In October 2025, a commentary on the People’s Forum website described two phrases that had become common in some places and offices facing a public controversy: “wait for notice from above” and “follow the leader’s arrangements.” Even matters clearly within an office’s own authority, it said, “must wait for a superior to speak.”
The commentary quoted Xinhua, which called this way of handling public opinion “looking only upward and not at the facts.”
In 99 BCE, Sima Qian, the Han historian who wrote the Records of the Grand Historian, was arrested on a charge of deceiving the emperor. He was sentenced to castration.
Afterwards, in his Letter to Ren An, he explained why he stayed alive: “That I bear it in silence and cling to life, sunk in filth without refusing it, is because I regret that my private purpose is not fulfilled. I would be ashamed to leave the world with my writing unknown to later ages.”
Yu Hua’s novel Huozhe, To Live, first appeared in 1992 in the literary magazine Shouhuo. In the first version, Fugui watches seven relatives across four generations die one after another, until he is left alone. In 1994, Zhang Yimou’s film of the novel won the Grand Prize of the Jury and the award for Best Actor at the 47th Cannes Film Festival.
In the preface to the Korean edition, Yu Hua wrote: “People live for the sake of living itself, and not for anything beyond living.”
On June 29, 2014, Jack Ma, chairman of the Alibaba Group, spoke at the graduation ceremony of the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University. He shared his motto: “Today is cruel, tomorrow is crueler, and the day after tomorrow is beautiful. But most people ‘die’ tomorrow night.”
韬光养晦 To hide one’s abilities and keep them out of view. The Handian dictionary cites a Qing novel: “You must hide your light, and then watch the timing of heaven.”
In Chinese foreign policy, the phrase is linked to Deng Xiaoping’s guidance around 1990. Sources differ on the exact wording of his formula and on when he first used it. The Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping record a related line: “We must never take the lead. This is a basic state policy.”
China’s Regulations on Petition Work were issued on February 25, 2022, and took effect on May 1, 2022. Under Article 20, a petitioner who comes in person must go to a reception site set up or designated by a body with authority over the matter, at the same level or one level above. Every body must “resolve problems locally and guide petitioners to raise their problems where they are.”
Under Article 19, once a petition has been accepted or is being handled, a higher body will not accept the same petition within the set period.
In chapter 7 of Dream of the Red Chamber, the old servant Jiao Da gets drunk and abuses his masters. When Jia Rong scolds him, Wang Xifeng says Jiao Da should be sent away: “If relatives and friends heard of this, would they not laugh at a family like ours, with no law or rules?”
Jiao Da goes on shouting that the family’s descendants do shameful things in secret. “What don’t I know?” he cries. “With us, ‘a broken arm is hidden in the sleeve!'” The terrified servants tie him up and stuff his mouth with earth and horse dung. Wang Xifeng and Jia Rong hear it from a distance and pretend they have not heard.
Mencius compared humaneness to archery: “The archer corrects himself and then shoots. If he misses, he does not resent the one who beat him. He simply seeks the cause in himself.” In another chapter he says: “Whenever an action does not succeed, seek the cause in oneself.”
The phrase 反求诸己 lives on as an idiom. The Handian dictionary defines it as “to turn back and make demands of oneself, to look for the cause in oneself.”
Fupan (复盘), “replaying the board,” comes from weiqi. After a game, both players replay it to fix it in memory and to find the gaps in each side’s attack and defense. In 2001, Lenovo’s founder Liu Chuanzhi was the first to apply fupan to business management. He often says: “One of the secrets of my life is to replay often.”
Lenovo later designed a report template for replaying a business or a project.
On July 23, 2011, the high-speed train D301 ran into the back of the train D3115 on a bridge near Wenzhou. The Railway Ministry later said that 40 people died. On the evening of July 24, the ministry’s spokesman Wang Yongping explained why the front of a train had been buried at the site. It was to make the rescue easier, he said, and added: “Whether you believe it or not, I believe it anyway.”
On December 28, 2011, the investigation report approved by the State Council was published. It named serious design defects in the train control equipment, lax review before the equipment was used, and a poor emergency response after lightning caused a fault. Fifty-four people were held responsible, among them the former Minister of Railways, Liu Zhijun.