August 9, 2020. Seki Hei argues that China’s traditional lineage system survives in modern “quanxi,” or insider circles linking officials, businesspeople, and other powerful figures. Drawing on Arthur H. Smith’s observations of China, he connects these networks to the distinction between insiders and outsiders, the Chinese Communist Party, and China’s international behavior, and argues that Japan should understand China carefully while keeping a prudent distance.

August 9, 2020
It is based on an essay by Seki Hei published in the June 2020 issue of the monthly magazine WiLL.
In the previous section, Seki Hei examined the traditional Chinese lineage system, or zongzu, arguing that strong trust, mutual assistance, and solidarity operated within the lineage, while the same ethical obligations did not necessarily extend to the wider public sphere.
In this section, he turns to what he regards as a modern successor to the lineage: the “quanxi,” or circle.
He argues that the distinction between insiders and outsiders within these networks helps explain not only social relationships inside China but also China’s conduct toward the international community.
【Respect It, but Keep Your Distance】
According to Seki Hei, the traditional lineage organization has largely disappeared from urban China, except in some rural areas, but its underlying logic survives in a different form.
That form is called a “quanxi.”
The word means a “circle,” and Seki Hei describes it as a kind of fictive family network.
For example, a local public-security chief, tax chief, judge, and local business owners might form a circle of ten or twenty people in order to protect their mutual interests.
Within such a circle, he argues, a business owner may evade taxes because the tax official deliberately looks the other way.
A public-security official within the same network may likewise protect members from legal consequences for certain offenses.
Those with money, in turn, may regularly provide bribes to officials.
In Seki Hei’s characterization, the circle thus functions almost as an extraterritorial zone governed by its own internal interests.
From this point, he extends his argument to China’s relationship with the international community.
He asks why China can, in his view, behave with such harshness and irresponsibility toward the outside world.
His answer is that foreign countries lie outside the “circle.”
He goes further, arguing that outsiders are not regarded as equals.
For that reason, he says, deception, refusal to acknowledge mistakes, and conduct harmful to outsiders can be rationalized so long as the prosperity of the inner circle is preserved.
China itself, he notes, contains many different circles.
He even describes the Chinese Communist Party as one such circle.
For Seki Hei, this represents a central feature of Chinese social organization.
He argues that lineage groups and their modern equivalents developed historically as means by which ordinary people protected themselves from oppressive or arbitrary rulers.
In his interpretation, these forms of social organization have existed in one form or another for thousands of years and have produced a lasting emotional and ethical divide between insiders and outsiders.
Seki Hei then cites a striking passage from Arthur H. Smith, the American missionary who observed Chinese society in the late nineteenth century:
“The Chinese are more or less a mystery to us, and must probably remain so. … We shall not venture to predict here how this suggestive proposition may relate to the coming conflict between their race and ours—a conflict which seems likely to grow more intense with the passing years. As a general proposition, we believe in the survival of the fittest. Which will prove better fitted to survive the struggles of the twentieth century: the ‘nervous’ European, or the tireless, persistent Chinese who penetrates everywhere?”
Seki Hei comments that this contest has continued into the twenty-first century.
He then turns specifically to Japan.
In his view, Japan risks serious consequences if it moves too close to China.
Writing in 2020 during the COVID-19 crisis, he argued that China, having lost international trust, might seek Japan’s assistance and attempt to build goodwill through such measures as providing masks.
Nevertheless, he warned that Japan should not place easy trust in China.
He urged readers to understand what he regarded as the underlying behavioral principles of Chinese society: friendliness while another party remains useful, followed by coldness once that usefulness has ended.
His conclusion was that Japan must first understand those principles thoroughly and then “respect China, but keep it at a distance.”
(Originally published in the June 2020 issue of WiLL.)
The central issue raised in this essay is therefore the persistence of an insider-oriented social logic that, in Seki Hei’s analysis, developed from traditional lineage groups into modern circles.
Inside the group, solidarity and mutual assistance may be powerful.
Outside it, the same ethical obligations may no longer operate.
If that distinction is significant, relations with the state, public institutions, and the international community must also be examined through the boundary between insiders and outsiders.
Seki Hei’s concluding phrase—“respect it, but keep your distance”—summarizes the posture toward China that he advocates for Japan.