In chapter 3 of Dream of the Red Chamber, the young Lin Daiyu arrives at the Jia mansion in the capital. She has often heard her mother say that this house is not like other families. “So she took care at every step and paid attention at every moment. She would not say one word more or take one step more than she had to, for fear of being laughed at.” (步步留心，时时在意，不肯轻易多说一句话，多行一步路，惟恐被人耻笑了他去)
The house is the home of her own grandmother.
After Zhuge Liang laid out his plan for the realm, Liu Bei “grew closer to him day by day.” The Records of the Three Kingdoms continues: “Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and the others were displeased.” Liu Bei explained: “For me to have Kongming is like a fish having water. I ask you gentlemen not to speak of it again.” (孤之有孔明，犹鱼之有水也。愿诸君勿复言。) Guan Yu and Zhang Fei stopped.
In 1999, Yang Yiyan published a case study of how trust is built, titled Zijiren (自己人), “One of Us,” in the journal Sociological Studies (社会学研究). Yang argued that Chinese people include others within the boundary of their own self, the family, and that this forms a boundary of trust.
Yang wrote that the boundary can move. “Through interaction, an outsider can be accepted as one of us.” Turning an outsider into one of us generally means a process “from strangeness or surface contact to intimacy, trust and a sense of obligation, or deep interaction.”
The Taiwanese scholar Cheng Bor-Shiuan was among the first to apply Fei Xiaotong’s differential mode of association to Chinese organizations. He proposed the concept of chaxu shi lingdao (差序式领导), differential leadership. In a study published in 1995, he named a typical sign of favoritism among Chinese leaders. They are “generous and understanding toward insiders, strict and demanding toward outsiders.”
A 2018 review in the journal Foreign Economics and Management sums up the concept. Such a leader divides subordinates into “insiders” and “outsiders” by how close the relationship is, how loyal they are and how capable they are.
In 2000, the researchers Chow, Deng and Ho published a survey of 142 managers on how openly knowledge is shared inside organizations. They reported in the Journal of Management Accounting Research that managers in China “shared knowledge significantly less with a potential recipient who was not a member of their ingroup.”
逢人且说三分话，未可全抛一片心 When meeting people, say only three tenths of what is on the mind. Do not throw out the whole heart. (Words to Broaden Wisdom, a collection of old sayings)
酒逢知己千杯少，话不投机半句多 With a close friend, a thousand cups of wine are too few. When the talk does not suit, half a sentence is too many.
In January 2013, the Institute of Sociology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences released its Blue Book of Social Mentality. Its survey of city residents found that fewer than half believed that most people in society can be trusted. Only 20 to 30 percent trusted strangers. More than 70 percent said they did not dare to trust strangers.
In 1947, the sociologist Fei Xiaotong published a series of essays on rural society, collected in 1948 as Rural China (乡土中国). In them he named the pattern of Chinese social relations chaxu geju (差序格局), the differential mode of association.
“Our pattern,” he wrote, is like “the ripples that spread out in circles when a stone is thrown onto the water. Each person is the center of the circles pushed out by his own social influence.”
自己人 Our own people, those close to us.
胳膊肘往外拐 The elbow bends outward. Said of someone who helps outsiders against their own people.
肥水不流外人田 Rich water does not flow into an outsider’s field. Keep the good things within the family.
In 2018, Chinese media reported on dashuju shashu (大数据杀熟), “big-data killing of the familiar.” Some defined it as internet companies using their customer data to show existing customers higher prices than new customers for the same product or service.
The name expresses the expectation that a familiar customer deserves better treatment.