Justice – Chinese Moral Leadership 35928.3 Combining Interests and Justice
Chinese traditional moral values have always positioned ‘righteous-
ness’ versus ‘material benefit’, as well as ‘public’ versus ‘private’ inter-
est as opposing forces. As the Southern Song Dynasty scholar, Wan-li
Yang, urged that ‘the pursuit of private interest would definitely result in
disservice to the public; the public and private interests could never be
properly aligned’, which reflects the essence of mainstream philosophi-
cal thinking. Traditional Chinese moral values draw a clear and uncom-
promising class distinction between the gentile and the villain. ‘Gentle-
men are moral-oriented while villains are interest-oriented’, with the
premises that ‘gentlemen care about the whole society while villains
focus on themselves’. Leaders who act according to the gentile doctrine
focus on self-cultivation by restraining their desires and purifying their
heart. However, just improving themselves is far from enough for a
leader, because leaders need to shoulder the obligation to achieve the
benefits of the whole organisation. Yen-fuh, while translating Adam
Smith’s ‘Wealth of Nations’ into China, summarized that “the reason
why leadership is difficult is because of the separation of interests from
justice [...] good leadership can be achieved with the public combining
interests and justice, and is willing to behave morally’^294. He proposed
to promote social progress by combining interests and justice. The tradi-
tional view that interests cannot go along with justice had dominated the
leadership standard in the feudal society, as it gave the emperors the
perfect moral excuse for fooling the public and predate for their own
benefits. This was revealed and illustrated by Zong-xi Huang, a scholar
in late Ming and early Qing Dynasty, who incisively said that “the ruler
gains benefits by portraying their selfishness as the public interests [...]
that the public profit serves ruler’s interests and harm stays with the oth-
294
“An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, translated
by Yen-fuh, published by the Commercial Press in 1776.