Originally published on February 16, 2020.
This article introduces a work by Kō Bun’yū and discusses the deeply rooted “culture of deception” in Chinese society.
Drawing on Confucius, Laozi, The Culture of Deception, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it argues that fraud, schemes, and stratagems form a traditional core of Chinese civilization, and that Japanese habits such as tacit understanding and frank dialogue do not work in China, where they only make Japan an easy target.

February 16, 2020
The idea that “if we speak frankly and openly, we will understand each other” is also a tendency peculiar to the Japanese.
Such thinking does not work in China.
It only makes one “an easy target.”
That is why the Japanese are “deceived, and then deceived again.”
The following is from a work by Kō Bun’yū, one of the world’s foremost scholars deeply familiar with China.
It is a book that not only the Japanese people but people all over the world must read.
The preceding text is omitted.
“Deception” Is a Distinctive Feature of Chinese Culture
The world was so thoroughly filled with social upheaval and disorder that Confucius wrote the Spring and Autumn Annals and, as a theory for reforming a society full of swindlers, proclaimed that “to overcome oneself and return to propriety is benevolence.”
However, Laozi saw that “when the great Way is abandoned, benevolence and righteousness arise; when wisdom appears, great falsehood arises,” and understood that “benevolence and righteousness” were born from the roots of a chaotic age.
He rejected Confucius’s reform of the world and explained the structure of a society in which “only swindlers are real.”
Moreover, he preached “cut off benevolence and abandon righteousness,” in other words, “throw away benevolence and righteousness!”
He advanced a kind of antithetical argument, saying that if these were discarded, deception would disappear and the world would become peaceful.
Because it is a society in which “only swindlers are real,” academic analysis of fraud naturally becomes a hot field of study.
Why is “deception” taken up as an object of cultural research?
For example, The Culture of Deception by Professor Lin Qiquan of Xiamen University, a historian, published by Taiwan Commercial Press, is one of the representative excellent works on the subject.
Professor Lin analyzes the scope, history, content, techniques, significance, and value of deception from the fields of sociology, or the study of human relations and communication.
He takes up not only “deception” as a social phenomenon, but also how to prevent deception by those around us, and even the future of deception.
As Chinese culture, there is not only the Confucian culture of Confucius and Mencius promoted by Confucius Institutes, or the culture of Laozi and Zhuangzi, or the various schools of thought that each established their own doctrines.
Should we not also know and study that, as one of China’s traditional cultures from ancient times, there is a “learning” for understanding the interplay of falsehood and reality?
The Japanese are not only capable of tacit understanding, but also place great importance on the expressive power of the eyes, as in the saying, “The eyes speak as much as the mouth.”
However, this does not work in Chinese society.
The idea that “if we speak frankly and openly, we will understand each other” is also a tendency peculiar to the Japanese.
Such thinking does not work in China.
It only makes one “an easy target.”
That is why the Japanese are “deceived, and then deceived again.”
For the Chinese, it is very welcome when the Japanese speak frankly and openly.
That is because there is no need to probe the other side.
The middle section is omitted.
In China, where “only swindlers are real,” it was not after reform and opening-up that China was first polluted by “the poison of capitalism.”
The “seven harms” and “eight poisons” to be discussed later are merely the surface emergence of a revival of traditional society.
The work that compiled, as a novel, the Chinese way of life of schemes and stratagems, and that gained popular resonance through street-level tales, was none other than the popular historical epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Chinese society, in which people can survive only through such a way of life, has not changed for several thousand years, whether in the age of empire or in socialist society.
Even in society after reform and opening-up, the “culture of deception” became the national character and national spirit, the core of Chinese culture and civilization, and the symbol of the tradition of Chinese culture.
No matter how much the national polity or political system changes, if there is one thing that has remained consistently and absolutely immovable, it is probably the “culture of deception.”
The rest is omitted.