Revisiting 家醜不可外揚 as an Obstacle for Transparent Information Sharing

家醜不可外揚, or "don't tell others about the negatives of one's own family," was a principle that my parents have mentioned upon multiple occasions. They stated that for others to be in on the knowledge of the family"s misfortunes and misconduct will tarnish the family's image so badly that it will be more than just an issue of the usual "losing face" when interacting with others or bringing embarrassment, ridicule, or shame upon the family. To keep negative information private was often seen as a precondition for the family as a unit and its individual members moving up in the social hierarchy by keeping public reputation squeaky clean.

Yet, every family has some negative issues, whether or not the members of the family really intended to become part of that negative issue. The ongoing coronavirus epidemic has proven that many innocent people will have their reputation tarnished just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That is particularly true in the epicenter of the virus, Wuhan, where the city's residents have gained notoriety in China and beyond for being sick eaters of wild animals and unclean, diseased individuals to be shunned at all costs, even though the vast majority of the city's millions of residents having absolutely nothing to do with the origin of the virus itself.

That belief in the principle of 家醜不可外揚, fair to say, has largely been shared with the Chinese government during its ongoing handing of the coronavirus epidemic. Once the initial news broke of a "mysterious" new virus making the rounds in the hospitals of Wuhan, the reflex of the government was to suppress the news, fearing that it creates a negative perception both among outsiders looking at China and the country's own citizenry. Even now, as the coronavirus has gone global, lingering suspicions of the Chinese government hiding true figures related to infections and deaths abound in international media.

It is easy to pinpoint political reasons for why a state, authoritarian or otherwise, would want to suppress news of a global epidemic. Even in normally trusted government, perceived failure to keep taps on something that threatens the lives of tens of millions of citizens can quickly lead to a loss of legitimacy. And as the economy gets hit with continued lockdown and loss of confidence, the government has the incentive to sound optimistic to ensure that people can get back to the streets to produce and spend, if only to minimize the prospects of permanent and irreversible economic damage as much as possible.

Yet, beyond the clear political and economic incentives to hide the true extent of the coronavirus' damage to normal everyday life, cultural factors, most clearly illustrated by 家醜不可外揚 in the Chinese instance, should not be discounted as another reason for the sheer difficulty of getting full transparency and accuracy in data collection and reporting. When individual citizens are convinced that they need to look good in front of their neighbors and community, authorities seeking to get people to come forward voluntarily with news of infections within their own family circles inevitably find their calls falling on deaf ears.

But it should be noted that that tendency to hide bad news from others is not unique to the coronavirus. In socially conservative households, parents finding their children being raped, being sexually "deviant," having children out of wedlock, and engaged in any other social activities deemed to be against the norms of the majority would lead to the 家醜不可外揚 to be kicked in. Those who seek to change society, or even just to get help for issues that many members of the local community refuse to recognize, find themselves not only marginalized by the state, but also by their own families.

And indeed, despite the 家醜不可外揚 concept being enunciated in Chinese, it is not an issue that is particularly unique to Chinese families. Whether it is the obsession with female virginity before marriage or "honor killings" of relatives that damaged the family name, many parts of the world continue to engage in practices that maintain "positivity" surrounding the family by not only suppressing bad news but gruesomely punish members of the family that refuse to partake in the upkeep of the positive family name. Many of those punishments go far beyond the socioeconomic marginalization that is the main form of punishment among Chinese families.

It is an understatement to say the danger of such a desire to hide information not just for hiding critical information but ensure social progress. If a government, such as the Chinese one, consider itself to be the "parent" of all citizens, then 家醜不可外揚 gives it the power to interfere in moral and cultural issues, areas that many social progressives find it to be outside the jurisdiction of the state. In an authoritarian state, such interference is much more than just giving the right numbers on a disease, it would lead to persecution of what the state call "anti-government" individuals, while the vast majority of the citizens are consumed by exercises to make themselves look good in public.