The Father We Carry: From Family to Public Life

Why Has China’s Internet Industry Stopped Talking About Flat Management?

In 2006, Google’s employees in China moved into new offices in Beijing’s Tsinghua Science Park. The meeting rooms were named after places in Journey to the West: the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, the Dragon Palace of the Eastern Sea and the Flaming Mountains. Printers took the names of Chinese spirits, including Wuliangye and Zhuyeqing. The kitchen was stocked with drinks, fruit and snacks. Even the columns and sofas were colorful.

Google had announced its Chinese research center in 2005. It was an era when China’s internet industry looked to Silicon Valley, and the excitement about new technology extended to how work should be organized. Offices with slides, informal ways of addressing colleagues and a say for young engineers offered a striking contrast to familiar workplaces. Beyond the ranks, seniority and successive approvals of the state-owned sector, this culture seemed to promise something: joining an advanced company might mean getting an early start on a more equal life.

Chinese companies made their own experiments. Tencent used English names; Alibaba used nicknames. A name that revealed no rank replaced the customary title attached to a superior’s surname. An article on Tencent Cloud’s developer community explained the reasoning: English names were intended to soften the distinction between superiors and subordinates and reduce the pressure of status.

Looking back, there was something almost innocent about that optimism. Remove rank from the way people address one another, put their desks closer together, encourage them to speak directly, and perhaps the tiresome conventions of the old workplace would gradually disappear.

The pictures that emerged later did not always bear this out.

In 2017, Lu Qi gave a presentation on artificial intelligence at the iQiyi World Conference. On a slide introducing the fourth industrial revolution, he used a portrait of Baidu’s founder, Robin Li. The history of a new technology had acquired the face of the company’s boss. The presentation was mocked online. Baidu subsequently said a test version had been shown by mistake.

What drew attention was the appearance of a familiar posture in a speech about the future. Online workplace discussions were teaching people how to praise a superior, signal agreement promptly in a group chat and frame an objection as an extension of the boss’s thinking. An industry that had promised less deference to status was teaching its employees to study status again. Screenshots described as coming from Huawei-affiliated work chats circulated, too. The joke was that people publicly ridiculed the shameless brown-nosing and privately treated it as a textbook of workplace language.

I hear less and less of the old excitement about flat management. English names remain, and the companies continue to charge ahead. Yet the workplace has come to resemble a one-man show. The exhilaration of breaking with the old ways, so much a part of the industry’s early appeal, has faded.

How the Father Takes Hold Within Us

In the television drama My Chief and My Regiment, Meng Fanliao kneels before his father, as the family rules require. This is a grown man who has experienced war and argues with others in his unit. Before his father, he is still a son receiving a reprimand on his knees. Episode synopsis

Traditional families often appear this way in Chinese film and television: the elder sits, the younger person kneels, and instruction travels downward. A father may be angry, scolding or disappointed. A son must first assume his proper place before explaining his grievances. The world outside may have changed; within the home, the order holds.

There is another conversation conducted on bended knees in Forever Young. Shen Guangyao, played by Wang Leehom, wants to enlist. His mother comes to dissuade him and has him kneel and recite the family precepts. She wants him to read, travel, marry someone he loves and enjoy a peaceful life. Her love is evident, and she has every reason to be afraid. Her son nevertheless listens from his knees. Report on the film’s family-precepts scene

Both feelings can inhabit the same relationship: parents love their children deeply, and children accept a subordinate place before their parents. Affection surrounds hierarchy, making it seem gentle, dignified and part of a good upbringing.

A teacher I knew in Taiwan once told me about his childhood. He had to get up at 5 a.m. to read and keep a daily journal reporting on his studies. Later, when he went to Germany to study, he was still required to write his father a letter every month. If I remember correctly, he was almost 30. Each letter had to be written with a brush, in formal kaishu, or regular script.

I have never forgotten that requirement about the handwriting. A letter could convey affection or news, yet even the way it was written had to comply with his father’s wishes. He was far away, living an adult life in Germany, while the rules at home continued to govern his relationship with his father. This was the 20th century. Neither distance nor a modern education had retired the requirement.

The kneeling men on screen and that monthly letter leave me with the same question: How old does a person have to be before he can stand before his parents as someone entitled to make his own decisions?

In such a family, reaching adulthood may leave the relationship unchanged. Parents retain the right to judge and intervene. A child who can earn a living may still wait for approval before making an important choice. Over time, the father’s expectations become an internal measure. He no longer has to state them; the child already knows what will anger or disappoint him.

This is what I mean by the father we carry within us. An actual father may occupy the position, as may a mother or another elder. The authority draws on affection, family precepts and the debt of being raised. A child’s coming of age does not automatically bring it to an end.

