You Must Work for CIA
Stockholm syndrome for Chinese people
You must work for CIA.
That’s what my father said to me when I criticized China for their ambition for my country Taiwan and their awful human right condition.
Why the hell does he think I work for CIA just because I criticize China?
Sadism and masochism relationship
This is what my father thinks: How can a guy or a group be bad to others? It’s always because he or they are powerful, or, at least has, or have a powerful big man behind them. The reason that my son has no fear to speak up against a superpower, China; there must be a bigger power behind him. That must be the USA government, probably the evil CIA.
Therefore, in his world, there is no reason such as bravery, human rights, free will or personal autonomy to encourage a young man to go against an authority. If the young man does so, it’s only possible because there is something bigger or stronger supporting him.
He believes in this ridiculous logic because of how he and his society work:
Be nice to the one who is treating you bad; be bad to the one who is treating you nice.
This SM mindset works in “Hobbesian’s state of nature”, which is basically the war of all against all, such as diplomacy, gambling, or teenager bully. It demands you taking a right decision to survive in a cruel world as in the Walking Dead series.
Chinese call these things Guanxi(關係).
You won’t have a problem when you have Guanxi, but you will have problem without Guanxi.
So, what’s Guanxi?
There are many people translating it as relationship, friendship or Key-Man.
No.
GuanXi is the knowledge of dealing with affairs that are weighted and intertwined by power and position.(Keeneth C. Fan)
Relationship and friendship are the networks between autonomous subjects, which are constructed by an interaction between the subjects.
Guanxi is a sense of understanding and reacting from an objective power structure.
For example, when you want to bribe a customs official, you usually give him a few hundred US dollar. However, in China, you need to make him believe that you have Guanxi with his manager, such as bribing or having special a relationship with him, only then he dares to take your money. You can’t just bribe the customs officials, you have to bride the whole department.
Because of Guanxi, you can easily figure out the hierarchy of power in a Chinese group by their seats. The closer you are to the leader the more powerful you are.
In the Guanxi, the higher power can always dominate the lower one in almost everything and of course sometimes in a corrupt way.
To sum up, my father uses the logic of Guanxi to deduct my power position so he has to consider that I might work for the CIA. And the most important thing, he finally respects me because of this logic (even if he doesn’t agree with my argument).
This logic of Guanxi relates to my previous article which talks about Eastern Asian society teaching kids to be the crafty fox. I will explain what kind of society emerges those special cultural elements in the next article.
