Relationships Archives - Page 3 of 8

If Rich, Do Not Forget

As a young man, Chen She worked in the fields as a hired laborer. One day he stopped work on a ridge and said to his fellows: “If one of us becomes rich and noble, let us not forget each other.” (苟富贵，无相忘) One of them laughed. Later he rose against the Qin and became a king, ruling at Chen.

An old companion from the fields heard of it and came to the palace gate. Chen She took him in. The visitor talked freely about the king’s old life. Someone told the king: “This guest is foolish and ignorant and talks wildly. He lowers your dignity.” Chen She had him beheaded. “All the king’s old friends left of their own accord, and from then on no one was close to him.” (Records of the Grand Historian)

Friendship Like Water

In the Zhuangzi, Confucius asks why, in his years of trouble, his friends have drifted away and his disciples have scattered. He is told that those joined by profit abandon each other in hardship, while those joined by nature take each other in.

“The friendship of a gentleman is plain as water. The friendship of a petty man is sweet as sweet wine. The gentleman is plain and so stays close. The petty man is sweet and so breaks off.” (君子之交淡若水，小人之交甘若醴)

“Those who come together without a reason,” the passage says, “part without a reason.”

Close to the Official

Since February 28, 2009, China’s Criminal Law has punished a particular way of getting things done. Under Article 388-1, a close relative of an official, or “another person with a close relationship” to the official, commits a crime by using the official’s position to obtain an improper benefit for someone who asked for help, and taking money or property in return.

The same rule covers former officials and their relatives and close associates.

Note Students

In August 2014, the head of the education bureau of Changsha announced a new rule. From that year, no school in the city would accept a tiaozi, a note, from any unit, and no school would set up “airdrop classes.” Tiaozisheng, “note students,” and airdrop classes, the bureau said, “are products of unfairness in education.”

The Vocabulary of the Back Door

走后门 To go through the back door. The Handian dictionary defines it as getting things done “through improper personal relationships or channels.”

托人情 To ask someone to put in a word on one’s behalf.

说情 To plead for another person, to ask for leniency or help on someone’s behalf. In the Qing novel The Scholars, frightened people beg a local gentleman for his card so that he will plead with the magistrate for them.

Mixed With the Back Door

The campaign to criticize Lin Biao and Confucius ran from early 1974 to about June of that year. In a written comment on a speech by Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong wrote: “Now metaphysics is rampant, one-sidedness. Criticizing Lin and Confucius is mixed with going through the back door, and this may dilute the criticism of Lin and Confucius.”

Finding Connections

In 2016, the think tank of the magazine People’s Forum published a survey of public tolerance in China. It asked how people respond to several kinds of conflict. Most respondents chose to smooth things over or to talk. Faced with “judicial injustice or rough law enforcement,” 26.4 percent said they would “find connections to smooth things over.”

An Informal Meeting in Wuhan

On April 27 and 28, 2018, Xi Jinping and the Indian prime minister Narendra Modi held what China’s Foreign Ministry called an “informal meeting” (非正式会晤) in Wuhan. The ministry said that the meeting would deepen mutual trust and set the general direction for relations between the two countries.

According to a report on Sina, the meeting had no set agenda. No agreements were signed and no joint document was issued. The two leaders walked beside East Lake and then took a boat ride. The report described the format in three short phrases: 散散步，喝喝茶，聊聊天, “take a walk, drink some tea, have a chat.”

Emotional Investment

In 2016, China’s Supreme People’s Court and Supreme People’s Procuratorate issued an interpretation of the law on bribery. It covers an official who accepts property worth 30,000 yuan or more from a subordinate or from someone under the official’s administration. If the gift “may affect the exercise of official power,” it is treated as a promise to seek a benefit for the giver.

The rule applies even when the giver has never asked for anything. A law professor writing in The Paper named what it targets: the so-called 感情投资, “emotional investment.”

Business at the Wine Table

“Once, ‘a good deal must be done at the wine table.’ For many officials in charge of attracting investment, this had become a fixed way of thinking.” The business paper National Business Daily wrote this in June 2017.

In June 2016, the website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection reported a campaign in Anhui against jiuzhuo bangong (酒桌办公), “doing office work at the wine table.” It targeted officials who used the wine table “to ask for funds, to chase projects, to compete for places in evaluations or to seek improper benefits.”