In the chapter on weak points and strong points in The Art of War, Sunzi compares an army to water. “Water shapes its flow according to the ground. An army shapes its victory according to the enemy.” (水因地而制流，兵因敵而制勝)
He goes on: “So an army has no constant formation, and water has no constant shape. One who can win by changing with the enemy is called divine.” (故兵無常勢，水無常形。能因敵變化而取勝者，謂之神。)
China’s Legislation Law uses the word biantong as a legal term. Under Article 85, as amended in 2023, the autonomy regulations and separate regulations of ethnic autonomous areas may make biantong guiding, adapted provisions, to laws and administrative regulations, “according to the characteristics of the local ethnic groups.”
The adaptation has limits. It may not violate the basic principles of the law. It may not adapt the Constitution, the Law on Regional Ethnic Autonomy, or provisions made specifically for ethnic autonomous areas.
On February 3, 2020, at a State Council Information Office briefing on the coronavirus, Gan Lin, deputy head of the State Administration for Market Regulation, said that her agency had told its whole system to te shi te ban, “handle special matters specially.” Firms that met the conditions were to get business licenses and production permits in the shortest possible time, so that they could start production at once.
In 2022, the magazine Banyuetan wrote that this kind of handling, “with efficiency first and flexible methods,” had always been an important tool of grassroots governance. Its headline named the difficulty: matters must be handled specially, and also according to law and regulation.
A private firm in China that registered as a collective or state enterprise was said to wear a hong maozi, a “red hat.” In a common form, the owner attached the firm to some unit or enterprise, took out a collective business license and paid a management fee. That unit did not touch the money or the running of the business.
In 2005, Dai Yuanchen wrote in the journal Southern Economy that the red hat was a countermeasure “forced by discrimination by ownership.” With it, a firm had political protection, found it easier to get things done and could enjoy certain advantages.
In 2000, the internet portal Sina listed its shares in the United States. Its control over the business in China rested on contracts, not on ownership. Chinese lawyers call such a structure xieyi kongzhi, “control by agreement,” or the “Sina model.” The other name, VIE, for variable interest entity, comes from American accounting rules.
The law firm Zhonglun explains why it spread. China restricted or banned foreign investment in fields such as the internet, the news media and education. The American SEC and the Hong Kong exchange accepted the structure, so it became an important route for Chinese companies to list abroad.
In a 2009 speech titled “Openness, Compromise and Gray,” Huawei’s founder Ren Zhengfei said: “This harmonious process is called compromise, and its harmonious result is called gray.” Direction and principle cannot be compromised, he said. “But everything on the way to the goal can be compromised, as long as it helps reach the goal.” He added: “Tolerance is a kind of strength, not weakness.”
上有政策，下有对策: “There are policies above, and countermeasures below.”
Xi Jinping has drawn a line against it. Leading officials, and above all the “number ones” of Party and government, he said, must “never be allowed to practice ‘policies above, countermeasures below,’ and still less selective implementation.” People’s Daily quoted the sentence in June 2026.
In a study titled “The Phenomenon of Collusion Among Grassroots Governments,” the sociologist Zhou Xueguang describes how local governments deal with the policies and inspections of their superiors. They use all kinds of means of “policies above, countermeasures below.” Collusion among grassroots governments, he writes, has become “an institutionalized form of informal behavior.”
Zhou also notes that some of these practices have been “an important source of institutional innovation.”
走过场 To cross the stage. In Chinese opera, a role that enters and leaves at once. Figuratively, to do something only for the form.
钻空子 To drill into the gap. To use a loophole or an opening.
打擦边球 To hit an edge ball, as in table tennis. To bend the rules. In 2025, the Party’s website quoted Xi Jinping: “Many leading officials start by hitting edge balls, breaking the Eight-point Regulation, and in the end it becomes a big problem.”
土政策 A homemade policy. Rules and decisions that a locality, office or enterprise makes on its own.
变通 To adapt. To act according to the actual situation, not bound by convention. The word is old. The Book of Changes says: “Nothing changes and gets through more than the four seasons.”
通融 To make an exception for someone. To stretch the rules as a favor.
合情合理 To accord with feeling and with reason. The everyday word for “reasonable.”