The following is from a separate issue of the September issue of WiLL, the monthly magazine.
China is the world's largest racist nation.
Arthur H. Smith talks about it.
Now and in the past... there is no word for "liar" in China.
China is planning to shift the blame for the Wuhan virus. Their behavior, which would generally be considered "brazen and unashamed," has always been "perfectly normal" in China. From the book by Arthur H. Smith, an American missionary who analyzed the Chinese in the late nineteenth century, some Chinese characteristics have not changed over the years. (Published in the June 2020 issue of WiLL)
The social organization of the "clan.
When we look at it this way, we can see that Smith's observations of the behavioral principles of Chinese people are very accurate and have not changed at all even today.
However, it is essential to note that Smith only observed and pointed out Chinese society from the outside (the eyes of Western civilization).
Of course, Smith does not understand the inner workings of Chinese society.
If we look at Chinese society from the inside, another aspect of Chinese society emerges.
Since ancient times, China has valued the social organization of a "clan" above all else.
The family, my father, was born into belongs to one of the Shi clan.
The Shi family's ancestors came to Sichuan from a place 300 years ago, and they established a family and prospered their descendants.
In my grandfather's generation, hundreds of Shi families lived in several villages in the same province.
In some cases, the larger clans would have thousands of houses.
They would then build a sūmyo (shrine) to worship their clan's ancestors as a base for ancestor worship.
At the same time, it becomes a place where the entire clan gathers and raises a sense of solidarity.
The most popular person in the clan becomes the chief of the group and leads the family.
The larger the clan, the higher the financial resources are generated and used to pay for the clan's children's education.
When there was no compulsory education, there was no school system, so the clan took care of the children's education.
They would invite a teacher to teach the children letters and open a cram school to give them a primary education.
Sometimes the family would also take in orphans whose parents had died early and take care of them.
Sometimes we had to go to court.
If a person in the clan committed a crime and was caught, he was brought to the shrine, and a decision was made.
Within the sect, Chinese people trust each other, help each other, think of each other, and build solidarity.
So they cannot lie to each other.
They live within the clan from birth to death, so once they lie, they are not trusted by everyone, and their place is taken away from them.
Sometimes there are disputes and conflicts within the clan, but the clan chief acts as a mediator and proceeds peacefully.
In other words, the five principles of benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom, and faith are alive and well within the clan.
However, as soon as they leave the clan, it suddenly turns into a world of wolves.
Political power, social systems, the public - they don't trust these things at all.
They think it's okay to lie and sin.
No, more to the point, if a person commits a sin outside the clan, the entire family will do everything to protect that person.
As a result, the public spirit is not fostered.
The "public" is within the clan, and there is no other place for it.
Corruption is the norm in the Chinese bureaucracy.
Why? To become a bureaucrat, one has to pass the Imperial Examination. The whole clan trains its members to pass the Imperial Examination.
Therefore, if anyone passes the exam and becomes a bureaucrat, he or she is obligated to make the clan prosper.
But the bureaucrat's salary is not enough to make the whole clan prosper.
Therefore, there is no other way but to take a bribe to enrich their own pockets.
From the clan's point of view, taking bribes makes the family prosperous, so hooray!
The clan does not welcome innocent bureaucrats.
There is no benefit to them, so they have no choice but to get rid of them (laughs).
Smith could not see through to the reality of these Chinese people.
However, it can't be helped.
He could never have imagined that Chinese people were living in such a small world.
To be continued