Ruling our vast empire by relying solely on harsh laws and severe punishments is impossible; its secret lies in using the power of ethics and morality to make the lowly obey their superiors, women obey the commands of men, and the uneducated—by virtue of information asymmetry—take the literate as their models.
— 1587, A Year of No Significance (《万历十五年》)
Rereading 1587, A Year of No Significance, I held the page for quite a while when I came to this passage. Not because the content was anything novel—precisely because it was so “fresh.” A book written about the Ming dynasty put its finger exactly on the most hidden and most universal pain point in today’s workplace.
1. First, Tear It Apart: The “Ethics and Morality” of Imperial Power and the “Values Assessment” of Enterprises Are Essentially the Same Thing
| Ancient imperial rule | Modern corporate management | Core commonality |
|---|---|---|
| The Three Bonds and Five Constants, ethics and morality | Corporate culture, the values system | No clear quantifiable standard; the right of interpretation belongs 100% to the top of power |
| Harsh laws, explicit statutes | KPIs, job descriptions, labor contracts | Clear boundaries, mutual constraints; the power holder is also bound by the rules |
| The lowly obey superiors; the uneducated take the literate as models | Employees obey management, embrace change, put company interests first | Packages “unconditional obedience” as “political correctness,” denying individual bargaining power |
Back then, the Qing dynasty didn’t use harsh laws—not out of mercy, but precisely because harsh laws have clear boundaries: which crime corresponds to which punishment was written plainly, imperial power was bound by the law, and the common people had a clear bottom line for their conduct, and could even use the law to rebut the overreach of imperial power.
But ethics and morality are different. What is “loyalty,” what is “filial piety,” what is “order of high and low”—there has never been a black-and-white quantifiable standard, and the right of interpretation always sits in the hands of imperial power and the gentry class. When I say you’re disloyal, then even if you work yourself to the bone, you’re “harboring seditious intentions”; when I say you’re unfilial, then even if you serve your parents with utmost devotion, you have a “grave flaw in your principles.” Once you’re labeled, without any punishment being applied, your personality is denied at the root, leaving you not even room to rebut, and the whole society will spontaneously exclude and judge you.
This is exactly the same logic as an enterprise putting values into performance reviews, where they even outweigh KPIs.
Why does an enterprise set aside clear, quantifiable performance metrics and insist on making the “airy-fairy” values the core of assessment? Not to build some team culture, but precisely because: KPIs are mutually constraining, whereas values are one-sidedly controlled.
Once you set a clear KPI and the employee meets it, you can’t just dock their pay, cut their salary, or optimize them away at will—the company is bound by the rules it set. But values are different: what is “dedication,” what is “embracing change,” what is “team spirit”—there has never been a quantifiable standard, and the right of interpretation is 100% in the hands of management and HR.
Even if your performance ranks first in the department, if the leader says you “don’t fit the team values, lack big-picture thinking, don’t know how to collaborate,” you can still be given the lowest performance rating and optimized out—and it’s even hard to prove in a labor arbitration. With what do you prove you “fit the values”? And with what do you rebut the leader’s claim that you “don’t”?
2. The Core of This Game Is Achieving the Most Thorough Obedience at the Lowest Cost
The biggest advantage of ancient imperial power ruling by ethics and morality was that it didn’t need to maintain a massive bureaucratic apparatus or station troops watching the people every day—it could make the lower classes voluntarily self-discipline and self-obey.
Without any imperial order, the people would themselves uphold “the ruler is the model for the subject, the father for the son, the husband for the wife,” themselves regard “disrespecting superiors” as the ultimate disgrace, and even actively supervise and report those around them who “break the rules.” Imperial power only needed to control the right of interpreting morality to let the whole society spontaneously form a system of control—extremely low cost, extremely strong effect.
Corporate values assessment has exactly the same effect.
