A Master Exposes the Hidden Rules of China

高人揭露潜规则

By Ni Ke (尼克), Chen Xiaoshou (陈晓守)

【Editor’s Note: Wu Si (吴思) is a leading contemporary thinker who has introduced concepts such as the “hidden rules” (潜规则), “meta-rules” (元规则), “blood payoff principle” (血酬定律), and “officialdom-ism” (官家主义) to pinpoint the distinctive features of Chinese history. These terms have become indispensable for any meaningful discussion of the nation’s past. Previously out of stock, Wu Si’s Qian Guize (《潜规则》) is once again available in limited quantities, with the added fortune that we have invited Wu Si to sign these copies, now bearing an additional seal, making them highly collectible. Here, we share an essay that introduces Wu Si’s work.】

In recent years, Wu Si has borrowed—or “coined”—a series of grassroots phrases to name the historical landscapes and human contests he has examined, each lacking an official term until now. These include the blood payoff principle (血酬定律), the meta-rules (元规则), the principle of “the strongest in violence having the final say,” and, earlier still, the hidden rules (潜规则).

He has created a new way of reading Chinese history, replacing warm, sentimental reflections on historical sources with a starkly causal dissection of events. His unwavering focus on the world he observes has given him the confidence to assert, after delineating the act of “bowing and kneeling,” that he sees through things more clearly than Ray Huang (黄仁宇).

Wu Si believes that for a China undergoing enlightenment, the most humane task is to explain phenomena clearly and articulate the rules behind them. This, he maintains, is precisely what traditional Chinese culture has long failed to do.

The term “hidden rules” (潜规则) was one he fabricated. He considered other terms—like “gray rules,” “internal charters,” or “informal institutions”—but none felt as apt. Yet this invention was not conjured out of thin air; it was drawn from real life.

While working as a reporter for China Rural News (中国农村报), Wu Si received a letter from a reader describing how agricultural authorities in the Kaifeng (开封) region issued numerous chits for fertilizer—originally priced and allocated according to plan—granting them to personal connections who then resold them for a hefty profit.

This scenario, later recognized as a common type of “dual-track profiteering” and “rent-seeking,” revealed a pattern: government price controls created profit opportunities that were seized by those wielding power at the expense of ordinary citizens. Fresh out of college, Wu Si was so agitated by this scandalous scene that he hurried off with two colleagues to investigate.

The chits were meticulously preserved, like bureaucratic files, with no apparent attempt to hide them. Outsiders saw something shameful, but insiders accepted it as natural. By the end of the interviews, Wu Si understood that behind the grandiose veneer of formal guidelines lay a widely acknowledged yet unwritten set of codes.

This insight dovetailed with the feelings he had when reading Wanli Shiwunian (《万历十五年》) by Ray Huang, a work he read no fewer than five times. When he first encountered it in 1986, he sensed that it had hit a crucial nerve but could not quite define that nerve.

After discovering the perspective of hidden rules, Wu Si reread history, looking for those unspoken norms that lurked beneath the official codes and actually guided the functioning of Chinese society. With this accumulated insight, revisiting Wanli Shiwunian revealed that the elusive core Ray Huang had circled around was precisely these hidden rules.

Ray Huang understood that Ming Dynasty (明代) society did not operate according to its openly declared principles. Lofty moral laws were largely lip service. He tried to depict the real conditions but never fully clarified what rules society actually ran, nor did he probe their origins.

Huang had indeed grasped the key issue but failed to drag it into the light.

“Think of it as heating water to over ninety degrees Celsius but not quite bringing it to a boil,” Wu Si explains. “Ray Huang is like a master storyteller who convincingly presents a series of astonishing outcomes. Take Hai Rui (海瑞), upright and rigid, who fails, or Zhang Juzheng (张居正), strategic, subtle, brilliant, and unscrupulous—he also fails, brought down by accusations. The Confucian idealist falls, and the pragmatist falls too. Why is that? Is it coincidence or inevitability? Exceptional case or universal rule?”

This lingering puzzle enticed Wu Si. Unwilling to drop this blurry insufficiency, he isolated it and gave a name to such phenomena that could yield a pattern.

