Persuasion Archives - Page 7 of 7

Chu Long Persuades the Empress Dowager

When Qin attacked Zhao, Qi would send troops only if the Empress Dowager of Zhao gave her youngest son, Lord Chang’an, as a hostage. She refused, and the ministers pressed her. She declared: “If anyone speaks again of making Lord Chang’an a hostage, this old woman will spit in his face.”

The old minister Chu Long came in slowly and spoke of his bad feet and of her appetite. He asked for a post in the palace guard for his own youngest son. Later he said: “Parents who love their children plan far ahead for them.” The empress dowager sent her son to Qi, and Qi sent its troops. (Strategies of the Warring States)

Object, Then Carry Out

Under Article 60 of the Civil Servant Law, as revised in 2018, a civil servant who believes a superior’s decision or order is wrong may propose to the superior that it be corrected or withdrawn. If the superior does not change it, or demands immediate action, the civil servant must carry it out. The superior then bears the consequences.

A civil servant who carries out a clearly illegal decision or order is held responsible for it.

From One Province to the Nation

In early 1980, the Anhui Party committee backed the household contracting begun in villages such as Xiaogang. That spring, Wan Li, who had supported it in Anhui, moved to Beijing as vice premier. A fierce debate followed, in Anhui and across China, and some said that contracting land to households was not the socialist road.

From 1982 to 1984, the Central Committee’s “No. 1 Document” confirmed household contracting three years in a row as a socialist form of responsibility. According to official data, almost all production teams had adopted it by 1984. Grain output rose from 609.5 billion jin in 1978 to 814.6 billion jin in 1984.

Yellow Cat, Black Cat

On July 7, 1962, speaking about how to judge household contracting in farming, Deng Xiaoping said: “Comrade Liu Bocheng often quotes a Sichuan saying: ‘Yellow cat or black cat, as long as it catches mice, it is a good cat.’ He said it about fighting. We beat Chiang Kai-shek because we did not follow the old rules and the old roads.”

The saying is popularly remembered as “white cat, black cat.” In 1976, the Party journal Red Flag attacked the “white cat, black cat” theory for erasing the difference between socialism and capitalism.

Practice Is the Sole Criterion

In February 1977, the leading Party papers set out the “two whatevers”: whatever decisions Chairman Mao made would be upheld, and whatever instructions he gave would be followed. Hu Fuming, a philosophy teacher at Nanjing University, wrote an article against this.

On May 11, 1978, Guangming Daily published it, revised by several hands and finally approved by Hu Yaobang, as “Practice Is the Sole Criterion for Testing Truth.” People’s Daily and the Liberation Army Daily followed the next day. A national debate on the criterion of truth began. Hu Fuming said later that the idea was not new: “Every philosophy teacher at every university knew it.”

Strong Ties

In a 1988 survey in Tianjin, the sociologist Bian Yanjie found that jobs were obtained through strong ties more often than through weak ties. Job seekers often reached their helpers through an intermediary to whom both sides had strong ties, and those who used such indirect ties got better jobs. He published the study in 1997 in the American Sociological Review as “Bringing Strong Ties Back In.”

High Notes, Little Action

In December 2017, Xinhua reported a written instruction by Xi Jinping on formalism and bureaucratism. It called for firm measures “in particular against prominent problems such as making many statements in a high key, with little action and poor implementation” (表态多调门高、行动少落实差).

The Good-Person Card

你是个好人 “You are a good person.” Since the 1990s, this has been a common way to turn down a suitor, often followed by “I believe you can find someone better than me.” The phrase spread from online forums in Taiwan.

Internet slang calls it receiving a 好人卡, a “good-person card.” To refuse a suitor gently is 发卡, to hand out a card.

Steps to Come Down

给台阶下 To give someone steps to come down. To offer a way out of an awkward position.

不了了之 To settle a matter by not settling it. To leave it unfinished, let it drag on, and count it as done.

冷处理 Cold treatment. To leave a matter untouched for now and settle it at a better moment.

推托 To decline with an excuse.

婉拒 To refuse gently.

Selling a Favor

人情 Human feeling. Also a favor, or a gift. 做个人情, to do someone a favor.

卖人情 To sell a favor. To do someone a good turn on purpose, so that they feel grateful. A dictionary gives the example: “If you sell him a favor today, he will surely repay you in the future.”

人情世故 Human feeling and the ways of the world. The knowledge of how to deal with people.