Without leaders watching attendance, watching for slacking, watching whether employees refuse overtime every day, once the values assessment is rolled out, employees will voluntarily “self-PUA”:
- The values say “dedication,” so even without an explicit overtime requirement, everyone defaults to “not working overtime means not being dedicated,” and voluntarily competes into the deep night;
- The values say “embrace change,” so even if the leader’s arrangement is utterly unreasonable—even a pay cut or reassignment—everyone defaults to “not obeying means not embracing change,” and doesn’t dare utter half a rebuttal;
- The values say “gratitude,” so even if the company docks benefits and over-extracts from employees, everyone defaults to “complaining means not knowing gratitude,” and even feels psychological burden for defending their own lawful rights.
This game can perfectly sidestep all backlash risks.
Ancient imperial power suppressing the people with harsh laws would earn the reputation of “tyrant” and provoke social conflict among the people; but killing with ethics and morality—even if you exterminate an entire family—could pin on them the label of “disloyal and unfilial, guilty of unpardonable crimes,” and even the common folk would feel “the killing was right,” with imperial power forever standing on the moral high ground.
Today’s enterprises are the same. If you fire someone with “KPI not met,” you must pay N+1 compensation, must prove the performance, and if the employee goes to arbitration, the company will most likely lose; but if you “optimize” someone for “value mismatch,” you can both fire them justifiably and pin on them the label of “bad character, not a team player, undedicated,” and even pay less or no compensation—even gaining the upper hand in public opinion. Even if an employee gets screwed over, it’s hard to prove their innocence, because “values” of this sort never had any objective standard to begin with.
3. Corporate Culture Building? Power Double Standards?
Some companies’ demands on employees’ values rival Confucius and Mencius—follow all of them and you could go be a saint. But in reality, many of these values even the executives and bosses themselves can’t live up to. This is the same as the ancient imperial “use the sages’ standard to bind subjects, use the emperor’s political craft to indulge oneself”—even the underlying logic is identical.
(1) This “Saint-Level Values” Set Was Never Meant for the Boss or Execs from the Day It Was Born
Imperial power never treated Confucius and Mencius’s ethics of loyalty and filial piety as anything but rigid rules to bind the lower classes: it demanded “the subject is loyal to the ruler, the son filial to the father, the wife submissive to the husband,” yet never treated “the ruler loves the people, the father is kind to the son, the husband upholds righteousness” as an untouchable bottom line. If the emperor was incompetent and tyrannical, no one could depose him by the “benevolent ruler” standard; but if a subject showed the slightest disobedience, he could immediately be labeled “disloyal and unfilial” and his whole family implicated.
The corporate version of this saintly value set is exactly the same logic.
Demanding that employees be “selflessly dedicated, indifferent to gain or loss, grateful to the company, putting the big picture first, absolutely loyal, embracing change”—in essence, all of it makes employees cede personal interests to obey the boss’s core interests: making you work overtime unpaid is “dedication,” making you take a pay cut and bear the blame is “responsibility,” making you unconditionally accept a reassignment is “embracing change,” making you give up defending your rights is “knowing gratitude, having big-picture vision.”
But the boss and executives themselves are forever exceptions to the rules: when they promise a pie and don’t deliver, they don’t talk about “integrity”; when they lay off and cut pay, shifting risk, they don’t talk about “getting through it together”; when they pocket money and hollow out the company, they don’t talk about “putting the big picture first”; and when they themselves travel and play and come in late and leave early every day, they certainly don’t bind themselves by “dedication and devotion.”
The core reason has never changed: they are the rule-makers, the interpreters, the final judges—never the subjects to whom the rules apply.
(2) Why Insist on Raising the Standard to the Level of a “Confucian Sage”?
Because the more extreme, the vaguer, and the more unquantifiable it is, the less constrained their power is.
We talked before about how rules with truly clear boundaries are always mutually constraining. For example, the monthly salary, job responsibilities, and KPI standard written into a labor contract—once you meet them, the company can’t just rough you over, and it too is bound by the black-and-white rules.
But saint-level values are precisely anti-rules.