Many families today no longer require kneeling or prescribe the handwriting in a letter. Yet in the traditional families that concern me, especially where village ties and the order of seniority remain strong, an adult child’s choice of work, partner or way of life may still need to pass parental inspection. The formalities have relaxed. Decision-making power has not necessarily changed hands.

A person who enters public life with this experience often reads authority’s moods acutely. He knows when to stop explaining and when to establish his respect first. Later, when a manager interprets disagreement as a challenge to his standing, the employee recognizes the conversation. Before the issue has been settled, he must explain his attitude again.

How the Strict Father Is Inherited

When I was a child, the class monitor was allowed to hit other children.

The teacher handed over the pointer and authorized its use against pupils who broke the rules. Teachers and students accepted the arrangement. The monitor was about the same age as everyone else. What distinguished him was the teacher’s permission. With the pointer in his hand, he could do to other children what had previously been the teacher’s prerogative.

Thinking about it years later, I am also interested in those who accepted the arrangement. The child holding the pointer learned how to exercise power. The children being struck learned something about power, too.

Some would come to despise this order. Others might reach a different conclusion: They suffered because they were not yet strong enough or sufficiently senior. Once they had achievements, positions and resources of their own, they would no longer have to put up with it.

That hope can sustain a person through years of humiliation. He works hard, meets the demands placed on him and eventually becomes someone others must handle carefully. His past then supplies a justification for his own severity. “I went through it, too” is a convenient explanation.

What he wanted to escape was his place at the receiving end. Whether the powerful should treat the less powerful this way may never have been seriously questioned.

Hating a father’s authoritarianism, then, does not prevent someone from becoming an authoritarian father. Resenting a manager’s humiliation does not prevent him from demanding that his own employees endure the same treatment later. As long as people believe patience can eventually buy them the right to dominate, the order has a way to reproduce itself.

When openly hitting people becomes harder to justify, the relationship can survive through other means. A superior can repeatedly convince someone that they lack ability and have a future only under his guidance. He can grant approval and withdraw it, keeping the recipient convinced that more is required. When that person considers leaving, he can remind them how much they owe him for his guidance and support. Contemporary Chinese discussions often call these practices “soft PUA,” extending the term to psychological manipulation. The familiar element is one person’s power to determine how another judges their own worth.

When Obedience Is Called Filial Piety and Deference Becomes a Duty

A dispute over a bus seat offers a small example of seniority entering public life. An older passenger asks a younger person to get up. When the younger person refuses, the argument moves from whether the seat is needed to whether the young understand respect. If “I am older than you” counts as sufficient justification, two strangers have been assigned a temporary family hierarchy.

At home, that relationship rests on deeper affection and is harder to leave. Pressure to marry is a familiar example.

The child is working and can support an independent life. The parents feel a major task remains unfinished. Without marriage, the child is not properly settled. Potential partners must be found, introductions arranged, and an explanation supplied for relationships that have failed to progress.

For the adult child, the burden is the continual intervention in a private life. Deciding whether a relationship is right already takes time. Now there is the additional task of managing whether the parents can wait or will be disappointed. Turning down a prospective partner may mean having to console them afterward. Saying that marriage holds no appeal can turn an ordinary conversation into a family crisis.

The parents carry a different burden. They have included their child’s marriage among their own responsibilities. Every day the child remains unmarried is another day the task remains incomplete. They may worry about who will provide care in later life, face questions from relatives or feel they have failed to arrange a secure future. Pressing the issue becomes an act of duty. Stopping can feel like neglect.

Both sides are exhausted. The child wants less interference. The parents want a choice that will let them feel at ease. A concession briefly relieves parental anxiety while confirming their standing to intervene. The more insistently they press, the harder it becomes for the child to tell them about genuine doubts or wishes.

These conversations often end with “We want what’s best for you.” The goodwill is real, yet it leaves unanswered who should make the decision. As long as parents believe they must remain responsible for a child’s entire life, autonomy can look like a failure to appreciate that responsibility.

This is the knot I see in pressure to marry. Parents struggle to put down the task of arranging their child’s life; the child struggles to escape the duty of satisfying parental expectations. Two lives are tied together, and peace returns temporarily when one accepts the other’s arrangements.

Filial piety becomes a demand for a particular outcome: The child has done well when the parents are reassured. Someone who cares about their parents and is willing to look after them may still be judged inconsiderate for failing to marry on schedule. Affection and obedience are assessed together. Refusing an arrangement brings an additional obligation to prove that the years of upbringing have not been betrayed.

The distance from this understanding to the workplace is short. An employee who has received a manager’s care may be asked, on deciding to leave, whether that decision repays the investment in them. Objections to an assignment may prompt a reminder that the manager is thinking about their future. For someone raised with these family obligations, indebtedness can arrive before the question of what they want.