In the 1990s, corruption ran rampant. One question kept haunting Wu Si: Zhu Yuanzhang (朱元璋) of the Ming Dynasty fought corruption relentlessly, with extreme punishments—beheading upon the slightest provocation, even flaying corrupt officials and stuffing their skins with straw to hang in the halls—yet why did corruption remain rampant, ultimately leading to a tragic collapse? Wu Si sensed that these internal codes or hidden rules could explain it.

Fixating on the Zhu Yuanzhang era, he scrutinized the Ming Dynasty in detail. The hidden rules became clearer, and he decided to write an essay. While talking casually, he mentioned his findings; people urged him to put them in writing. He wrote “Dang Tangguan de Liyou (《当贪官的理由》)” (“Reasons to Become a Corrupt Official”), found he had more to say, and wrote another five or six essays. Immersed in extensive reading, he delved deeper and deeper, unable to stop.

After depicting the forces that create hidden rules, he pursued the rules behind the rules even more deeply. Eventually, he discovered what determines all other rules. This discovery made his heart constrict: the concept of meta-rules (元规则). Once it emerged, he knew he had struck the core.

The so-called “blood payoff principle” (血酬定律) means a reward gained through bloodshed and desperate struggle. The idea of meta-rules digs even deeper: at the bottom, all rule-making follows a fundamental principle—“whoever wields the greatest violence decides.” It is utterly brutal, yet it is the truth.

Stabbing straight to the heart, Wu Si realized that all previous descriptions were but glimpses of a leopard’s spots, lacking systematic rigor. A few years earlier, his pieced-together Zhongguo Tongshi de Yizhong Dufa (《中国通史的一种读法》) (“One Way to Read a General History of China”) was merely a rough sketch, short on proof and prone to literary conjectures. With the understanding of meta-rules, that sketch needed a complete overhaul.

He developed a habit of calculating historical motives and causes with great precision, weighing both material and spiritual forces. Only after painstaking calculations could he strip away illusions and determine which explanations hold and which do not. “Once you understand all this,” he says, “studying history becomes like the butcher Pao Ding carving an ox—no integral whole remains, only joints. With one cut, everything falls apart elegantly.”

When he looks at historical upright officials and corrupt clerks, he neither idolizes nor denounces them in simplistic terms. He knows exactly where to cut. With one slice, understanding deepens.

“After all the bumps, bruises, and broken heads—after rebuilding understanding from the ruins—I feel utterly grounded. Every conclusion I’ve reached comes from scrabbling through flesh and blood. Maybe I miscalculated a few times, but you can’t say I got it mostly wrong. No one can out-calculate me. This matches how ordinary Chinese calculate things realistically.”

When “hidden rules” and “meta-rules” appeared, criticism followed: Didn’t Wu Si’s concepts scrub away the filth from corrupt officials, giving shameful deeds a convenient excuse—just blame it on the hidden or meta-rules?

“I accept this criticism,” Wu Si replies. “The same thing can be used differently, depending on your intentions. But let’s balance the ledger. On one hand, some insiders might use this to justify wrongdoing. On the other, ordinary people see the truth and are no longer fooled. Without this explanation, they remain in the dark, paying a high price to learn the truth. Officials know these calculations by heart, just like monkeys instinctively understand how to fight for the crown. Common folk, standing afar, see the government as unfathomable. Without anyone illuminating these hidden rules, they’d stay ignorant. When you tally it up, is the net effect positive or negative? I believe it’s positive.”

Scholar Chen Xingzhi (陈行之) once said that only those who understand both history and reality can be called true thinkers. Wu Si stands among China’s most profound.

If we say that Ray Huang heated the water of history to 80°C, then Wu Si brought it to a full boil at 100°C. He is an author of remarkable originality, and thus, his works are acclaimed as the most innovative historical writings since Ray Huang’s Wanli Shiwunian (《万历十五年》).

December 11, 2024

Mr. Wu Si (吴思) signing books at Xianzhi Bookstore (先知书店)

This translation is an independent yet well-intentioned effort by the China Thought Express editorial team to bridge ideas between the Chinese and English-speaking worlds. The original text is available here: Shaoshu Pai Wenku (少数派文库)

Kindly attribute the translation if referenced.