What is “extreme dedication”? What is “absolute loyalty”? What is “true gratitude”? There’s no quantifiable standard at all; the ceiling is infinitely high, and the right of interpretation is 100% in management’s hands. Even if you work overtime all year without rest, they can say you “don’t have the company in your heart, insufficient dedication”; even if you earn great merit for the company, they can say you “are insubordinate, lack big-picture vision.”
Precisely because this standard is so high that ordinary people can’t reach it, everyone naturally has a “handle” in their hands. If they want to keep you, even if you only score 60, they can say your “values are sound”; if they want to fire you, even if you score 99, they can optimize you out for “value mismatch”—and a labor arbitration is still hard to win.
This is exactly the same logic as Wang Mang using an ethereal Zhou ritual to manipulate the realm, and, in the “seizing affection storm,” using a publicly posted imperial edict to seal the mouths of opponents—the vaguer the rules, the more absolute the power.
(3) The Most Ironic Truth: The Boss Himself Can’t Do It—and That’s Precisely Why the Rule Works
Many people think: the boss himself can’t do it, so isn’t this value set just a joke? Badly mistaken. The fundamental purpose of this rule was never “to make everyone a saint,” but to screen out the obedient and clear out the dissenting.
It is essentially an extreme obedience test:
Even knowing this standard is double-standard and impossibly high, you’re still willing to set aside your doubts, obey meekly, and even voluntarily self-PUA—this shows you’re a controllable, easily-manipulated, non-resisting “good employee.”
Conversely, if you dare use this value set to question the boss and demand he lead by example—say the boss makes you work overtime indifferent to gain or loss, and you ask him “Why don’t you lead by dedicating yourself and give everyone a raise as promised?”—you’ll immediately be labeled a “troublemaker, value mismatch, no team spirit,” and cleared out at the earliest opportunity.
Just like Hai Rui of the Ming dynasty, who really did demand of Emperor Jiajing by the sages’ standard of Confucius and Mencius, denouncing him for being addicted to Daoist cultivation and indifferent to the people’s lives—and was thrown straight into prison. What imperial power wanted was never a “true saint” who dares bind imperial power by the sages’ standard, but an “obedient subject” who, even knowing the rules are double-standard, still obeys meekly; what the company wants is likewise never a “consummate person” who can practice saintly values, but a “tool person” who, even knowing the rules are unfair, is still willing to be manipulated.
4. Case Study: Why Was a Thousand-Meter-Long Document Publicized to the Whole Court?
Zhang Juzheng, out of filial devotion, continued to submit a second and third application, but neither was approved. In the final rescript, the emperor even stated that retaining Mr. Zhang was out of the empress dowager’s decree. These documents passed back and forth from the Wenyuan Pavilion to the palace, a distance of barely a thousand meters, but interestingly, whether memorials or imperial rescripts, all had to be sent to the Six Offices Corridor at the Meridian Gate to be copied and circulated, so that officials great and small could read the original text and understand the whole truth of the matter.
— Ray Huang, 1587, A Year of No Significance (《万历十五年》)
This passage comes from 1587, A Year of No Significance‘s depiction of Zhang Juzheng’s “seizing affection storm” (夺情风波) in the fifth year of Wanli (1577). At first glance it’s just a detail of document circulation, but in reality it was a meticulously designed open power stratagem, in the same vein as the earlier discussion of “the top using vague rules to achieve absolute control.”
(1) First, Clarify the Historical Background
According to the Collected Statutes of the Great Ming and Confucian ritual law, when a Ming official’s parent died, he had to resign and return to his native place for a 27-month mourning period (丁忧). Only a key minister facing great military or state affairs could be ordered by the emperor’s special decree to “seize affection” (夺情)—forced to remain in office on the grounds of state necessity.
In the ninth month of Wanli 5, Zhang Juzheng’s father died. At the time he had been Grand Secretary for 5 years, and core reforms like the examination method and the single-whip law were just entering deep water. Once he left to observe mourning for 27 months, the new policies could die along with the man at any moment.
So Zhang Juzheng, per ritual law, submitted memorials three times petitioning to return and observe mourning, and the Wanli Emperor (then 15; the actual holders of power were Empress Dowager Li + the eunuch director Feng Bao) rejected them three times by decree, with the final rescript specifically noting that “retaining Mr. Zhang is out of the empress dowager’s decree”—this is the historical “three resignations, three retentions.”
