Why Is It so Easy for the Chinese to Lie?
Examining the mystery of the keyword “bihui”
byKitamura Minoru and Lin Siyun(Summary)

Minoru Kitamura and Lin Siyun discuss Chinese psychology and how it relates toChinese interaction with Japan. Chinese thinking can apply to countries beyond Japan.
Understanding the Chinese way of thinking is critical not only in understanding theircurrent and past actions, but to forecast their future actions. The key behavior is bihui, thetendency to ignore inconvenient facts, or even to lie about them, for the sake ofpreserving stability of the state and the good name of the group: “the reputation of yourgroup can’t be dishonored”. In fact, such a view of history has been expressed by boththe Nationalist and Chinese Communist Party in that both sides exposed the others grave
short comings while taking great pains to conceal their own “dirty laundry”. Given theprevailing Chinese way of thinking, the authors feel that it is highly unlikely that, even if
presented with the facts, the Chinese will be persuaded to change their hostile attitude
towards Japan.
Kitamura points out that the concept of “aggressive war,” which Japan wasaccused of at the Tokyo Trials, was not considered criminal before the Second World
War. President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed that aggressive war in the name of justiceis in fact noble. Furthermore, there are those today who favor “aggressive war” aslegitimate state policy, but it is usually cast in more favorable terms such as “preemptivestrike”. In order to punish Japan for waging “aggressive war,” it was necessary to accuse
the Japanese military of committing atrocities on the scale of that committed by Nazi
Germany. Thus, Japan was painted with the same brush used against Germany, eventhough the facts on the ground in Japan and Germany were completely different.
Indeed, the Chinese accusations nicely illustrate the concept of bihui. For example
the authors point out that the Nationalists received heavy military support by National
Socialist Germany and that common soldiers were treated as nothing more than cannon
fodder despite public pronouncements to egalitarianism. There was little if any support ofthe Nationalists or the Communists from the peasantry before the Second Sino-JapaneseWar. Rather than nationalist sentiment, the peasants ended up supporting the Nationalists
and Communists because of Japanese forced ration activity—of taking food from thecountryside to feed the urban areas. At the core, one could say that the peasants only
wished to be left alone. More recently, while the Chinese Communist Party confessedthat 70 million people starved to death under Mao’s rule, this admission was made only
to attack Mao for the purpose of fortifying their rule rather than to denounce communism
in general. One can see then that Chinese “truths,” such as the “300,000 massacred” inNanking, are formed on the basis of bihui, of loyalty to the group, and not on the basis ofobjectivity. To uncover the truth one must view documents from both the Communists
and Nationalists since neither side needed to bihui to the other side. Such is theconvolutions one must undertake to uncover historical truth in China.

An additional way of thinking peculiar to the Chinese is that they see no expiation
for any crimes, including “war crimes”. Even the death of those who committed crimes
does not erase those crimes—thus to the Chinese, the Japanese are “war criminals”
forever. Such thinking is indeed counter to Japanese and even Western thinking. In total,
given such Chinese thinking, it is unlikely that any accommodation will occur between
China and Japan or between China and any of her enemies.