How Family Authority Enters Company Management

In 2024, Richard Liu’s remarks about his “brothers” again drew controversy. In an internal speech, the JD.com founder excluded employees who performed poorly and made little effort from that designation. The remarks attracted attention partly because he had repeatedly called employees his brothers while speaking about the protections and improvements to their lives he provided. 5

An assessment of work acquires the additional weight of belonging. Good performance can bring compensation and an elder brother’s approval. Poor performance can cost a person their place in the relationship. The person controlling the resources decides who remains a brother.

For anyone familiar with paternalistic relationships, the language is easy to understand. A capable leader takes risks and cares for subordinates; they repay him with loyalty and effort. When things go well, the arrangement can generate deep trust. The difficulty comes when a subordinate wants to refuse. An assignment may carry a debt of gratitude that is much harder to decline.

Research on paternalistic leadership examines these relationships. Authoritarianism can coexist with benevolence. One study of employees and their supervisors in Chinese companies found an association between authoritarian leadership and less employee voice. 6 Being cared for and being afraid to speak can be two features of the same employee’s working day.

Control readily comes to be understood as a responsibility. A manager sets the direction for employees; parents steer a child away from danger. Reviewing every decision looks conscientious, and repeated requests for approval reward that conscientiousness. In time, being needed and obeyed can become satisfying. Letting go becomes unsettling.

I think this is one place where flat management encounters resistance. A leader may welcome everyone addressing him by name while resenting a young employee who proves him wrong in front of others. Fewer reporting layers may also bring more decisions directly to the founder. The chain grows shorter while personal power becomes more concentrated.

Subordinates learn the distinction quickly. A company encourages independent thinking, yet promotions reward putting the boss at ease. A meeting welcomes debate, yet an objection requires a separate explanation of one’s attitude afterward. People adjust to those consequences and invest their attention where it is safer.

The promise of flat management is revised through these small encounters. A new recruit learns an English name upon joining. Later comes the lesson in when to keep quiet.

What Taiwan Can Teach Us

When I was an exchange student in Taiwan, classmates would quite naturally bring girlfriends or boyfriends home to meet their parents and share a meal. Some changed partners frequently enough that a month later they might bring someone different. Their parents did not intervene very much.

This stayed with me. A romantic relationship could be part of everyday family life. The parents knew about it and met the partner, without the child thereby handing the relationship over for them to decide.

In the family culture familiar to me, meeting the parents easily becomes a formal stage in an assessment. Is the person suitable? What is the family background? Does the relationship have a future? The ease with which my Taiwanese classmates brought partners home suggested another possibility: Parents could participate in a child’s life and leave room for the child’s choices.

Differences over politics carried a similar meaning. In Taiwanese families I observed, two generations supporting opposing parties, the Kuomintang and the Democratic Progressive Party, could exchange views at the same table. The older person did not have to leave the conversation because of disagreement. The younger person did not have to offer a political allegiance as proof of filial devotion.

Taiwan’s closely related East Asian cultural background makes these experiences particularly worth considering. A family can matter deeply while allowing its members different lives. Generational differences can persist while a young person retains an independent judgment. Changes in politics and family culture become visible in these ways of living together.

For me, equality takes a concrete form in such moments. Parents may disagree, and their child can still make a choice. The disagreement remains. They can still have dinner together.

Family Culture Is a Microscope for Social Power

In Google’s blog post about its office move two decades ago, employees complained that they had not been involved in naming the meeting rooms. The people responsible promised that everyone would get a say next time. Reading it now, I find that detail more revealing than the colorful sofas: Someone with little seniority could feel entitled to object without necessarily straining the relationship.

My childhood classroom offered a different experience. The teacher handed the pointer to the class monitor; the pupils accepted the arrangement. Participation in power meant receiving permission to exercise it over others. There was no equally established place for questioning that power.

People raised with these different experiences can enter the same company, working under the same promise of flat management, and expect very different things from equality. One assumes disagreement belongs in a discussion. Another regards a leader’s willingness to allow discussion as generosity. When conflict arises, the latter is more likely to experience speaking freely as a permission that can be revoked.

This is how the family enters public life. It rarely teaches a child explicitly how to manage a company. From the age at which a child can speak, however, it teaches whose words carry weight, whose anger must be taken seriously and whose consent a choice requires. Schools and organizations receive these people and reinforce their experience with rewards and penalties of their own.

If China is to move toward freedom, democracy and equality, these arrangements at home deserve another look. A person who wants respect from a manager may return home and struggle to accept a child’s refusal. Criticizing power becomes a more intimate test when we ourselves become parents, elders or managers.

My classmates bringing partners home in Taiwan made that change feel less remote. Their parents remained their parents. Care and advice could continue. The children had acquired a part of life that required no approval.

We once gave everyone in the office new names, hoping the relationships of power would change with them. More than two decades later, it may be worth looking at home, too: Can the child who has grown up announce a decision without first asking to be forgiven?