(2) The Most Critical Question: Why Publicize to the Whole Court a Document That Could Travel Just 1000 Meters?
The “copying and circulation” at the Six Offices Corridor of the Meridian Gate was a legally mandated step for Ming government affairs to take effect.
The Ming established six offices—Personnel, Revenue, Rites, War, Justice, and Works—with their offices at the Six Offices Corridor of the Meridian Gate. The supervising secretaries held a rank of only the 7th grade, yet wielded two core powers:
- The power of sealing and veto: If the Six Offices deemed an imperial edict or a Grand Secretariat draft to violate ancestral institutions, they had the right to seal and return it outright;
- The power of copying and circulation: All memorials bearing the emperor’s vermilion rescript had to be copied and circulated by the Six Offices to take formal effect, and the circulated content would be issued to government offices nationwide in the form of a court gazette—the Ming dynasty’s official “government affairs bulletin.”
And Zhang Juzheng and Wanli forcing this private “resignation-retention” document through the full public circulation process concealed four interlocking political intentions:
1. Turning a “private deal” into “the will of the state,” sealing off the gap for moral attack
At the time the court and the realm were seething, with many civil officials convinced Zhang Juzheng “forgot his parents and coveted his position.” If this document had merely passed privately between the Wenyuan Pavilion and the inner palace, everyone would have concluded: this is a backroom deal between Zhang Juzheng, Feng Bao, and Empress Dowager Li—it’s he himself who didn’t want to leave, begging the empress dowager to retain him.
But after the full text was publicly copied and circulated, officials throughout the court could see the original black-and-white text: it was Zhang Juzheng who thrice sincerely fulfilled filial duty and applied to return home to observe mourning, and the emperor and empress dowager who thrice, prioritizing the state, forcibly rejected him. This directly turned the personal moral stain of “Zhang Juzheng greedy for power and unfilial” into the state action of “the court, prioritizing the realm, forcibly retaining him”—occupying the high ground procedurally and ritually first.
2. Drawing a public red line with the highest authority, sealing off every retreat for opponents
The final rescript specifically noting that “the retention comes from the empress dowager’s decree” was the most ruthless stroke of this operation. Writing the empress dowager’s decree into the vermilion rescript and publicizing it to the whole court through the Six Offices’ circulation was clearly drawing a red line for all officials: retaining Zhang Juzheng is the final decision of the empire’s highest ruler, with no room for negotiation. Anyone who steps forward to oppose it is no longer impeaching Zhang Juzheng but opposing imperial power and defying the empress dowager’s decree.
3. Using the statutory process to push “procedural justice” to its limit, leaving opponents no opening
The Ming civil-official group’s most core weapon against imperial power was “ancestral institutions” and “ritual law.” Observing mourning is an ancestral institution, and seizing affection is also an exception explicitly permitted by ancestral institutions—but it requires completing the full process of “the official memorializing to observe mourning → the emperor decreeing seizure of affection → the official declining repeatedly → the emperor retaining repeatedly” to be compliant.
Zhang Juzheng’s three resignations and three retentions had every step walk the official formal process, and every document was copied and publicized by the Six Offices, fully conforming to the Ming document-circulation rules. Even if the civil-official group morally accused Zhang Juzheng of being unfilial, they couldn’t pick out any flaw in institutions or procedure—the whole process was fully compliant, with no space for any backroom operation.
This is exactly the same logic as corporate values assessment: the top packages its personal will, through an open, compliant process, as a collective rule; even if everyone sees through the intent behind it, they can’t rebut it on the basis of the rules.
4. Probing the attitude of the court and the realm in reverse, and precisely clearing out dissidents
This full public circulation was also an open-stratagem probe: with the highest will already clearly publicized, whoever still dared step forward to oppose was dead set on standing against Zhang Juzheng and against imperial power.
