The Chinese believe in the naturalness, necessity and inevitability of hierarchy. It is self-evident to Chinese that all men are born unequal. An efficient society requires a broadly accepted ordering of people. The bases of this inequality are achievement, usually academic, wealth and moral example. The last is especially important for commanding political authority.
Laws negotiated by men are rigid, artificial and insensitive to the changing circumstances of life.
The judgement of wise and compassionate men is a better way to regulate personal, social and political relationships. Man exists in and through relationships with others. The goal of socialisation is to train children for lifelong interdependence with others by developing skills and values which promote harmony. Bond notes that all these factors exist in other cultures, but it is in their combination that he believes China is unique. These generalisations are like Platonic forms, instructive and useful as abstracted reference points but their manifestations in our reality were various.