The Shift from External Control to Internal Control in Zhenguan Zhengyao
1. Question
Why does preservation become more difficult than founding?
2. Abstract
In Zhenguan Zhengyao, Emperor Taizong asks his senior ministers which is more difficult: founding or preservation. Fang Xuanling, who shared the hardships of the founding period with Taizong, answers, “founding.” Wei Zheng, who served Taizong during the preservation period, answers, “preservation.” After hearing both answers, Taizong recognizes that each has its own kind of difficulty, and says that since the hardships of founding have already been overcome, the next task is to devote himself to preservation.
This study structurally analyzes why Wei Zheng judged preservation to be more difficult. It clarifies the problems that arise specifically in times of peace and then abstracts them in a form applicable to modern organizations.
3. Method
This study extracts, as Layer 1 facts, the answers given by Fang Xuanling and Wei Zheng to Taizong’s question in Zhenguan Zhengyao.
It then reconstructs, in Layer 2, the different kinds of difficulty that Fang Xuanling and Wei Zheng identified in the founding phase and the preservation phase. Finally, in Layer 3, it derives insights that remain applicable to modern organizations.
4. Layer 1: Fact
1) Fang Xuanling saw the difficulty of founding as “winning survival at the risk of one’s life”
In Chapter 3 of the Ruler and Minister section of Zhenguan Zhengyao, Taizong asks, “Which is more difficult, founding or preservation?” Fang Xuanling, who survived war together with Taizong and contributed greatly to the founding of the Tang, answers that founding is more difficult.
His reason is that, at the time of founding the state, the realm was in chaos, powerful rivals were divided across many regions, and only by defeating them, forcing their surrender, and winning war after war could peace finally be achieved. In other words, the greatest difficulty of founding lies in the fact that one must fight for survival itself and win in order to move to the next stage.
2) Wei Zheng saw the difficulty of preservation as “keeping oneself right in the midst of peace”
To the same question, Wei Zheng answers that preservation is more difficult. In his view, when an emperor rises, he does so in the aftermath of the extreme decline and disorder of the previous age, pacifies chaos, and gains the support of the people. In that sense, founding is comparatively easier because it is granted by Heaven and given by the people.
However, once the ruler has obtained the imperial position, everything becomes easy to direct according to his own will, and his mind gradually becomes self-indulgent. Even though the people hope for rest after long years of war, if they are exhausted again by construction works and luxury, the decline of the state begins from there. What Wei Zheng is pointing to here is not an external enemy, but the internal risk of collapse produced by peace itself.
3) Taizong recognized that founding and preservation involve different kinds of difficulty
After hearing the answers of Fang Xuanling and Wei Zheng, Taizong acknowledges that both founding and preservation are difficult. He then says that since the hardships of founding have already been overcome, the next task is to devote himself to preservation.
This shows that Taizong understood founding as the difficulty of winning and preservation as the difficulty of continuing to maintain what has already been won.
5. Layer 2: Order
5-1. The problem-solving process in the founding phase
If Fang Xuanling’s answer is reconstructed structurally, the founding phase is an age of survival struggle against external threats. Because outside pressure is extremely strong, the organization cannot avoid maintaining a constant sense of crisis. To survive, it must gather information, recognize reality accurately, make proper judgments, and act.
This problem-solving process can be organized as follows:
External threat (war / competition)
↓
Tension (sense of crisis)
↓
Multi-perspective information gathering
↓
Accurate recognition
↓
Proper judgment
↓
Action taken at the risk of survival
↓
Survival
↓
Organizational growth
The greatest difficulty in the founding phase lies in the final two steps: “action taken at the risk of survival” and “survival” itself. Unless these are overcome, the organization cannot even move to the next stage. This is the special difficulty of the founding phase.
5-2. The problem-solving process in the preservation phase
By contrast, the difficulty Wei Zheng sees in preservation is the risk of internal collapse that appears after external pressure disappears. In the founding phase, the existence of survival threats forces people to restrain arrogance and maintain a certain degree of self-control. But in the preservation phase, external pressure becomes weaker, and people become more likely to grow comfortable, careless, and self-indulgent.
