Filial piety is an often misunderstood concept. Westerners tend to see it as a stronger version of their biblical precept "honour thy father and mother". But filial piety in Imperial China was a very different principle. In the West the authority of parents was always a relative value, a fluid one that co-existed with other values. But in Imperial China, it meant complete subjection of children to parents.
Chinese society was based on a strict hierarchy in which parents were superior to children, men to women, elder to younger. Children were often seen by parents as their old age insurance. They had to serve and help them, obey and respect them. An interesting example of this are "The 24 Paragons of Filial Piety", a classic of Confucianism. The 24 stories show the hierarchical concept of filial subordination to parents; in one story, for instance, a father decides to kill his own daughter in order to give more food to his ill mother.
Confucian hierarchy was a clever and successful tool of government and social stability. As the Emperor was the undisputed ruler in the country, so the father was the undisputed ruler in his own house. His children were his subjects, who had to obey him until his death and revere him after death. T
The echo of centuries of Confucian hierarchy can still be seen in the legislation of the People's Republic of China, in which Confucianism as an ideological instrument of government has been rediscovered after the era of Maoist anti-traditionalism.
CONFUCIUS said that while a man’s parents were alive, he should not travel far afield. Recent economic opportunities have been straining such norms as much as iconoclastic Maoism ever did. So the Communist Party, now more interested in social harmony than revolution, is weighing in. On July 1st it introduced a law to require children to visit or keep in touch with their elderly parents. On the same day, a court in the eastern city of Wuxi ruled in the case of a 77-year-old mother who had sued her daughter for not visiting her and for failing to help her financially. The court ordered the daughter to do both, or face fines or even detention.
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