Shengyi bu cheng renyi zai (生意不成仁义在) If the business does not happen, benevolence and righteousness remain. The Handian dictionary explains it this way. Although the sale was not made, the two sides still keep their good feeling. A variant begins with maimai, buying and selling.
Danone and Wahaha
On May 9, 2007, the French food group Danone filed eight arbitration claims against its Chinese partner Wahaha at the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce. On September 30, 2009, the two sides announced a settlement. Danone sold its 51 percent stake in their joint ventures for 3 billion yuan and left Wahaha.
Wahaha’s founder Zong Qinghou later said that the company had not understood what trademarks and brands meant, so that its growth “fell into a trap carefully laid by Danone.”
Die Wronged Rather Than Sue
饿死不讨米，屈死不告状 Starve to death rather than beg for rice. Die wronged rather than file a lawsuit.
衙门口，朝南开，有理没钱莫进来 The yamen gate faces south. With reason but no money, do not come in.
A columnist cited both old sayings in 2024 to explain a long fear of the cost and the unfairness of going to court.
Petty Men First
In chapter 84 of Journey to the West, the widow Zhao, who has run an inn for many years, welcomes the pilgrims. “My inn treats guests in three ways,” she says. “Now let us be petty men first and gentlemen afterward. Let us settle the price of the room first, so the bill is easy later.”
The saying 先小人后君子, first the petty man, then the gentleman, means to set out the terms plainly before treating each other with courtesy. The writer Wang Meng explained it as signing a contract first, fixing the division of profit and responsibility, “and then talking of cooperation and team spirit.”
Courts That Mediate First
On June 7, 2010, the Supreme People’s Court issued an opinion on the working principle 调解优先、调判结合, “mediation first, combining mediation and judgment.”
China’s Civil Code sets the same order for divorce. Article 1079 says: “When a people’s court hears a divorce case, it shall carry out mediation.” If the marriage has truly broken down and mediation fails, the court shall grant the divorce.
Trust Without Contracts
In Rural China (乡土中国), the sociologist Fei Xiaotong describes rural society as a society of people who know one another. There, he writes, “trust does not rest on respect for contracts.” It comes from “the reliability of knowing the rules of conduct so well that one acts without thinking.”
Acquaintances, he notes, say: “We are all acquaintances. A greeting is enough, why say more?” In modern society people fear that “the spoken word is no proof,” so “they make a mark and sign their names. Only then does law begin.”
The Wenzhou Lending Crisis
In the first half of 2011, according to the Wenzhou branch of the central bank, the city’s informal lending market had reached 110 billion yuan. Nearly nine in ten families or individuals and nearly six in ten companies took part.
In 2011 the chain broke. Zhou Dewen, head of a Wenzhou association of small and medium firms, said that in August and September alone, more than 100 bosses fled. A commentary in October 2011 called it “a defeat of the business model of the acquaintance society.”
Change of Circumstances
Article 533 of China’s Civil Code covers a contract whose basic conditions change in a major way that the parties could not foresee and that is not a commercial risk. If continued performance would be clearly unfair to one party, “the party adversely affected may renegotiate with the other party.” Only if they fail to agree within a reasonable time may either party ask a court or an arbitration body to change or end the contract.
In one reported case, a court refused a request for higher rent based on rising prices.
Asking for More
In Ming and Qing land sales, a seller could come back after the sale and ask the buyer for more money. The custom was called 找价, “seeking the price,” or 加找. A seller could claim that “the price was not enough.” The historian Cao Shuji found that after the Qianlong era, 加找 became a standard contract form.
A 2012 study in the law journal The Jurist cites the finding that repeated 找价, even after a deed of final sale, was “a very common custom.” Qing law later limited it. Where a deed of final sale did not mention extra payments, none were allowed.
Feeling, Reason and Law
In January 2019, a judge reviewed the book 情理法与中国人 (Feeling, Reason, Law and the Chinese) in a piece published by the Supreme People’s Court. She summed up the book’s view: “In the eyes of the Chinese, to accord with feeling comes first, to accord with reason second, and to accord with law third.”
She also defended the saying 法不容情, “the law makes no room for feeling.” It means, she wrote, that a judge must not bring private feeling into a case.