ABSTRACT
The social organization within the family group tends not only to influence but actually to shape the larger organizations of government and trade into which its members pass as they assume their hereditary responsibilities. The Chinese family has revealed many reasons for its persistence during the ages. Its religious sanctions, ethical foundations, social values, relation to the state and its place in the maintenance of law and in the public services, its provision for the weaker elements in the population, training for social adjustment in a land too crowded to be tolerant of needless conflict, contributions to the persistence of the race, its power to transmit the accumulated experience of generations, economic functions, all these would seem to make the Chinese family sacrosanct. Nepotism has been a great cause of incompetence and waste in China, and many feel it cannot be overthrown save by a direct challenge to the family ethic which lays down such action as entirely laudable.
