 5 times than that of before, and the possible battlefield situations increased about 60% than before. Various combat methods replaced the single one used in the past and there were usually more than 3 operational plans for each campaign. The examinees from the division's commanding departments had to give full play to their imagination and creativity. The examiners also changed their assessment to the operational performance with new remarks such as "lacking in flexible tactics", " the operational plan does not meet the requirements of the actual combat", "a proper comprehensive coordination" and "the situation is dealt with reasonably". An examination without fixed answers has raised new requirements both for the examinees and examiners.　

　　By Cheng Jian and Liu Yu

　　(October 23, PLA Daily)