This internal collapse process can be organized as follows:
Peace / decline of a sense of crisis
↓
Arrogance / ease
↓
Decline of self-control
↓
Neglect and disappearance of remonstrance
↓
Bias in information
↓
Distortion of recognition
↓
Errors in judgment
↓
Collapse
The important point here is that the difficulty of preservation lies not in the strength of external enemies, but in the difficulty of continuing to discipline oneself. Since there is no external pressure, the effort to restrain arrogance and ease is not enforced by the environment. Therefore, self-control and the maintenance of remonstrance must be carried out consciously.
Moreover, once external pressure disappears, the perceived necessity of dissent declines, and remonstrance begins to look like “unnecessary friction.”
5-3. The difficulty of founding and preservation differs in the mode of control itself
Taken together, the difference between founding and preservation is not a difference in the amount of difficulty, but a difference in the nature of difficulty.
In the founding phase, external threats are strong, and the organization is pushed in the right direction by outside pressure. In other words, founding is a phase of external control.
By contrast, in the preservation phase, external pressure declines, and the organization must maintain its own correctness by itself. In other words, preservation is a phase of internal control.
Founding is a phase in which the environment tightens people.
Preservation is a phase in which people must keep tightening themselves.
This shift is the essence of why preservation is more difficult.
6. Layer 3: Insight
A structural reading of Zhenguan Zhengyao shows that the difference between founding and preservation lies in the fact that the organization’s mode of control changes according to the presence or absence of external pressure.
Founding is a phase of external control, driven by external threats such as war and competition. In that phase, a sense of crisis is naturally maintained for the sake of survival, and multi-perspective information gathering, accurate recognition, and proper judgment are encouraged. The difficulty of founding is great, but that very difficulty also keeps the organization tense and alert.
By contrast, preservation is a phase of internal control, which begins after peace arrives and external pressure declines. In that phase, the present condition can be maintained for a time even without great effort. As a result, people easily drift into arrogance and ease. Then self-control declines, remonstrance is neglected, information becomes biased, recognition is distorted, and judgment becomes mistaken.
For this reason, the difficulty of preservation is not the difficulty of growth.
It is the difficulty of fighting deterioration.
At the center of that fight lies the question of whether the organization can maintain its self-correction function. If the ability to continue correcting recognition and judgment through self-control and remonstrance is lost, the organization may not collapse immediately, but it will begin to deteriorate quietly.
Therefore, the real difficulty of preservation lies in the need to restrain arrogance and ease and to continue maintaining the self-correction function across generations, as long as peace continues.
7. Implications for the Present
The same applies to modern organizations. Preservation means a process in which, after external pressure has declined, the organization must continue to restrain deterioration through self-control and information circulation.
In newly founded companies, the following tendencies are often seen:
- field orientation
- flexibility
- diversity of information
By contrast, in mature companies, the following tendencies often advance:
- bureaucratization
- rigidity
- information closure
Of course, bureaucratization is not automatically evil. Organization-building is an unavoidable issue when moving from the founding phase to the preservation phase. The problem is that, when bureaucratization advances, sectionalism and information closure often advance at the same time, and the recognition and judgment of the organization as a whole begin to distort.
For this reason, the greatest challenge in the preservation phase is that the governing side—in a company, the management side—must continue to remain conscious of preventing deterioration. In other words, it must constantly ask itself whether it is collecting information accurately and making decisions without arbitrary rule or prejudice.
The need to continue this constant self-examination for as long as the organization exists—
this is the greatest difficulty of the preservation phase.
8. Conclusion
Both founding and preservation have their own corresponding difficulties.
However, whereas founding is always a difficulty under conditions of survival risk, preservation is always a difficulty under conditions of deterioration risk and the need for self-control.
Human beings tend to deteriorate when self-control is neglected.
For that reason, in the preservation phase, talent alone is not enough. Virtue is also necessary.
Virtue is desirable even in the founding phase, but because the sense of crisis created by external pressure forcibly restrains arrogance, a lack of virtue is less likely to become visible immediately. In the preservation phase, however, that external restraint no longer exists.
Therefore, in the preservation phase, it becomes essential not only to have talent, but also to possess virtue—the capacity to restrain arrogance and ease and to continue maintaining the self-correction function.
Thus, preservation is more difficult than founding because it is a phase in which one must continue preventing self-deterioration in the midst of peace.
9. Source Text
Harada Tanenari, Shinshaku Kanbun Taikei: Zhenguan Zhengyao (Vol. 1), Meiji Shoin, 1978.