Sure enough, Wu Zhongxing and Zhao Yongxian of the Hanlin Academy, and Ai Mu, a vice-director of the Ministry of Justice, along with the bureau chief Shen Sixiao and others, successively memorialized to impeach him. In the end the four were severely flogged at court, stripped of office, and exiled, and the voices of opposition in the court and realm were thoroughly overawed. This public circulation was essentially about forcing opponents into the open in advance, achieving a precise strike and consolidating power.
(3) This Thousand-Meter Document Circulation Was a Performance Everyone Understood Without Saying So
The Mingshi Jishi Benmo clearly records that Zhang Juzheng, from the very start, “outwardly petitioned to observe mourning, but signaled Feng Bao to press for his retention”—on the surface applying to return home to observe mourning per ritual law, while secretly colluding with Feng Bao to have Feng Bao help push the emperor and empress dowager to issue the retention decree.
This document exchange that could have been completed within 1000 meters, this public circulation to the whole court, was a performance with a script written from the very beginning. It and Wang Mang’s restoration reforms, and the anti-human institutional designs of enterprises, are fundamentally the same logic of power:
When the rule-maker simultaneously controls the right of interpreting the rules, and can fix the rules in an open, compliant form, it achieves absolute control at zero cost and with no backlash.
Through this operation Zhang Juzheng successfully seized affection and retained his post, pushing the reforms forward—but it also thoroughly exposed his absolute control over the court, planting the most deadly foreshadowing for his posthumous purge by Wanli, the confiscation of his home, and the extermination of his family.
5. The Final Outcome: This Value Set Never Saves a Company—It Only Accelerates Its Death
From Wang Mang’s reforms to the present, all conclusions point to the same endpoint: power without constraint will ultimately slide into loss of control and collapse.
When a company indulges in PUA-ing employees with saintly values instead of retaining people with clear rules, fair distribution, and a clear development path, it will surely head toward complete “bad money driving out good.” People who are truly capable and have a bottom line won’t swallow this double-standard PUA—they’ll just leave; those who remain in the end are all opportunists skilled at performance, good at shouting slogans, catering to leaders, and utterly lacking real talent.
The boss lives day after day in the illusion that “everyone is a saint,” no one dares speak the truth, no one dares do real work—and in the end the business collapses and the system disintegrates, meeting exactly the same fate as those dynasties that lost control of power and governed by whim.
Ancient imperial power pushing ethics and morality to the extreme ended in “ritual ethics devouring people”: rules grew vaguer, standards harsher, the lower classes blamed at every turn, completely losing room to survive, and finally the dynasty collapsed and the realm fell into chaos.
Today’s enterprises, pushing values assessment to the extreme, will likewise fall into this dead cycle:
Those who can work lose to those who can pick sides; those with ability lose to those who cater to leaders; those who dare speak the truth lose to those who shout slogans. Employees who can truly create value get pushed out for “not knowing how to navigate social niceties, not fitting the values”; what remains are all opportunists skilled at performance, good at catering, and utterly without a bottom line. In the end the team completely loses vitality, and the business collapses across the board.
Conclusion
In the final analysis, whether it’s ancient rule by ethics or today’s values assessment, the essence is “rule monopoly” under unequal power—when the rule-maker is simultaneously the judge and can modify the rules at will, all “morality,” “culture,” and “values” ultimately become a fig leaf for power to do evil.
And what ordinary people should do most is not treat the company’s values as a creed for life, but only as a “workplace survival manual.”
Whatever it says, go along with it on the surface—don’t confront it head-on, don’t use it to challenge the boss’s power; but deep in your heart you must be crystal clear: your foundation for standing in the workplace is your ability, your performance, your irreplaceability—never whether you can practice this saintly standard.
When the boss PUA-s you with values, you respond with performance, your labor contract, and the law—don’t fall into self-doubt, and don’t foolishly go be that selflessly-dedicated saint. After all, the pie the boss draws can’t fill your stomach, and the youth and health you devote to the company will ultimately only turn into real gold and silver in his pocket.
Your value does not need anyone else’s values to stamp and certify it.
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