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.
吃一堑，长一智 Fall into a ditch once, gain a measure of wisdom. A setback is a lesson. The Handian dictionary traces the saying to a letter by the Ming thinker Wang Yangming: “Each stumble adds to one’s wisdom. Today’s loss may yet become tomorrow’s gain.”
A well-known story tells of a report to the throne from the army of Zeng Guofan. It said: “Your servant’s army fought repeatedly and was repeatedly defeated” (屡战屡北). The words were turned around to read “repeatedly defeated, repeatedly fighting” (屡北屡战). The facts stayed the same, but they now read as persistence.
The story exists in several versions. Tradition credits the change to Zeng’s secretary, Ma Jiading. Other accounts say the report was by another commander, or that Zeng made the change himself. The article that records these versions gives no primary source.
Zengzi said: “Each day I examine myself on three points. In planning for others, have I failed to give my all? With friends, have I failed to keep my word? What was passed on to me, have I failed to practice?” (Analects 1.4)
Commentators read zhong in the first question as giving all of oneself to another person’s task.
A zuiji zhao (罪己诏) was an edict in which a Chinese emperor admitted his own faults and changed his policies. Emperor Wen of Han issued the first formal one. The last came from the Xuantong Emperor of the Qing, after the 1911 revolution broke out.
The scholar Xiao Han counted these edicts in the Twenty-Five Histories. He found 79 emperors who had issued one.
In January 1962, 7,118 leading cadres met in Beijing for the largest central work conference the Party had ever held. Its main subject was the famine caused by the Great Leap Forward. On January 30, Mao Zedong told them: “Whatever mistakes the Center has made, I am directly responsible for them, and indirectly I also have a share.”
Mao and other leaders made self-criticisms at the conference. Afterwards, Mao withdrew for a time to the “second line,” and Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping ran the daily work of the Center.
In August 2017, a Beijing newspaper published a report on poor hygiene in the kitchens of two Beijing restaurants of the hotpot chain Haidilao. A reporter had worked there undercover. On August 25, Haidilao posted an apology letter on Weibo. “After investigation, the company believes that the problems disclosed in the media reports are true,” it said. They “exposed problems in our management.”
A second statement said the incidents came from deeper management problems and that the main responsibility lay with the board. Commentators summed up the response in three lines: “I carry the pot, I correct the mistake, I keep paying the staff.” The wording comes from commentators, not from the company’s statements.
过而不改，是谓过矣 To err and not correct it, that is truly an error. (Confucius, Analects)
吾日三省吾身 Each day I examine myself on three points. (Zengzi, Analects)
人谁无过，过而能改，善莫大焉 Who is without faults? To err and be able to correct it, there is no greater good. (Zuo Zhuan)