Hidden Rules
by Wu Si
“Subtle rules” is a word I made up. I also thought of some other words, such as gray rules, internal regulations, informal system, etc., but I always feel that it is not as appropriate as “subtle rules”. This word was not invented out of thin air, it came from a life experience of mine.
In 1983, I was an editor and reporter at China Peasant News (now called Peasant Daily), and I often read letters from the public. One letter said that the leaders of the agricultural production material department in Kaifeng, Henan Province, had granted a large number of strips to their own personal connections for the supply of fertilizer at affordable prices, which was allocated by the state according to the plan. Their “relations” and will be the price of fertilizer resold at a high price, between the hands, the relationship gave birth to a huge profit. In fact, this is later people are used to the use of the dual-track profit problem, of course, against the formal provisions of the state, just can not prohibit. I had just graduated from college less than a year ago, and when I saw such bad things, I immediately got excited like Don Quixote seeing a windmill, weaving a lot of ugly transactions in my imagination, and making up my own heroic story of tracing the roots, fighting evil, and weeding out violence. I impatiently invited two colleagues to go down to investigate.
What surprised me was that the strips of similar stolen goods that I thought should be hidden away were actually well preserved, just like the official files in the government offices, and the insiders didn’t seem to be worried about being seen — you want to see it? Please, there is a large pile of it. And, which layer can be granted how much “fat”, each layer of who has the power to approve how many strips, outside the circle of which leader’s strips effective, which leader’s strips do not work, all this is a rule. These apparently do not meet the explicit provisions of the matter, the insiders are comfortable with it, as a matter of course. Near the end of the interview, I realized that, in Chinese society, there is an unwritten and widely recognized rule, something that can be called an internal constitution, behind all the explicit rules, in addition to the formally defined systems. It is precisely this kind of thing, rather than the crowning formal regulations, that governs the operation of real life.
The phrase “it is precisely …… and not ……” may be radical, but there is at least a partial basis in fact for saying so. In the official government regulations, what is supplied to farmers is almost always affordable fertilizer, which is pegged to the cotton and wheat that farmers deliver at affordable prices, hence the name pegged fertilizer. And our interview team investigated for almost a month and surprisingly did not see a single ordinary farmer who admitted to buying affordable fertilizer. Every level of resource control from the central to the local level will write a note to cut a piece out of the affordable fertilizer for their own whatever. This is like a pipe with serious leakage, before it reaches the people’s kitchen, the water in the pipe is trapped clean, the kitchen faucet can’t twist a drop. So, what is it that nourishes this society? Is it the official pipeline or pushing the water truck hawking water vendors? Isn’t that clear?
Later, we reported this tracking out, and the impact was not small, the Ministry of Commerce and the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection also issued a special notice to reiterate the formal system. A few months later, the Ministry of Commerce and the CCDI sent a joint investigation team to Kaifeng to investigate and deal with the matter. When I followed as a member of the team, I was again surprised to find that the strips were still being granted, no different from before our report. This means that the local government and the higher-ups in the agricultural production material supply department did not take the phenomenon we reported as a problem. They obviously knew about it and didn’t bother — it turns out that they didn’t bother because they didn’t know. The leaders in the official theory are obviously not supposed to be like this, which is another subterfuge.
Long story short. I have followed this matter for several years and have come to understand that this is not a question of moral good or evil as I first thought, but rather I am dealing with the ordinary or normal behavior of most people in a pattern of interests, based on a realistic calculation that we can all understand to avoid harm. Not to touch this pattern, the report or investigation and even dismissal and punishment, to put it nicely, is only to raise the soup to stop the boil, in my personal experience, because the soup spoon is too small and too little, even stop the boil can not do. Later, the real solution to the problem was the increased supply of fertilizer, the government withdrew, the market was liberalized, and now the supply and demand of fertilizer fluctuates, often in excess, and the market rules of supply and demand have replaced the official unspoken rules.
This concludes the evolution of fertilizer distribution rules and my awareness process. But I have a vague feeling that the subterfuge rules have a long history in China and there must be many interesting discoveries to be made in pursuing them.
Five years ago, when I left the government and was able to spend my time more freely, I picked up the idea again and soon began to read Ming history. When I was in college, I read “The Records of the Grand Historian”, which was like reading a novel, and skipped over the “tables” and “zhi” that had no story. After I became a journalist, I read the Book of Han and the Book of Later Han, but I was completely overwhelmed by the names of people and events, and I felt drowsy. I also read “Zizhi Tongjian” in a hurry, and when I got to the Later Han, I was in pain and stopped halfway. Surprisingly, the heart of a “subterfuge” idea, and then read the history actually enjoyable, full of chaos suddenly clear eyebrows, I also a hair and uncontrollable. So I advocated with friends to read the history of the experience, and was urged by friends to write down these articles, with the writing of the hair, and gradually have a small book length. I understand that the world is different in the eyes of different animals, and the world seen through different glasses is also different. These articles depict the Chinese officialdom and its traditions as I see them with the glasses of subtle rules.
These essays are largely about the “elimination of the Qing officials,” explaining why the Qing officials are so difficult to achieve as they publicly claim, and why they often suffer the fate of being eliminated, so that the Qing emperor has become part of our national dream. The “elimination of the Qing official” is only one of the unspoken rules of officialdom that I can arrange, which is supported by many smaller unspoken rules at the lower level. The “elimination of the official” up and down there are many small and large subterfuge, that is what I will continue to write about later. In retrospect, the existing ten essays can be organized as follows.
The relationship between the officials and the people: “The body has a sharp weapon”, “the people are a big head of injustice”, “the second fairness”.
The relationship between officials and their superiors, including the emperor: “Reasons for being a corrupt official”, “Bad governance is a sieve”, “The emperor is also an ingrate”.
Speaking about the relationship within the officialdom: “Settlement of violators”, “Seniority is also a good thing”.
Mixing several relationships together: “The Law of the Fall of New Officials”, “Yan’s Transformation”.
Summing up: “Chongzhen Death Bend”.
The table of contents is arranged according to this structure, but the two mixed talks are mentioned in the front.
The book is also accompanied by several articles outside the subtle rules. Subtle rules in the Ming Dynasty is a near-synonym for “ugly rules”, write more of this kind of thing, people also tend to look “ugly”, full of head calculations of profit and loss, calculations are also old accounts, all do not know what day and night, and do not know what the spirit and ideals are. I don’t want to leave the reader with this impression, I hope the book and the author’s look fuller, so I added a few miscellaneous articles, which also talk about Lei Feng and personality ideals. The article on the ideal of personality was written earlier, and if I start writing now, I think I can still be more intelligent by Mr. Feng Youlan’s standard of “extremely high and moderate”, and the two articles on creation and superstition can provide some supporting evidence.