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.
Becoming One of Us
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.”
Differential Leadership
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.
Gift Ledgers
In 1996, the scholar Shang Huipeng described wedding gifts in eastern Henan in the journal Sociological Studies. “Every family holding a wedding also has a detailed account book. It records the names of the givers and the kind and amount of the gifts, so that they can be repaid later.” The ledger, he wrote, “ensures that this savings will not be forgotten.”
Writing about gifts in Dream of the Red Chamber, the scholar Deng Yunxiang described a similar record, the lizhang (礼账). One of its purposes was “for checking when returning gifts. How much the other side sent, and how much to send when the other side has an occasion.”
Leave It to Me
At the 1995 CCTV Spring Festival Gala, Guo Donglin performed the sketch Youshi nin shuohua (有事您说话), “If Anything Comes Up, Just Say the Word.” His character brags to his leaders and friends that he can get sleeper tickets for the train, and people come to him for help.
In fact he gets the tickets by standing in line. When the tickets run out, he pays a high price for two scalped tickets to keep up the story.
Obey Orders in All Actions
The first of the Three Main Rules of Discipline reads yiqie xingdong ting zhihui (一切行动听指挥): “Obey orders in all actions.” The rules took shape in the Red Army in 1928. On October 10, 1947, the General Headquarters of the People’s Liberation Army reissued them, together with the Eight Points for Attention.
In the autumn of 1935, two officers of the political department of the Red 15th Army Corps set the rules to music. The song spread through the whole army and became one of the most popular revolutionary songs.
The Maker’s Name
物勒工名，以考其诚: “Engrave the maker’s name on the object, to examine his sincerity.” The line appears in the Lüshi Chunqiu and, in a slightly different form, in the Book of Rites. It goes on: “If the work is not right, his crime must be punished, to get to the bottom of it.”
Qin law had a related rule. A statute on the bamboo slips found at Shuihudi orders that state armor and weapons be engraved with the name of the office responsible for them. Another fines the official in charge one shield when state vessels are not engraved.
Waiting for Notice From Above
In October 2025, a commentary on the People’s Forum website described two phrases that had become common in some places and offices facing a public controversy: “wait for notice from above” and “follow the leader’s arrangements.” Even matters clearly within an office’s own authority, it said, “must wait for a superior to speak.”
The commentary quoted Xinhua, which called this way of handling public opinion “looking only upward and not at the facts.”
The Squad Leader
On March 13, 1949, Mao Zedong set out the working methods of Party committees. The first heading reads: “The Party committee secretary must be good at being a ‘squad leader.'” A committee of ten or twenty people, Mao wrote, “is like a squad in the army, and the secretary is like the ‘squad leader.'”
The same text sets a limit to the image. “Of course, the relation between the secretary and the members is that the minority obeys the majority. This is different from the relation between a squad leader and his soldiers.”
Requests and Reports
The Communist Party’s Regulations on Requesting Instructions and Reporting on Major Matters took effect on January 31, 2019. They define two ways of speaking to a higher level. A qingshi (请示), a request for instructions, is when “a lower Party organization asks a higher Party organization, or a Party member or leading cadre asks the Party organization, for instructions or approval on a major matter.”
A baogao (报告), a report, is when the lower level submits “important matters and important situations” to the higher one. Both definitions run in one direction, from below to above.