The Chinese are a nation of individualists. They are family-minded, not social- minded, and the family mind is only a form of magnified selfishness. It is curious that the word “society” does not exist as an idea in Chinese thought. In the Confucian social and political philosophy we see a direct transition from the family, chia , to the state, kuo , as successive stages of human organization, as in such sayings as “When the family is orderly, then the state is peaceful,” or “Put the family in order and rule the state in peace.”
