Decision-Making Archives - Page 4 of 9

Qi Xi Recommends a Successor

In 570 BC, Qi Xi of Jin asked to retire. The duke asked him who should succeed him. Qi Xi named Xie Hu, his personal enemy, but Xie Hu died before he could be appointed. Asked again, Qi Xi said: “Wu will do.” Qi Wu was his son. (Zuo Zhuan)

The Zuo Zhuan praises him: “He named his enemy, and it was not flattery. He put forward his son, and it was not favoritism.” He is remembered with the saying 内举不避亲，外举不避仇, “in recommending insiders, he did not avoid kin. In recommending outsiders, he did not avoid enemies.”

Face and Favor

The psychologist Hwang Kwang-kuo built a model of how Chinese people decide on a request. Starting from Fei Xiaotong’s idea of ties that are closer or more distant, he divides relationships into three kinds: expressive, mixed and instrumental.

Each kind follows its own rule. For expressive ties, the rule of need applies. For instrumental ties, the rule of fairness applies. For mixed ties, the person who controls the resource follows the rule of renqing (人情). He weighs what helping would cost against the return that may come in the future.

Midea’s Successor

In 2012, after Midea Group listed as a whole on the stock market, its founder He Xiangjian retired in August. Fang Hongbo, a professional manager, became chairman and president. On the question of a successor, He had said that he would not let his children take over Midea.

In the Name of the People

In the Name of the People (人民的名义), a drama made by the film and television center of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, began on Hunan Satellite TV on March 28, 2017. It is set in the fictional province of Handong.

Two factions there have competed for years. The “Handong University gang” (汉大帮) forms around Gao Yuliang, deputy party secretary of the province and a former university teacher. The “secretaries’ gang” (秘书帮) forms around Li Dakang, party secretary of the city of Jingzhou.

Radish Recruitment

萝卜招聘 Radish recruitment. A job posting written for one person chosen in advance, like a hole dug to fit one particular radish.

In Pingnan County, Fujian, one job notice asked for a full-time new graduate with a foreign bachelor’s degree in international accounting, College English level four, Pingnan household registration, female, aged 25 or under. After the case was exposed, the personnel bureau of Ningde canceled the hiring plan and the qualifications of those already hired.

The Vocabulary of Connections

关系户 A relationship household. A unit or person that gains benefits or convenience through special connections.

一人得道，鸡犬升天 When one man attains the Way, even his chickens and dogs rise to heaven. When one person gains power, everyone connected with him rises too. Said with irony. The image comes from the Han dynasty Lunheng, which tells of a king whose whole household rose to heaven with him, so that dogs barked in the sky and chickens crowed in the clouds.

Sons of Office

Under the Han dynasty, an official of the rank of two thousand dan who had served for three years could recommend one son or younger brother for appointment as a court gentleman. The practice was called renzi (任子), “appointing a son.” It is also known as menyin (门荫), “the shade of the gate.”

Chinese Wikipedia describes it as “a privilege system” that gave rank to the sons, grandsons, younger brothers or nephews of high officials, according to the official’s own rank. The rank was lower than the father’s. Sometimes it was only a title, or simply the right to enter service.

Two Centenaries

On September 12, 1997, Jiang Zemin’s report to the 15th Party Congress set goals for two dates. By the hundredth year of the Party, the economy would be more developed. By the middle of the century, the hundredth year of the People’s Republic, China would basically achieve modernization.

Chinese Wikipedia traces the Two Centenary Goals (两个一百年) to this report. On July 1, 2021, Xi Jinping declared: “We have achieved the first centenary goal.”

The Fifteenth Five-Year Plan

On March 12, 2026, the National People’s Congress approved the outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan. The Party’s proposals for the plan had been adopted at the Fourth Plenum in October 2025. People’s Daily wrote that carrying out the plan would lay “a more solid foundation for basically realizing socialist modernization by 2035.”

The same article described one line running through all the plans: “From the First Five-Year Plan to the 14th Five-Year Plan, the consistent theme has been to build our country into a modern socialist country.”

Fifty Years Unchanged

Article 5 of the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region: “The socialist system and policies shall not be practiced in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and the previous capitalist system and way of life shall remain unchanged for fifty years.” (五十年不变)