Benevolent Ideal Archives - understand-culture

The People Come First

Mencius said: “The people are the most precious. The altars of the land and grain come next. The ruler counts least.” (民为贵，社稷次之，君为轻) Whoever wins the common people, he continued, becomes the Son of Heaven.

The founder of the Ming dynasty, the Hongwu Emperor, disliked the book’s low view of the ruler. He ordered passages like this one cut. The shortened book, the Mencius Abridged, was issued across the country, and the civil service examinations had to follow it. It did not stay in use for long, and the court later returned to the full text.

Like the Pole Star

In the Analects, Confucius says: “One who governs by virtue is like the pole star. It stays in its place, and all the stars turn toward it.” (为政以德，譬如北辰，居其所而众星共之) When Ji Kangzi asked him about government, he answered: “If you lead by being upright, who would dare not to be upright?”

Ji Kangzi also asked whether he should kill those without principles to help those with them. Confucius replied: “In governing, why would you kill? If you want the good, the people will be good. The virtue of the gentleman is like the wind, and the virtue of the small man like grass. When the wind blows over the grass, the grass bends.”

Water Carries the Boat

In the chapter on royal government, the Xunzi quotes a traditional saying: “The ruler is the boat. The common people are the water. Water carries the boat, and water overturns the boat.” The same passage gives the lesson: “A ruler who wants security can do nothing better than govern fairly and love the people.”

In the Tang dynasty, the minister Wei Zheng quoted the saying to Emperor Taizong as an old proverb: “The ruler is the boat, and the people are the water. Water can carry the boat, and it can also overturn it.”

Parent Officials

父母官 Parent official. The Handian dictionary defines it as the old name for the magistrate of a prefecture or county, who could also be called simply “parent.” The Water Margin uses it in the line “in case the parent official asks later.”

The idea goes back to the phrase “parents of the people” in the early classics. Under the Han, people called the official Shao Xinchen “Father Shao” and the official Du Shi “Mother Du.” A saying went: “First there was Father Shao, later Mother Du.”

Liu Bei Takes the People Across the River

In chapter 41 of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Liu Bei flees from Cao Cao with more than a hundred thousand soldiers and civilians. They cover little more than ten li a day. His generals urge him to leave the people behind. Liu Bei weeps: “Whoever undertakes great things must take people as the root. Now the people have come to me. How could I abandon them?” (举大事者必以人为本。今人归我，奈何弃之？)

Soon after, Zhao Yun carries Liu Bei’s infant son out of the battle. When he hands the child over, Liu Bei throws him to the ground. A common saying gives the scene its usual reading: he did it to buy people’s hearts.

Paternalistic Leadership

In 2000, the organizational psychologists Farh Jiing-Lih and Cheng Bor-Shiuan published an analysis of paternalistic leadership in Chinese organizations in the Taiwan journal Indigenous Psychological Research. Their model has three parts: authoritarian leadership, benevolent leadership and moral leadership.

A 2021 review in Advances in Psychological Science, published by the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, sums up the style as one that combines “absolute authority, elder’s care, and moral role model.”

Justice Bao

Qingtian, blue sky, is also a word for an upright official. The Handian dictionary gives the example: “The common people call Lord Bao ‘Bao the Blue Sky.'” Bao Zheng was a Song official who became the judge in many folk stories.

The Taiwan television series Justice Bao began in February 1993. It was planned for 15 episodes, but its ratings kept it on air for 236. Its theme song in Hong Kong was titled “May the World Have a Blue Sky.” The series was also popular in mainland China, where several provincial channels broadcast it in 2010.

Two Servants of the People

In 1959, the sanitation worker Shi Chuanxiang attended the national “heroes’ conference” in Beijing as a national advanced producer. He was elected to its presidium. Head of State Liu Shaoqi once took his hand and said: “As a cleaner, you are a servant of the people. As chairman, I am also a servant of the people.”

First to Worry, Last to Enjoy

In 1046, the statesman Fan Zhongyan wrote The Yueyang Tower (岳阳楼记). Near its end, it describes the ideal of the virtuous men of old: to be “the first to worry about the worries of the world, and the last to enjoy its pleasures” (先天下之忧而忧，后天下之乐而乐).

According to a 2019 report, the essay is a must for school exams, and visitors who could recite it in full were admitted to the tower for free.

Jiao Yulu

As a Party secretary of Lankao County in Henan, Jiao Yulu worked to fight the county’s floods, sandstorms and salt-alkali soil, and died of liver cancer on May 14, 1964, still in office.

The Party named him “a model for county Party secretaries.” In 1990, People’s Daily published an editorial titled “Leading cadres must learn from Jiao Yulu.” In March 2014, Xi Jinping visited his memorial in Lankao.